Disturbance Effects on Timberland Returns

PSTR-D-24-00014

Dear Prof. Dos. Kärenlampi,

We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript 'Disturbance Effects on Timberland Returns' has been provisionally accepted for publication in PLOS Sustainability and Transformation.

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Best regards,

Isabel Marques

Section Editor

PLOS Sustainability and Transformation

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Additional Editor Comments (if provided):

Reviewer Comments (if any, and for reference):

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Does this manuscript meet PLOS Sustainability and Transformation’s publication criteria? Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe methodologically and ethically rigorous research with conclusions that are appropriately drawn based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available (please refer to the Data Availability Statement at the start of the manuscript PDF file)?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception. The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS Sustainability and Transformation does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: This paper makes an economic comparison of two stylized forest management practices, i.e. rotation of even-aged plants vs uneven-aged semi-stationary continuous cover forestry. The contribution of the paper is that this is made accounting for the possibility of severe disturbances, like drought, storms or insect damages that may serious disturb plant growth. Consideration of such events are vital to the choice of sustainable forest management practices and the basic result of the analysis, using forestry data from growth of spruce in Austria, collected from another published study, is that even-ages forestry may outperform continuous cover forestry in the light of the possibility of such disturbances. The analysis is straight forward and convincing, and the presentation is clear, so I have no specific remarks to make.

Reviewer #2: The article provides a thorough examination of the economic consequences of severe disruptions on the returns from timberland utilizing the principles of probability theory. The juxtaposition between even-aged rotation forestry and continuous-cover forestry is lucidly presented and corroborated by pertinent data obtained from Austrian spruce forests, which effectively elucidates the findings. The comprehensive and transparent methodology section facilitates comprehension of the study's approach. The insightful discourse on the financial sensitivity of continuous-cover forestry to disturbances and potential regime shifts adds practical value to the study, notably with the incorporation of carbon rent and its influence on financial performance. While certain sections, such as the elucidation of probability density functions and their application, could benefit from enhanced clarity, the manuscript would be further bolstered by a concise discussion of its limitations and potential avenues for future research.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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