clarify drought tolerance vs resistance

[teixeirak]

From R4: "you seem to use drought resistance and drought tolerance interchangeably, which may be confusing. I think it is important to clarify these definitions early on in the paper"

[teixeirak]

We need a good definition of drought tolerance. I'm currently having trouble finding something concrete... @mcgregorian1 , maybe you can help find something?

[teixeirak]

Here's a draft response:

We now define drought resistance in the first paragraph: " Understanding forest responses to drought requires elucidation of how tree size, microenvironment, and species’ traits jointly influence individual-level drought resistance, defined here as a tree's ability to maintain growth during drought,...". We then use this term when we wish to speak specifically about resistance. We use "tolerance" as a more general term, consistent with what seems to be a fairly nebulous definition in the literature.

We should confirm that last sentence, though (see comment above).

[mcgregorian1]

Sorry packing took longer than I thought.

I agree though. Expanding on your thought process, "Drought resistance" refers to a tangible metric that denotes the extent to which a tree can maintain its usual growth during drought, whereas "tolerance" refers to a generalized way of saying how the tree reacted to the drought.

• If we want to go even further than that, then technically in my mind, if a tree has low tolerance of drought then that means it also has low resistance. However, you could have a situation where a tree has low tolerance but high resistance, for example with fagr as you call out in the final paragraph.

Does that make sense? Unfortunately I've not seen much on this in the literature as well.

[mcgregorian1]

If we deviate from your draft @teixeirak I just need to remember to update the response to R4

[teixeirak]

I think we're good on this