In this manuscript, the authors explored the changes of vegetation structure and distributions in the subalpine to snow belts in the Lombardia region of Italia. The authors compiled 219 historical vegetation plots conducted in 1953, and then resurveyed 42 of them in 2023. Using these 84 matched plots, in combination with 21 environmental variables collected for these plots, the authors demonstrated changes in floristic composition, vegetation cover and distribution, and transition between different community types, and explored the relationships of the environmental variables with variations in vascular species richness, vegetation cover, and species composition. They found complex changes in vegetation structure and distribution, and found that microclimate and soil properties had significantly influences on variations in species richness, vegetation cover and species composition. They also suggested that land use change (e.g. livestoch density) may also influence species composition and species richness in these communities. Similar to this study, many studies have demonstrated that vegetation in mountains are experiencing significant changes due to global changes, which reduces the novelty of this study. Moreover, this study demonstrated the complex vegetation changes in one of the regions in Italia, and the general implications of the findings at larger scales are not clear. Therefore, this manuscript is more suitable for a speciallized/regionalized journal.

Specifical comments
Line 214, are these models based on global distribution or local distribution? can these models reflect the global niches of these species?

Line 216, the number of plots varied in different places in the manuscript. it is a bit confusing how many plots were used.

Lines 237-252, TWINSPAN is known for its sensitivity to rare species. moreover, the vegetation types identified overlapped with each other in the NMDS figure, which suggests that the identified vegetation types have relatively similar species composition.

Line 276, plots were used in some places, but relevees were used in others. This should be checked and corrected.

Lines 307-312, the results in this paragraph are quite confusing.

Table 2, Considering the number of variables used, the model had a relatively low explanatory power in explaining the variations in species dissimilarity between communities. Why?

In this revised version, the authors did not make many changes, and I see some of the issues remained in the current version. After another careful read, I have some more concerns about this manuscript.

1 Although the authors made a review about vegetation changes in response to global changes in the introduction, the introduction still lacks evidence how the hypotheses were proposed (especially the first three). This makes the hypotheses less convincing. I think the authors should reframe the introduction part to make the hypotheses more solid.

2 Joint species distribution models were used to detect the plant-plant interactions. Better justification for the use of this method to evaluate species interactions are needed in the method section. The uncertainties of the outputs of these models should also be acknowledged.

3 The discussion 4.2 are very general, and did not provide clear and convincing evidence supporting the observed changes (e.g., vegetation cover decline) in this study. The discussion is not closely based on the findings of this study.

4 Writing is not easy to follow. The manuscript also contains quite a few typos and broken sentences. I think these should be carefully checked.

More detailed comments
Fig 3, the abbreviations of vegetation groups are not clear. The grouping is not consistent with the description in the first paragraph of the results section. The vegetation types are also different from Fig 4. Shouldn’t these be the same.

L265, model

L350, what does LIV-L represent? This variable was not included in Table 1

L373, soil reaction, This variable was not included in Table 1 either. In table 1, there is a variable, LIV-R. but this variable represents soil pH.

L354, decrease in H index may not be due to “harmonized” plant communities. Loss in species richness could also lead to decline in H.

L484-485, strange. Wrong sentence?

L492, strange. Wrong sentence?

L503, Boch et al., 2021, this was not found in reference list