First Results of Phytoplankton Spatial Dynamics in Two NW-Mediterranean Bays from Chlorophyll-a Estimates Using Sentinel 2: Potential Implications for Aquaculture

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Sentinel 2 provides satellite-derived chlorophyll products with high spatial resolution. This is pivotal to help investigate dynamics of ecosystems, from the land to the ocean.  But to quantify coastal chlorophyll concentrations is still far less than expectation because of the complexity of the water content. This paper is a nice attempt to evaluate several prevailing chlorophyll algorithms in shallow coastal water environment. Before this paper is ready to be published, I have a few comments for the authors to improve the quality and the readability.

1 More details and instructions could be added onto the figure 1.

(1) The coordinates system should be replaced with standard longitude and latitude. The same suggestion is for the inserted panel.

(2) The narrow channel in Fangar Bay should be marked.

(3) Any big or representative cities located in this map should be marked.

2 For the results shown on the Table 4, there are several algorithm which though displays a relative higher r-square, but with a low AIC. Considering the rest of the paper adopted the selected algorithms to predict/evaluate the spatial-temporal dynamics, 95% confidence interval and 95% prediction interval should be given in both Figures 6 and 7.

3 I cannot find Figure 10 c and d in the draft. I guess some software errors happened when the figure 10 was added into the draft.

4 An additional table is required to summarize the performance/validation of all chlorophyll algorithms that appear in section 2.6.

5 When discussing the spatiotemporal chl-a dynamics in the Discussion section, necessary annotations pointing to associated figures should be added in every paragraphs. Otherwise, only with text, it is particularly hard for readers to visualize and locate the mentioned observations in their minds.

6 The equation for coefficient of variation calculation should be given in the methodology section.

7 Please upload all software source codes (I suppose R language?) and in situ data into an online public accessible data repository.   The accession number then should be given in the context. This requirement is to fulfill the data availability policy of the Remote Sensing journal.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper presents interesting research, with a high potential of applicability, as aqua farming depends on data regarding phytoplankton dynamics.

The methods and results sections could be more concise, as they are quite difficult to follow.

Minor English corrections should be taken into account, such as line 32 "being Catalonia", which should be corrected to "Catalonia being".

In the methods, there is stated that sun glint correction was performed manually, for each image. Is there any chance of introducing subjectivism in values?

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx