Unclear Land Rights and Deforestation: Pieces of Evidence from Brazilian Reality

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The study submitted for reviews does not have the typical layout of a scientific article with the described research methodology, results and their discussion. It is rather a study resulting from a query of available source materials on the subject, along with their analysis and discussion. This approach to tackling the global problem of deforestation in the Amazon forest is, of course, one of the forms that science allows. The legal situation of deforestation of the Amazon forests in Brazil is well explained in the paper. Studying this work allows us to better understand the complexity of the problem of forest deforestation in this part of the world. Due to the importance of the issues raised, the work should be published, but it also has weaknesses that must be corrected before publication. I believe that the scientific discussion of the issues raised regarding deforestation as such, as well as the deforestation of forests in this part of the world, with its consequences not only for Brazil but more broadly, should be further developed. Many scientific papers have been written on this subject, some of which could enrich the introduction and discussion of this paper. Only 18 references cited is not enough on deforestation.

The second weakness of the manuscript are the figures, they all require major or minor corrections, details below:

Figure 1. No unit on the vertical axis. It is not known what currency the budget amounts are in. The caption should be placed under the figure, not above the figure.

Figure 2. The caption should be under the figure. The vertical axis caption is in Portuguese? It should be in English. Vertical axis unit km2, 2 should be superscript.

Figure 3 and 4; captions should be under the figures. The legend is not visible - low resolution drawing.

Figure 5, caption should be under the figure. No vertical axis title, no vertical axis unit, no explanation of PA, MT, RO and AM symbols.

Figure 6 is in the form of 2 tables and should be presented as follows: Table 1………… and Table 2.

Table captions and their content should be in English.

The reference list does not match the journal model. The entire list of references cited in the work should be corrected.

Author Response

After the review, there was the need to deepen the discussion on the deforestation and the link with land related issues and tenure insecurity, which was improved with further references. Besides that, others were already cited in footnotes, which was not suitable with the Journal format. This was corrected and some footnotes where cleared and those relevant references were quoted properly. 
There were also major adjustments to the Figures and Tables accordingly with the Journal model. We understood the problems and corrected them. The legends on Figures 3 and 4 were enhanced to facilitate reading. If they are still too small, another option should be to leave them out of the Figure and explain it in the text, but we did not believed that this was the best solution for it. 
Please see the attachment of the new version and consider the improvements made.  

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper is written well, however need some minor changes, the figure used in the text body is caption/written in local language it must be changed with English so that a non native of English understand it easily. 

In figure 3 the Legends are unclear. it also must be changed, and this issue is same for figure 4,5 and onwards. The resolution quality of the figures is very poor. 

Lastly, the references from 14 to 18 are unclear, they seems incomplete the author need to change reference by add complete information.

Author Response

Considering the review provided we adjusted the Figures and Tables accordingly to the Journal's model, translating all content to English, fixing captions and legends of the maps (Figures 3 an 4). 
We understood the need to correct the references and footnotes, as they were not suitable and many needed adjustments. Some footnotes were cleared and others were turned into proper references. 
Please see the attachment for the improvement made.   

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

My comments have been considered and the manuscript has been revised, thank you. I have no further comments and can recommend the manuscript for publication in its current form.