Applications of a Novel Method of Ecosystem Services Assessment into Local Policy Making in the River Blackwater Estuary, Ireland

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The argument of how to involve the appraisal of ecosystem services into policy is of great interest. The complexity of what and how to measure ecosystem services is a result from how to merge different approaches and methods applied by social science, economy and ecology. General comments to the authors:

1. Materials and methods:

• pag.3, Fig.1- it will be better if you show geographical coordinates on the map of the studied area (e.g. degree, minutes, seconds or decimal degrees); Legend on the figure- indicate the acronyms used in the capture (SAC, SPA, PDS).
• pag.4, Data collection- it is not clear how many are the stakeholders in the group Public (you should named the group Public here as far you use Public further in the Results) and the RSG. In the Section Results, you stated 99 responses to survey and 44 individual. The number of stakeholders in each group is important because this could influence the responses.
• pag.5, Fig.2-In the capture specify “according to Likert (1932)”. Include the reference in the section References.
• pag.6, table 1, Q15, third column Options -shift the number 2 down

2. Results:

• pag.7, Fig.3- Box 1 “Facebook comments on the survey”. Could you specify in the section Mat&Methods how the survey of the 99 respondents was actually conducted? Only Facebook? This Figure in % present 99+44 respondents but how many of them are from group Public and group RSG? What is the % distribution by groups of stakeholders?
• Fig.3- on the axis X the number of questions are 17, but in Table 1 are 16 questions described.
• page 9, Fig,6- ES values by site. It will be nice to see how the ES values of the three sites vary between the two stakeholders groups.
• pag.10 Policy Analysis- it is difficult to catch the own results, the analysis presented are all published data.

3. Discussion and conclusion: The core conclusion of the authors is that the sample size is limited and the high drop off rate possibly is due to inaccessibility of the language. The sample size is really too limited but you could try to discuss the results of the survey by stakeholder groups at least. Is it possible that the survey results (responses) are altered by the period in which were obtained (COVID)? With regards to drop off rate especially from the 12^th questions, could be also presumed that you ask too many questions in order to retain respondent interest. One idea to consider is the order in which you ask questions.

• page 12, line 413- write in full PDS.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

this is a generally well-written manuscript on an interesting study examining how ecosystem services are perceived by two sets of stakeholders, how surveys can be improved, as well as incorporation of ES into policy.

I have a few minor comments that are on the attached version. I include the main ones here:

1. The map can be improved by making the Special Areas polygons transparent, currently they are opaque and hides the underlying topography from the reader, making it harder to understand the physical setting.
2. Try not to use too many specific abbreviations in the text, like GP and GI, which are not well known, and makes the reader search for what they stand for.
3. You can perhaps discuss more on the issue of equating ES that are cultural values with those that are regulatory services. Possible shortcomings in such scoring arises if the audience is not sufficiently aware of regulatory services of landscapes such as marshes.
4. English - while its generally clearly written and flows well, I'd suggest going over to add some punctuation and improve certain sentences.

Thanks.

 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript provides a case study for ecosystem service assessment of three estuaries by local residents using the CICES scheme. Most of the contents are clear. I only have minor comments on the paper.

 

1. If possible, it would be informative to have information about personal attributes of respondents such as age, gender and profession. In L164-166, there is a brief description about stakeholders, and the authors state that some are involved in regional development. Do you mean by construction workers? Did the response different between construction workers and other stakeholders who are not involved in regional development?

 

2. If possible, it would be infromative to have the original questionnaires in a supplementary material. How well respondents returned the questionnaires largely depends on the information provided in the survey. It would help readers visualize the actual survey by looking at the questionnaires.

 

3. Too many acronyms are used in the paper which makes difficult to read for the first time unless one is familiar with these acronyms. Acronyms are even used in the legend of Fig. 1 without spelling out in full. Please reduce the use of acronyms unless they appear frequently or are essential. For example, PDS, SAC, SPA, pNHA may be described without using acronyms as they only appear few times.

 

4. In Fig 4, the authors depicted a bar graph of most important ecosystem services in the three sites. It would be informative to see non-valued ecosystem services as well. Is there a possibility that non-valued or least valued ecosystem services are undervalued because of language barrier or jargon used in the respective parts in the questionnaires?

 

5. It would help visualize the study sites if the authors can include representative pictures of the three study sites in Fig. 1.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf