Innovations in Sustainable Groundwater and Salinity Management in California’s San Joaquin Valley

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors thoroughly describe the current surface water and groundwater sustainability management approach in California and its origin and evolution over time. The manuscript is well written and provides many interesting insights on the topic of concern.

My main concern is that the text resembles a critical essay more than an article (as it is described in the "guide for authors" of this journal), with no data presentation or discussion, very few links with previous scientific literature, and less than half of the text dedicated to the discussion of case studies. However, I recognize that the style and content may be in line with the requests of the current special issue.

A few suggestions to improve manuscript quality:

-more attention should be given to acronyms (e.g. "GSA" is given two different definitions - Groundwater sustainability areas AND Groundwater sustainability agencies; "CVSALT" is mentioned in the abstract and introduction with no explanation of its meaning)

-most of the figures are not cited nor explained in the text. Since figures should support the discussion, I suggest giving them more importance throughout the text or to delete some of the proposed GIS maps

-in my opinion, more space should be given to case studies. The main conclusion from the analysis of the two cases is that a more "centralized" sustainability management appears to be more effective than a diffuse one. I guess that other useful conclusions may be drawn when comparing such interesting case studies.

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on your draft paper.  I have spent some time in California so that made the paper more interesting to read. 

Having said that tt is written by two USA authors and the pitch I think is at a USA audience. (eg line 103, 651 .....you say nation.....i think you mean the USA)  This is an international journal and i think you should run that lens over your next revision of this paper.  what's in it for an internatiional readrship ?  You could possibly strengthen that in a few places in the paper.  eg line 95-97 talks about the seperate systems in the USA, but this problem also applies in other countries too and you could reference a couple of countries / regions  ......

There are a few places where you assume the reader knows what GSAs, CVSALTS are.   eg line 21, 29 is the first time these abbreviations are used.  I'm left asking what are these at the start even though it is explained eventually.

There are some places where the tense is not quite right eg line 39....will affect everybody....this was act signed in 2014, so it must of happened in the past tense.  The objective Line 40 is to should be was to.......

line 51; are ......should be is ?

65: to include........including ?

75: Delta region  ....add region ?

There are alot of places where you use State.......and federal acts.  Federal should be a capital F......too ??? eg line 101

Figure 1: some formating issue next to 354.24.....  GSP is the caption  (in full ?)

line 169; underline California - not needed ?

I found section 3 (note you have two sections 3 at the moment line 166 and 277) are bit long winded and wordy.  If you feel like cutting out a few senetnces somewhere I dont think they would be missed.

section 3.2 line 334......."until relatively recently........"  that reference is 20 years ago,........ that is hardly recent.......... There are other examples of this in the paper referecing a paper from years ago and implying it is current/new/recent.

Figure 2 source ?

I wonder around line 343 if there should be another "sub heading" along the lines of managment problems.  You go onto to talk about irrigation allocations, subsidence, and covid..........   and also at line 459 raise the "diverse problems" which I'm sure there are many, but you dont really say what they all are in one concise place in your paper. Clearly as authors you are well versed in the history and these problems, but your readers are not. Could you have a concsie table listing some of them and a reference column ....rising urban demand, environmental water, salinity, ag chemicals etc.....  You barely discuss the rising urban demand wate ror  for wetalnds etc which I presume is a big topic.

Moving onto to the case studies.  I think you need to say in the text where they are so an international reader can figure it out quickly.  The county names mean nothing to someone from a land far away.    Maybe name a big city nearby, so they can figure out if they are in the north, south or middle of the SJV..  

Conclusion:  I would revisit this with some learnings for an international readership on "sustainability" which is the focus of this journal.  In addition, words like "shaken the major resource agencies" probably should be in a more formal scientific format

It is a well written paper.

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments

 

SUMMARY

 

The paper addresses the research area related to “sustainable agriculture” of the MDPI Sustainability journal. I believe that the target journal is an appropriate forum for this article. The Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) of 2014 and the CVSALTS initiative were enacted to reverse years of inaction on over-pumping of groundwater and salination of rivers that both threaten agricultural sustainability in the State of California. Two case studies are described that illustrate the disparity in the challenges faced by GSAs in subregions charged with developing consensus-based Groundwater Sustainability Plans (GSPs). Local leadership and advocacy will play a significant role in achieving long-term goals for both the SGMA and CVSALTS initiatives.

 

BROAD COMMENT

 

This is an important paper about the sustainability of agriculture in the State of California (USA). The introduction section is well written with recent references. I appreciate the fact that the authors described two case studies to illustrate their point. It helps to understand and grab the issue at the ground. The authors draw a good conclusion at the end of the paper.

 

SPECIFIC COMMENTS

• Lines 340-343: Please include the link to the Water Management Planning Tool in the caption of Figure 2.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf