Strategies for Successful Mangrove Living Shoreline Stabilizations in Shallow Water Subtropical Estuaries
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Review of “Strategies for Successful Mangrove Living Shoreline Stabilizations in Shallow Water Subtropical Estuaries” by Fillyaw et al.
Summary of paper:
Fillyaw et al describe a manipulative experiment that explores the importance of mangrove age, breakwater presence and planting location on mangrove survival over one year. About half the mangroves planted survived after one year. Most of this loss was attributed to extended periods of high water. In general, older mangroves and mangroves planted with breakwaters had increased survival.
Overall comments:
- The manuscript would benefit from actions to make it clearer and more concise. A few suggestions:
- Simplify language (e.g., “get older” can be simplified to “age”, “In order to” to “To”).
- Combine sentences
- Restructure sentences that begin with a citation. It’s a bit awkward to read with the reference first when the format is a number.
- Consider paring down the number of sentences that begin with “According to…” (and other variations of this)
- Use subheadings, particularly in the methods section
- Use consistent terminology throughout
- Consider focusing the story on the manipulative experiment and removing anything not directly related.
Below I outline specific comments for each section:
Abstract:
Line 14: provide age of older mangroves if providing age of seedlings
Line 15-16: Simplify beginning of sentence. Perhaps “Approximately half (50.6%) of mangroves died and of those, 90.7% occurred…”
Line 17: Be consistent with how age of mangrove is written, stick with months or years throughout.
Introduction:
- May want to acknowledge that living shorelines can take the form of vegetation, oyster reefs, etc and that this paper is focused on vegetation.
- It may be beneficial to add a sentence or two earlier in the introduction (perhaps paragraph 3 or 4) about what age mangle are typically used in living shoreline projects. This would better set up the paragraphs starting on line 75.
Line 31: Remove additionally
Line 34: Consider beginning sentence with “Another option for shoreline stabilization is “living shoreline” which use…” or something along those lines to connect the 2 paragraphs together.
Line 35-36: Remove “This method of restoration” and replace with “Living shorelines…”
Line 40: Consider defining breakwater and providing specific examples of them before diving into oyster shell bags. Also consider describing how wave weight and near-bed velocity impact vegetation in living shorelines.
Line 51: Consider removing “[22] demonstrated that combining the results of” and move citation to end of sentence.
Line 51-54: Consider combining sentences
Line 64: Consider removing “According to data collected from 64 Tampa Bay, FL [34]” and move citation to end of sentence.
Line 66: Consider removing “In order”
Line 72: Consider removing “get older” and replace with “age”
Line 75-76: Consider breaking into 2 sentences.
Line 77: Consider moving this sentence up then stating how individual seedlings are lost from wave action.
Line 79: Consider restructuring sentence so it does not begin with the citation.
Line 83: Consider moving this sentence up to the paragraph that provides background info about mangroves.
Line 86: Consider restructuring sentence so it does not begin with the citation.
Line 89-93: Consider condensing these sentences
Line 103: What species of seedling mangroves?
Methods:
- Please consider adding subheadings throughout this section.
- Rhizophora mangle, R. mangle, and mangrove are used interchangeably throughout. Consider sticking with one for consistency.
Line 134-150: Consider adding subtitle such as “Study Site”
Line 134-140: Consider adding dominant plants in Mosquito Lagoon
Line 137-138: Consider providing the range in water depths here
Line 141: Refer to Fig 1.
Line 148: Were mangroves here historically?
Line 151: Consider adding subtitle such as “Study Design”
Line 165-175: Consider combining paragraphs
Line 170-176: Can combine these sentences into 2. “Rhizophora mangle used in the experimental living shoreline were separated into three developmental stages based on known plant ages percentage of woody tissue on the stem at the time of deployment. Mangroves were either seedlings at 11 months-old (0% woody tissue), transitional plants at 23 months-old (hereafter “transitionals”) with 15-75% woody tissue, or adults that ranged in age from 35 to 47 months-old (100% woody tissue). “
Line 184: What was the maximum for adults and transitionals? Consider providing the range to match what was provided for seedlings. May need to provide an explanation for why there was a range and how variable this was between replicates.
Line 191-201: It may be useful to provide a figure of the design in supplementary material.
Line 195: Were plants randomly assigned to rows? Were equal numbers of each type planted in each row?
Line 196: Is it standard practice to plant pots if roots were not growing out of the container? Were these pots biodegradable?
Line 201: Was the topsoil characterized for soil properties, etc? What type of R. mangle needed to be replaced?
Line 203-207: This can be simplified to one sentence stating that mangroves were tagged for continued identification. The rest of the detail is unnecessary for the manuscript and could be moved to supplemental information.
Line 208: Provide number of times sampled throughout study period rather than just “monthly”
Line 215-217: Did this occur often? What category would those mangroves fall under then?
Line 225-226: Did you record live and dead leaves or total leaves? What does “without manipulation of mangrove” mean? I suggest deleting and keeping the description of how height was measured.
Line 242-244: Likely need a citation for Arc and the method used to determine fetch
Line 246: Sediment transport is mentioned as the factor, but erosion and accretion are the metrics measured. For clarity and consistency, I suggest using erosion and accretion instead of sediment transport.
Line 254: Was it clear that plants next to planted mangroves were in fact shading the planted mangroves? Without quantifying shading, perhaps it’s better to refer to this as proximity to another plant, and then in the discussion introduce shading as a mechanism.
Line 263: Mean of what? The depth of wrack?
Line 270: Check spelling: “evenly-space”
Line 287-292: The mean grain size sentences do not fit well here since this paragraph continues discussion of methods for the temporal variables. Consider moving to the site description paragraphs
Line 296-300: Boating pressure sentences don’t seem to fit here either since this appears to be a continuation of temporal factors and boating pressure was not mentioned earlier.
Line 301-307: The way this paragraph is written suggests that this work was done to characterize the site, not used in any of the analyses. If so, then I suggest moving this paragraph up to more of a study site description section.
Line 315: Use “distance of vegetation” here but refer to it as shading in paragraph above. Be consistent with terminology.
Line 318: Use “shading” here instead of distance to vegetation. Use consistent terminology.
Lines 308-329: Did you investigate correlations between any of the variables measured?
Results:
Line 338: add space between “by” and “186.4%”
Line 355: Table 2 does not refer to accretion or erosion. Also, “Table” should be spelled out and parentheses should be included in sentence.
Line 352-355: Were there differences in accretion or erosion between treatments?
Line 369: Not sure dimensions is the right word here.
Line 370: The use of ANOVA is never mentioned in methods
Line 372-373: Unnecessary. Refer to table at end of previous sentence.
Line 391: Refer to table or figure that shows this significance.
Line 398: No need to include when sampling was conducted as this is already stated in methods. Remove and combine sentence with sentences on line 400.
Line 409: Was the 5-day period the same every month (e.g., the 5-10th)?
Line 411: If only monitored for 5 days, how do you know mangroves were completely exposed or not each month?
Line 414-418: This seems better suited to site description than results.
Line 425-426: This statement about what new growth is methods not results
Line 419-433: I would be curious to know whether the treatments impacted this at all. It seems remiss to not report that--- especially if treatments impacted overall survival.
Line 441-450: Much of this information about the boats could go into methods. Still unclear why boating impact was necessary--- is that the main source of waves in this system? Also, wave height is never tied back to the mangroves--- did it have any impact?
Line 453: What treatment replicates?
Line 454-455: This sentence should be in discussion not results.
Line 456-460: Is this necessary? It only matters if it was a variable monitored to try and answer the question posed on line 390.
Lines 461-465: This section seems like it should be nested within the first “How does initial mangrove age, breakwater presence, and mangrove placement impact mangrove survival?”
Line 470-473: This seems better suited to a site description than a result.
Discussion
Consider using the same subheadings as the results section here and/or by important take-home points (Age of mangrove; Water level/flooding; planting location; breakwaters, etc)
Line 512-513: Where did you report wave attenuation results and the impacts of it on the mangroves? This should be referred to and discussed in results.
Line 563-576: Not sure this paragraph adds much to the discussion. I would rather see discussion of other variables measured that were not as important in this study, but may be important elsewhere.
Lines 577-600: This is a very important section. I suggest reworking to break it into clean, separate sections. Some examples are “How to determine if restoration is necessary”, “Considerations for implementing a restoration”, “Recommended monitoring”. Try to think about this paragraph as if you were a land manager coming to this paper for the key bullet points they may want to consider if interested in doing a mangrove restoration or living shoreline project in their location.
Tables:
Table 1: This table would benefit from additional information. Consider including how often the measurements were sampled, and analysis used. Provide a more detailed table caption, perhaps restating the study questions.
Table 2: Add more detail to caption
Table 3: Provide the equation of best fit model in caption
Figures:
I suggest making all figures in the same program for cohesiveness (with the except of Figure 1). Also, check journal guidelines on whether figures need titles.
Figure 1: This figure is not referred to in text. If kept in the manuscript, consider making the legend more descriptive and highlighting where the oyster bags were deployed on the map as well.
Figure 2: Remake figure in same program as figures 3-4.
Figure 3: Improve axes labels. Add more detail to caption, particularly that this is a boxplot and describe components (what does the middle line in box represent, etc)
Figure 4: Add more detail to caption.
Figure 5: Can see a text box that shouldn’t be visible. I suggest remaking figure in same program as Figures 2-3. Add in vertical line to show when Hurricane Dorian hit.
Figure 6: Remake is same program as other figures. Potentially combine with figure 2.
References:
Line 891: There is a line for reference 123 but no text.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
In the section of experimental method, authors take oyster shells and other shellfish shells as breakwater, and simulate the function of breakwater to prevent waves and dissipate waves. Why can shellfish shells be used to replace breakwater? There is lack of verification materials.
What principle can be used for the orientation of the mangrove and breakwater? The paper only describes about the method of arrangement, whether it is reasonable and why can it be reasonable?
The ultimate goal of delineating ecological defense line for mangrove should be to protect the shoreline. However, in the results and discussion section, it mainly focuses on the survival situation and conditions of mangroves, it is suggested to supplement some discussion about the influence on the shoreline.
Location of the restoration site (scope of Longitude and latitude) should be illustrated in Fig. 1; it gives none information to readers in this figure. And the manuscript also gives none expatiation about the study area.
The format of the literature should be checked and improved carefully.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear Authors,
The article is well written and contains a lot of information regarding the stabilization of the coastline. I suggest supplementing figure 1 with the exact location of the research areas against the background of North America together with geographic coordinates and inserting a new figure into section 3.5. This figure should present the changes of the coastline with the breakdown into individual years.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors have made a good attempt at addressing my earlier comments. However, there are still a few things that should be improved prior to publication.
Figures are suggested to be improved, longitude and latitude grid line or picture frame should be added in the figure 1 and Figure 2, readers may be not familiar with where is the study site.
Many of your additions (as shown in red) contain English grammar problems. Please review and/or get a native English speaker to edit.
Please check and adjust the format of the manuscript carefully.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
