Morphological Assessment of River Stability: Review of the Most Influential Parameters

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is an interesting study on morphological assessment of river stability using AHP method. I think the study design and execution were appropriate, but I doubt whether this paper is a review article due to the manuscript is organized like a technical article. Also, there are some grammatical errors and inconsistencies in this manuscript that require additional attention.

1) Please state the reason for the use of AHP method. How is the applicability of AHP method for your research item? What is the advantage of this method?

2) Please try to improve your description of some technical terms especially when it first appears in the manuscript. For example, “reference condition” in line 88 made me confused.

3) Equation (1), n(n-1)/2, is actually not an equation. Please revise it in line 248.

4) Please improve the figure quality to make sure everything is clear. For example, some characters are partially covered in Figure 1.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for taking the time to review the manuscript, your opinion and comments are valued greatly, and they will support me in writing more journals in the future.

I appreciate your valuable comments and would like to clarify and respond to the comments. Please see the attachment. 

Thank you. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

I had very the much the pleasure to go through the manuscript "Morphological Assessment of channel stability: Review of the most influential parameters". the manuscript is well written, comprehensive, and even though I am not an expert on this field, it was easy for me to understand it and have better idea on the assessment of channel stability. It is my impression that this work would be a great contribution to your journal and I recommend it for publication with only a minor spelling check.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, 

Thank you for taking the time to review the paper, your opinion is valued greatly, and it will support me in writing more journals in the future. The spelling errors have been checked appropriately.

Thank you.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

Please note that your responses to POINT (2) and (3) are the same, but I found your revision in the revised manuscript.

In general, the paper has been improved to some extent, and I have no more questions.

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

you present a potentialy interesting topic, but I found some major shortcomings which prevent from the acceptance of your paper in its present form. Mainy, I found very difficult to follow your results and the discussion does not really answer on the main goals of your study. See the specific comments below:

- It is not clear how "channel stability" correlates with  the assessments of hydromorphology. Channel dynamics (e.g., erosional and depositional processes in braiding rivers or meandering rivers) can be signs of healthy fluvial systems classified as good hydromorphological state. In the case you use the term "stability" to express "healthy" of fluvial systems, please replace "stability" by more proper term used in fluvial geomorphology/restoration practice. "Stability" is usually perceived as a stable channel in space and time, which simply suggests some engineering approach to increase the stability of channel bed and banks. 

- l. 58-60 please rewrite this sentence to better express its meaning

- results are very difficult to follow. Caption of 3.1 chapter is missing, chapters 3.2 and 3.3 are mixtures of methods and obtained values for individual parameters, but I am not sure that this complete methodological approach is relevant for the main goals of your study. Figures 1-4 are really not helpful to understand the obtained conclusions (e.g., I have no idea why there are empty lines 5-9 in Figure 4; moreover, this figure should be referred as a table). I recommend to rewrite entire section and present only the most relevant results (based on clear methods and supporting the aims/conclusions of the study) separated from methodology (eg. l. 253-259 or l. 285-291 should go to methods). 

- the discussion is practically missing, and it is recently consisted of two unrelevant paragraphs. For example, lines 314-339 do not discuss the obtained results and this part rather has a character of introduction with some general statements, but without any references on literature. For example, I would expect some information about the most important (or the most frequently used) parameters/variables in hydromorphological assessments based on your statistical analysis to fulfil your main goals of the paper. I think you can add here some sentences from "conclusions", but put into wider framework (based on relevant literature). 

 

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper investigated the Morphological Assessment of Channel Stability using AHP approach. the paper needs some revisions as follows:

1-at the end of the introduction section give the main novelty and applicability of the current study.

2-in the methods of study give a flowchart and framework that is used in the study.

3-in the material and methods, nearly all the tables and methods are previously proposed by Belletti et al. 2015 , so what are the differences between your method with the Belletti  et al.?

4-in Tables 1-4, "Frequency " how is determined? what is its meaning?

5-the material and method of the study is a review of previous studies, it needs to give your method fundamentally.

6- how the results of AHP can be used in the model and methods of Morphological Assessment of Channel Stability? for example in a case study these weights how can be used?

7-The discussion section is written from a general viewpoint, focuse on your results regarding previous studies.

8-explain the effects of uncertainties in parameters selection and uncertainties in data acquiring for the AHP results.

 

 

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript presented a review of past approaches to assessing the channel stability by revisiting the most influential parameters that were frequently adopted in the assessment process. Using an Analytical Hierarchy Process method, the prioritization and weightage of each factor were determined. However, the organization of this manuscript and presentation of the data and results need extensive improvement.

1) The current manuscript is not well organized, and the language need be fully polished. Please make sure the manuscript could be easily understood after a major revision.

2) It seems like the whole paper is based on the study of Belletti et al. (2015). What is the relationship between your study and the study [4]?

3) Please explain why you choose the AHP method in this study and evaluate its applicability, because we know there are a lot of other methods to obtain the prioritization and weightage of parameters.

4) The Section 4 Discussions is just a summary of the previous sections without any further analysis. Please carefully rewrite this section and add more valuable comments.

5) The quality of the figures is not good. For example, the first letter case is not unified in Figure 1 (e.g., ‘Criteria’ and ‘more important’). The description of each figure is too simple. Please check the figures and tables and make further modification.