Land Cover Changes in Selected Areas Next to Lagoons Located on the Southern Coast of the Baltic Sea, 1984–2021

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

All the suggestions/improvements that I recommended were made.

Author Response

Reviewer 1: All the suggestions/improvements that I recommended were made.

Authors: Thank you very much for your positive opinion!

Reviewer 2 Report

In this paper, the land cover changes in three lagoons located on the southern coast of the Baltic sea was studied in 1984-2021.

It constitutes a very interesting topic deserving in depth-study and publication in the scientific literature. However, from this reviewer's point of view, this paper needs work and clarifications in the discussion part (section 4). In this section, the authors summarize things already said in the results part. However, the results should also be discussed with respect to literature data. In this section the references are only cited, but comments for discussion of the obtained data with respect to the cited literature were not written.

Some minor revisions are detailed in the following:

• Abstract: please use the present form of the verbs;
• Line 67: please remove website and move it in the references list. In the text use only the number of the reference;
• Line 97 – 103: please use the present form of the verbs;
• Section 2: insert subsections in lines 105 (2.1), 130 (2.2);
• Figure 1: insert A near the Curonian Lagoon;
• Line 145: add verb: …..for Sentinel-2 was 10 meters;
• Line 147: remove website leaving only the reference [39] and add the period at the end of the sentence;
• Lines 152 – 154: remove the numbers (1), …., (10);
• Lines 160 – 171: add semicolons to the end of each bullet;
• Section 3: insert subsections in lines 199 (3.1), 231 (3.2);
• Line 211: remove the space before the period;
• Line 232: check indent the text;
• Table 3: no split into 2 pages and remove the spaces between one written line and another both in table 3 and in table 2;
• Figure 5: the letters used in the figures are misleading. In figure 1 the Szczecin Lagoon is indicated with C letter. The authors could use in figure 5 the letters C1, C2, C3, and C4, for example;
• Section 4: please not use bold in the references.
• Lines 275 – 284: resume, the same topics are reported in the introduction. In this section the authors should focus on the discussion of the results;
• Lines 284 – 285 and 287 – 288: are two conflicting statements. Please clarify;
• please add Author Contributions as suggested in the guide of authors.

Author Response

Reviewer 2

In this paper, the land cover changes in three lagoons located on the southern coast of the Baltic sea was studied in 1984-2021.

It constitutes a very interesting topic deserving in depth-study and publication in the scientific literature. However, from this reviewer's point of view, this paper needs work and clarifications in the discussion part (section 4). In this section, the authors summarize things already said in the results part. However, the results should also be discussed with respect to literature data. In this section the references are only cited, but comments for discussion of the obtained data with respect to the cited literature were not written.

Authors: The Discussion was changed and improved.

Some minor revisions are detailed in the following:

• Abstract: please use the present form of the verbs;

Authors: The present form of the verbs is now used.

• Line 67: please remove website and move it in the references list. In the text use only the number of the reference;

Authors: The reference to the website was added instead of the url in text of the manuscript

• Line 97 – 103: please use the present form of the verbs;

Authors: The present form of the verbs is now used.

• Section 2: insert subsections in lines 105 (2.1), 130 (2.2);

Authors: The subsections were added

• Figure 1: insert A near the Curonian Lagoon;

Authors: Letter A was added to the Fig. 1

• Line 145: add verb: …..for Sentinel-2 was 10 meters;

Authors: It has been added.

• Line 147: remove website leaving only the reference [39] and add the period at the end of the sentence;

Authors: It has been corrected.

• Lines 152 – 154: remove the numbers (1), …., (10);

Authors: It has been removed.

• Lines 160 – 171: add semicolons to the end of each bullet;

Authors: The semicolons have been added.

• Section 3: insert subsections in lines 199 (3.1), 231 (3.2);

Authors: The subsections have been added.

• Line 211: remove the space before the period;

Authors: It has been removed.

• Line 232: check indent the text;

Authors: The indent was corrected.

• Table 3: no split into 2 pages and remove the spaces between one written line and another both in table 3 and in table 2;

Authors: It has been changed.

• Figure 5: the letters used in the figures are misleading. In figure 1 the Szczecin Lagoon is indicated with C letter. The authors could use in figure 5 the letters C1, C2, C3, and C4, for example;

Authors: It has been changed.

• Section 4: please not use bold in the references.

Authors: It has been changed.

• Lines 275 – 284: resume, the same topics are reported in the introduction. In this section the authors should focus on the discussion of the results;

Authors: It has been shortened.

• Lines 284 – 285 and 287 – 288: are two conflicting statements. Please clarify;

Authors: Acknowledgments were removed and only Funding section was left.

• please add Author Contributions as suggested in the guide of authors.

Authors: Author Contributions section was added.

Reviewer 3 Report

Congratulations,I think this manuscript is very complete and almost perfect except for some small grammatical errors.

 

Author Response

Reviewer 3: Congratulations, I think this manuscript is very complete and almost perfect except for some small grammatical errors.

Authors: Thank you very much for your positive opinion!

Reviewer 4 Report

The article presents changes in forest and water surfaces for selected areas located on the southern coast of the Baltic Sea between 1984 and 2021, with the use of satellite data.
The calculated increase in forest area amounted to 0.9% on average, in one case a decrease of 2.9% was observed. On the other hand, for waters the change was 0.1% on average.
However, drawing conclusions on the basis of such small changes in value requires a very detailed analysis of the accuracy of the analyzed data. Firstly, the study did not take into account the influence of MAUP on the results of the classification. Comparing the values ​​for pixels with a 9-fold difference in area (and with different positions of the raster grids) requires special care and should be explained in detail in the paper.
The work should also present the results of the classification quality assessment. This would allow an assessment of how the land use change compares to the classification uncertainty.
There is also no information as to whether the photos were given radiometric and geometric corrections.
The omission of channels other than RGB + IR (lines 145-6) does not improve the quality of the classification. Pixels for channels with lower resolution are then divided into smaller ones. Such action allows taking into account the greater variability of the terrain in the classification.
Lines 164-167 report that CLC data was also used as training data. These are processed data with its own errors. How did the use of these data affect the quality of the classification?
The raster vectorization mentioned on lines 172-173 is redundant. The area can be calculated directly from the raster, knowing the number of cells with a certain value.

Author Response

Reviewer 4

The article presents changes in forest and water surfaces for selected areas located on the southern coast of the Baltic Sea between 1984 and 2021, with the use of satellite data.
The calculated increase in forest area amounted to 0.9% on average, in one case a decrease of 2.9% was observed. On the other hand, for waters the change was 0.1% on average.
However, drawing conclusions on the basis of such small changes in value requires a very detailed analysis of the accuracy of the analyzed data. Firstly, the study did not take into account the influence of MAUP on the results of the classification. Comparing the values ​​for pixels with a 9-fold difference in area (and with different positions of the raster grids) requires special care and should be explained in detail in the paper.

Authors: Information about modifiable areal unit problem (MAUP) was added to the Material and Methods, Results to Discussion as well. We cannot avoid such a problem but we are aware that MAUP can bias the final results, especially for small water bodies like rivers and ponds.

The work should also present the results of the classification quality assessment. This would allow an assessment of how the land use change compares to the classification uncertainty.

Authors: Results of the classification quality assessment were added in supplementary material as Table S1

There is also no information as to whether the photos were given radiometric and geometric corrections.

Authors: Landsat 5 L-1 product was downloaded and atmospheric correction was performed using the DOS1 method in Semi-Automatic Classification Plugin (SCP). In case of Sentinel-2 L2A products after atmospheric correction were downloaded directly from Landviewer service.
Such information was added to Material and methods

The omission of channels other than RGB + IR (lines 145-6) does not improve the quality of the classification. Pixels for channels with lower resolution are then divided into smaller ones. Such action allows taking into account the greater variability of the terrain in the classification.

Authors: The RGB+IR together with spectral indices based on these bands, i.e. NDVI and NDWI allow us to obtain high accuracy of classification of the two land cover types which were important in the study – forest and water bodies.

Lines 164-167 report that CLC data was also used as training data. These are processed data with its own errors. How did the use of these data affect the quality of the classification?

Authors: Only large water bodies and large areas of forests were treated as training datasets to avoid doubtful classification. Small areas were not included as training data.

The raster vectorization mentioned on lines 172-173 is redundant. The area can be calculated directly from the raster, knowing the number of cells with a certain value.

Authors: It has been changed. Calculation of area of forests and water bodies was performed using raster calculator and zonal statistics in QGIS software

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors followed all the suggestions of the reviewer. Only the discussion part of the results remains a bit weak and should be expanded.

Author Response

Discussion was expanded and improved.

Reviewer 4 Report

The article can be published in the presented form.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your positive opinion.

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

As land use and cover article, the work is simple, what changes in this paper is the study area and the approach about the sustainability of the targets. For this publication, I believe there is still a need to improve the presentation of results. I think that the visualization of results is weak as the text and discussion.

Figure 1 needs to be completely restructured. Contextualization (continent, region, countries) is lacking, in addition to the basic elements of a figure: scale, geographic north, and datum. The other figures are in poor visualization, like the tables. I suggest improving the presentation, pictures, focusing on what you are describing. Really too weak.

Reviewer 2 Report

This study has some merits, however the manuscript is written poorly and do not show any novelty compared to previous studies. In addition, the methodology is too simple. Visual classification is a good way to get training data, but not classification itself, as it is hard to be applicable to other regions, especially at a large scale. Authors want to employ more advanced methods to do the classification. Moreover, the spectral difference in Landsat and Sentinel is not mentioned in the study. How did authors address this issue? All in all, I encourage authors to conduct more comprehensive analysis.

Reviewer 3 Report

A BRIEF SUMMARY

The paper titled ““Land cover changes in selected areas next to lagoons located on the southern coast of the Baltic Sea in 1984 – 2021”, presents a good topic for readers of this Journal. However, several some lacks emerge after reading the paper. Below is the list of serious lacks to justify my decision. In my opinion after a very careful revision, the manuscript could be submit as a technical note.

 

• Lack of novelty. This manuscript represents a poor data analysis
• Lack of an adequate method description
• Lack of an adequate conclusion’ section
• Too little bibliography for this type of work, on a so broad topic. I strongly suggest that the authors try to add some more references especially in the "part 1 (introduction)" of the paper to make the foundation for the arguments stronger
• Figure 2 quality is not adequate for the publication on an international Journal (with a good IF as "Sustainability" journal).