Re-Thinking Ecological Flow in Romania: A Sustainable Approach to Water Management for a Healthier Environment
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
In the paper was proposed methodology represents a holistic approach, regarding the development of a regulation to replace the existing legislation for determining the ecological flows on water courses in Romania. The new methodology applied was compared to the existing methodology, on the Uz river, as well as with the dam and the reservoir Uz Valley. From the point of view of the hydrological component, the methodology respects and ensures the natural variability of flows, being characterized by four hydrological regimes: floods, high waters, medium waters and law waters. The biodiversity component is of particular importance, in the development and application of the methodology, considering both the potential and the capacity to sustain biodiversity, as well as the existing and regularly conducted environmental studies for the majority of rivers in Romania, which clearly highlight the real situation of biodiversity on the rivers and the mandatory measures to support it. The application and monitoring of ecological flows is done in real time depending on the hydrological regime, based on the limnimetric keys, calibrated with hydrometric measurement campaigns, of the hydrotechnical constructions evacuators. The methodology proposed in this article provides for increasing the salubrious flow from Q95% to Q90% for the run of river, and for the reservoir regularization of annual and multiannual flow, the salubrious flow will still be increased to
Q95%.
This is valuable work, but It could be published after minor revisions as below.
General Remarks
The goal of research should be clearly presented at the ed of Introduction
Conclusions could be shorter and more clearly
Detailed remarks
1. Page 3. Last paragraph of the Introduction should be removed
2. Figures 2,3,5,6,7,8 - should be self-explaining. Please add proper information.
Table 2,5,6 - should be self-explaining. Please add proper information
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
In the presented manuscript entitled »Re-thinking ecological flow in Romania: a sustainable approach to water management for a healthier environment« the authors present a new methodology for calculation of ecological flow which is supposed to take into account the dynamics of the flow and the biodiversity of the river. As such the presented topic is very up to date and relevant for many researchers and stakeholders as determination of the ecological flow is important in water management and on the other side in maintaining ecological status of the rivers. However, as currently described, I don’t really understand the method and am not sure to be able to perform the calculation accordingly. Additionally, I did not understand how exactly the dynamics of the flow is ensured and how the water abstraction is taken into account by the proposed methodology. Please see the comments in the attached file and keep in mind that comments were set based on me not be able to fully understand the steps of the calculation.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
It often happens that there is a verb missing in the sentences, therefore some sentences are hard to understand. I would also suggest to merge sentences in paragraphs (one sentence is not a paragraph as currently organized).
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Thank you for providing detailed answers to my comments. I understand the methodology way better now. Some things are quite country-specific and were not clear to me before as I was looking at this through what I am familiar with. I think that you did a great job in establishing this methodology and it is definitely worth publishing as it can be very useful for other researchers dealing with similar problem. I would only suggest to include some of the explanations provided in the response also into the manuscript (e.g. comment 15, comment 18, comment 21, comment 24), so that this things would be better understandable also for the others reading the paper.
I suggest to read the paper again (if possible by lecturer or native speaker) to avoid missing verbs and the awkward order of the word forms.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
