The Impact of Rewetting Peatland on Fire Hazard in Riau, Indonesia

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The study asses the impact of large-scale peatlands rewetting to reduce fire risks and occurrences (durantion, coverage area, and number of events). To do so, a climatic model (WRF) was integrated to a hydrological model to spatially quantify fire hazard in Riau, Sumatra. The results show that rewetting has resulted in decreasing the frequence of (fire?) extreme events in the study area , from 7 before rewetting to 4, after rewetting. The area influenced by extreme events reduced by 5% after rewetting, however, the mean duration of extreme events increased.

Although the subject of the research is very interesting and the methods selected for investigation - integration of climatic and hydrological modeling, using fire hotspots as proxy of the fire events - I don't think the experiment is well explained. During the revision, some questions arised:

1) the fire hotspots registered by MODIS in 2015 and 2019 (the extreme El Nino events) could be used as proxy of some influence of the rewetting - which begun in 2018 - on the fire occurrence? If not, please explain why and relate this to the necessity to use modeling tools to access the impacts of the peatlands restoration. It may be necessary to reorganize the methodology explaining why fire hotspots were only used to validate the risk areas simulated by the modeling experiment. It is also necessary to explain why WRF results were used instead data from local meteorological stations. By the way, L236-238 should appear in the methodology

2) what the authors call 'hydrological model' is a bit confuse with what they call 'fire hazard assessment' - both described by the equations 1-4 (L 191-192). In my opinion, the study do not use hydrological modeling, in the sense that this kind of modeling involves the simulation of the water cycle in order, for example, to estimate the variation in the water table or the soil moisture in the peatland. It is important to define if an hydrological model was in fact used and diferentiate hydrological model from the steps used to the fire hazard assessment. L:103-138

3) The soil moisture in the peatland and the water table depth - which varies as a function of the duration of the dry season - are the main hydrological variables that influence the peat fires. In this sense, it is important to better describe how this variables were calculated by the WRF model. How it varied before and after rewetting? It is also not clear, in the WRF model, if soil moisture is influenced or not by the water table. Please clarify if the equation 4 was used or not and, if not, how it can be replaced by the soil moisture computed by WRF

Minor comments

L 181 - replace monitored by registered

L 261-268 - looks like more an introduction than discussion

 

 

 

 

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you very much for your comments and suggestions that improve our manuscript. We have considered all your valuable inputs in the revised version. Please find enclosed our response to your comments and suggestions.

Best 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

The paper is well-prepared in general. Quantitative analysis on environmental studies are very important. I have two comments to correcrt for:

1. The introduction section is mainly related to hydrological changes and functions on peatland, please also add at least one paragraph about the methods you used in this research, which are also related to the context. It should be better to mention how WRF data were used in wildfire assessment on peatlands or other types, and which outcomes were obtained.

2. For Figure 1, please add coordinate system information to the caption or on the Figure such as geographic coordinate system.

 

All the best.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your comments and inputs. We have considered your valuable inputs in the revised version. Please find enclosed our response to your inputs.

Best

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper was significantly improved after revision