Vegetative Flow Resistance for Erosion Control Using Grass Species from the Caribbean Region

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Author

 

                 The Quality of paper is outstanding. But it needs some minor corrections. Please incorporate the suggestions. Good Luck for your manuscript

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

I would like to congratulate the authors for their efforts in this manuscript, it is a very interesting specific essay, certainly technical and with a certain novelty, below I include a series of comments aimed at improving the quality of the manuscript:

1. In section 1 Introduction an exhaustive and detailed state of the art is reflected, explaining in an orderly way concepts of hydraulics and fluid dynamics with vegetation, necessary to understand the research carried out, but perhaps separating those long texts in a few more paragraphs will facilitate its reading and assimilation.

2. In section 2 Materials and Methods accurately describes the methodology and media infrastructure available for experimentation, being well ordered and separated into Materials, Methods and their sections given the technical complexity of the investigation in terms of physical-mathematical procedure and understanding the extension that it covers as necessary to clearly expose the developed work, figures 7 and 8 are confused in the text with numbers 6 and 7.

3. In section 5 Conclusions the investigation carried out is reflected, but given the degree of extension and detail that the article develops in the investigation, it is not attended in the same way. It would be better to structure in such a way that they refer to the greater conclusions obtained, another paragraph can be proposed starting from line 474, in addition to what is cited for Pangola grass, include other results observed in relation to the other grass species tested, even if they are not significant, as well as mentioning the usefulness of the modified log law compared to the measurement parameters that it contemplates and the apparently valid calculation iterative procedure in the channel, all this is referred to in section 4 Discussion, leaving a last paragraph from the line 476 in which it is rightly invited to continue investigating.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Review on manuscript sustainability-2259782

 

Dear Authors,

 

In my opinion, the manuscript is well-written and organized in a readable way, and it contains all of the most related and up-to-date scientific background. The topic is interesting and has a high chance of filling a gap in floodplain/channel/backwater flood management. The results are clear and concise, the discussion is well-organized, and the flow of information given to the obtained data is okay. However, I have some major issues with the paper that the authors should address.

 

Major concerns:

 

Title: What about erosion control? I understand what the authors want to talk about, but in the manuscript, there is not a single sentence about erosion control, not even a "hypothesis" about it. There is also not a single experiment that deals with the erosion "factor" and how the mentioned grass species control erosion. For example, without grass species, what is the extent of erosion? I hope the authors understand my concerns about the title. The authors should change the title according to the data given in the manuscript or rewrite the manuscript entirely according to the title.

 

Experimental data: What about the grass species? There is no information about what growing phase they are in, whether they have matured or are in a growing stage, etc.

 

The lack of a hypothesis and aims: It appears as if the authors gathered data and created results based on the gathered information rather than testing a hypothesis.

 

Lastly, the conclusion is not in harmony with the title. Please rephrase or rewrite it according to the title/missing aims or my first major concern.

 

Minor problems:

 

Line 9: "improving water quality." I suggest changing it to "maintaining adequate water quality."

 

Lines 15-16: If Bermuda species grow in Puerto Rico, why did the authors need to import them from the USA?

 

Lines 212-213: In binomial nomenclature, only genus names capitalized, species names are not.

 

Line 237: 0.023. What is the unit of measure?

 

Experiment: How long were the grasses under water? And how long was the discharge?

 

Table 2: I didn't find any information regarding the correlation between species height, density, and discharge rate water depth, but visible differences are shown in Table 2.

 

Figure 6: Poor quality. Please replace it.

 

Furthermore, the manuscript contains numerous misspellings and typos.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

 

1-     The author should have mentioned their innovation and its behind idea in the abstract and introduction section in more detail.

2-     Table 1 should transfer to supplementary material section

3-     Equation #6 is describing before. The 1.3-1.5 sections and describe formula can be merge in one new table. Famous formulas that have been introduced a lot before do not need to be introduced again

4-     Line216-232, What is the connection between this part and the main title? In this part, it is necessary to express your scientific method.

5-     Based on what criteria the approximate slope of 2% was chosen?

6-     Figure 6 is not clear.

7-     Investigating the effect of different plant species at the same density and at different submerge levels on the velocity distribution can be useful.

8-     Are the investigated species native in other parts of the world? Also, do these species exist in the natural conditions of the rivers of that area

9-     How can the effect of these species be on reducing erosion?

10- What non-hydraulic behavior of these species can be effective in the management of river bank erosion? Are these species compatible with nature and other species, and how do they reproduce and their ecological conditions?

11-  In the results section, it is appropriate to compare the results of this research with similar works in the world

12- Velocity distribution before and after the implementation of these covers should be presented

13- The general result of this work shows that the use of green coatings is effective. What unknown parts of this statement will be completed by the results of your work

 

 

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors,

 

Thanks for appling all of my suggestions and answering my questions.

Author Response

Thanks again for your comments.

We reviewed the manuscript once more and corrected some minor spelling errors. We hope to have attended to your concerns. There were no specific details on where you found spelling or style errors.

Reviewer 4 Report

Thank you for the modification and the efforts , it is quite clear that the article has been significantly improved. But it seems that the limitations mentioned in the respond to question 5 are necessary to be clearly mentioned in the manuscript. Also, if you set the origin of y- axis equal to the minimum data, the  graphs can be seen better. moreover, i think it's better to improve the discussion section  with  the context of  new article in this subject, for example please see the  "Spatiotemporal changes in Iranian rivers’ discharge"

Author Response

Thanks for your new comments. See our response below. 

Recommendation:  Limitations mentioned in response to question 5

Question 5:    Based on what criteria the approximate slope of 2% was chosen?

The answer to that question was provided in the new version of the manuscript. Lines 237 -238: "Due to the flume construction over a rigid frame, the slope value remains at 2.3% for all experiments."

Recommendation:  If the origin of y- axis equal to the minimum data, the  graphs can be seen better.

We accepted the recommendation and modified figures 7 and 8. Hopefully, those are the figures you refer to.

Recommendation: Improve the discussion section  with  the context of  new article in this subject, for example please see the  "Spatiotemporal changes in Iranian rivers' discharge"

The article is exciting. It is dedicated exclusively to Iranian river flow reductions during the last 30 years and their impact on natural resources. The topic seems quite different from our paper's focus on vegetative resistance. However, your comment inspired us to include the potential application of the methodology to estimate the impact of vegetation changes due to the construction of photovoltaic farms in the Caribbean, particularly in floodplain areas.