The Integration of Remote Sensing and Field Surveys to Detect Ecologically Damaged Areas for Restoration in South Korea

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

I found your manuscript is good in terms of generating information as well as contribute to methodological development related to ecologically damaged areas exploration. I have very few suggestions that I think will improve the readability and scientific soundness of the manuscript. 

General comments

I found the manuscript is good in terms of generating information as well as contribute to methodological development related to ecologically damaged areas exploration.  The structure and organization of the manuscript is quite good as well.  In terms of language, I would suggest to get language edition so that it will be more interesting to read and understand the message easily.

Regarding on the justification of why this study was conducted needs to substantiate with concrete evidences. Particularly focus should be given on the gaps and the methodology adopted in this study.

The other issue is the discussion part need to be revised. It has to incorporate other similar studies, and compare their methods with others and how your methodology is really improved, complement or against the others.

Specific comments
Line no. 61

Line no 104 & 115:  please make some description about how the 5m resolution land cover data is generated.

Line no 233: please describe a bit about how you conducted the field survey particularly how you selected the samples if you didn’t take all the damaged places

Best regards,

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

I think that this article makes a valuable contribution. Some specific revisions are outlined below.

I also think that the authors should consider adding to their accuracy assessment. Currently, it seems like the authors only measured false-positives. They did not measure false negatives. I think the authors should do additional accuracy assessment to quantify false negatives. This does not necessarily have to be a field survey. It could be done using Google Earth imagery. If this is impossible for the authors to do, that is no problem. I think that the paper still merits publication. I just think this would enhance the quality of the publication, if the authors are able to do it.

Title:

Page 1, Line 4: I would recommend deleting the hyphen after "the case of South Korea." I don't think that there needs to be a hyphen at the end of the title.

 

Abstract:

Page 1, Line 27: Please add a period at the end of this sentence.

 

Introduction:

Page 1, Line 35: I recommend adding "worldwide" after "trillion per year," to make it more explicit that this cost is the worldwide estimate of land degradation damage.

Page 1, Line 37: Please change "area" to "areas."

Page 2, Line 44: I recommend changing the past-tense "were" to the present-tense "are", since the rest of the Introduction is written in the present tense.

Page 2, Line 61: I recommend adding "a" between "such as" and "protected area."

Page 2, Line 67-70: I recommend revising the sentence that begins with "Environmental offsets" and ends with "have been taken" for clarity. Maybe it is just me, but it does not really make sense in its current state.

Page 2, Line 70-71: Please clarify what is meant by "others such as avoidance and minimization." Other strategies? Other outcomes?

Page 2, Line 73-76: Please revise the sentence that begins with "The technique" and ends with "specific region" for clarity. In the sentence's present state, the authors mention that combining field surveys and RS increases the data quality and decreases the cost, as compared to field surveys and RS. Please be more clear about what is being compared here.

Page 2, Line 81: Please delete the second period at the end of this sentence.

 

Materials and Methods:

Page 2, Line 89: I recommend listing some examples of the natural disasters that damage South Korean environments.

Page 3, Line 97: What is the source of the land cover map presented in Figure 1(a)?

Page 3, Line 104-106: It is unclear to me whether the authors examined and supplemented the MOE land cover maps through field work, or if the MOE used field work when creating these maps. Please clarify.

Page 6, Line 181-183: The authors mention that Google Earth data has been used as reference data in many studies, and that previous studies have quantified the horizontal and vertical precision of the data. Please cite some of these references here.

 

Results:

Page 10, Line 280-282: The authors mention that 72% of the 399 areas identified as damaged were actually found to be damaged in real-life. This quantifies the amount of false positives in the map. Did the authors also quantify the amount of false negatives? In other words, did the authors survey "non-damaged" areas in the map to see if they were truly non-damaged in real life? If so, please report the results of that accuracy assessment here.

Page 10, Line 287 and Line 289-290: Should Rocky Mountains be capitalized? Is it a proper noun? I am not familiar with South Korean geography, so if this is the name of a mountain range (like the Rocky Mountains of the USA) then it should be capitalized. If it is just a type of mountain, then I think maybe it should not be capitalized.

Page 12, Line 357: How did the authors determine the damage type at each site? Was this from the EIA map, or determined from the field surveys?

 

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The study deals with an interesting topic. 

I read the study in detail and I consider it as an interesting environmental and GIS contribution. However, the methods used in the study are very simple and vague. Remote sensing part does not bring any novelty, added value. It uses only images from Google Earth application. From this point of view, this study is not attractive for readers of the Remote Sensing journal. I would recommend to submit this paper to environmental oriented journals. This study is not suitable for Remote Sensing journal and there is no perspectives to be improved this paper because the design of method part is very simple and vague.  

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx