Use of Bi-Temporal ALS Point Clouds for Tree Removal Detection on Private Property in Racibórz, Poland

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors thank you very much for your interesting manuscript about Comparison of the world of legislation with a reality - a case study of tree removal on private land in the municipality of Racibórz, Poland.

Thank you very much for your contribution about the legislation and its impact on ES using remote sensing technology. However, introduction, methodology, result and discussion section need more correction and improvement. The methods are well but methodological part are not visible in the result section. It is essential to elaborate the result section.  

 Major comments:

Line 20 include supporting service and add reference

Line 21:   Remove for example and directly start a sentence, according …. Or something.

 Line 25: add reference after elsewhere in the world.

Line 105 add reference after reasons

Authors need to include missing references in introduction, methodology and discussion part.

Figure 1: add labels (Name)  of  16 cities (left top figure)

 

 Methods, result and discussion

Please reduce the sentences of Line from 273-292.

Please include the sensor and Performance specifications also.   Need to include cloud and % removal points of available data collected from different sources (if any) . Authors missed to discuss about the terrain complexity of  data. Please include the raster plot of sample point and CHM measurement. Please check section 2.3.1 and 2.3.2 (add a figure of DSM DTM and CHM ).   Need to address the issue of image registration   in details. Furthermore, need to discuss more about the accuracy assessment.

 

Please present the images of (a) original images, (b) segmented images,  (c) segmented images with training sample point .  

 

Provide the transition map of UTC loss layer of different period and present the accuracy assessment table and its discussion.

 Please include transition map

 Authors may discuss or recommend to others model like CNN, R-CNN, F-CNN for urban tree coverage mapping using LiDAR data.  

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript "Comparison of the world of legislation with a reality - a case study of tree removal on private land in the municipality of Racibórz, Poland" is submitted to Remote Sensing as a scientific article. Although no new technique is presented since it deals with bi-temporal airborne LiDAR datasets, the application is of interest to the scientific community. The outcomes have great appeal for foresters, environmental policy agencies, and local managers. However, the results are not presented in form of maps that would be a better outcome for the practical users of the proposed application. I understand that some security and restrictions apply, but it could be solved by neglecting the geographic coordinates and stating this in the figure captions. The absence of subsets of the LiDAR datasets, the outcomes of the ground filtering, the spatial agreements, data processing details, and data processing steps make reproducible research impossible. This is in fact my major criticism and the reason why I must attribute it to major changes. Below some other comments.

Title: the proposed title is too auspicious and could be more directed to the proposed task in which it is devoted;

Abstract: the abstract seems to be written by a different author and is confused because it seems not to be linked to the concepts of the main text. For example, urban growth makes the pressure to shrink green areas. Growing pressure is somehow unclear. Trees growing in private land are important for their several services and must be part of a kind of monitoring system by the city government and not part of the urban green policy. L7 and L8 repeat the city name and it is not necessary.

L21: add the concept "giving space to urban services such as buildings, roads and others"

L22: and what about population growth? please consider adding the number of inhabitants and also type of constructions (if more buildings, roads, houses, industries and so on);

L54-59: it is also important to mention that trees also attract fauna and this may also cause some issues in urban areas (if possible please mention this);

L85: it is important to mention the importance of having every single property georeferenced and not the building or constructed individualized (as it occurs in man cities) and this would even support public administration for annual taxes;

L97: do you mean inventory (census)?

L111: voivo?

L128: ALS and LIDAR in the same sentence? it seems confuse as it is;

L159: please define NDVI;

L159: Landsat-5;

Figure 1: LIDAR footprint? from both dates?

L250-251: please comment on the implications of the time difference;

L254: reference missing?

L262: from both dates and from same flight? what is the height flight and other characteristics of the LIDAR dataset? please provide a table with such infos;

L305: parameters? same procedure for both years? where it was conducted? how it was conducted? it is not possible to replicate the procedure;

L316 and L359: either you use nDSM or CHM otherwise it is confusing;

L355: same period and timeframe of the LIDAR? please comment;

L368: equations?

L373: no maps or subsets are provided;

L384: same for both datasets?

Figure 6: the figure is nice, but the paper would lovely improve showing some subsets of the datasets and final maps;

L531-532: what you would recommend for future studies?

L549: in which aspect? please add the comment;

L572: RPAs?

L589: please add a short conclusion and recommendation section;

Thank you for the opportunity to review this paper.

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors 

Thank you very much for the revised version of the manuscript. Please check the title and caption of figures and other missing reference in your final version.

You can add some references ( line : 64-77, 143,). You can review this reference paper about the urban development and ES,

  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2019.04.029

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoser.2019.100963. 

doi:10.3390/su12166675 ,

Please add the scale of available cadastral data also in section 2.2.2.

Author Response

Point 1: Thank you very much for the revised version of the manuscript. Please check the title and caption of figures and other missing reference in your final version.

Response 1:We have modified the title in accordance with the Reviewer 2 suggestion.

Point 2:

You can add some references ( line : 64-77, 143,). You can review this reference paper about the urban development and ES,:

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2019.04.029

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoser.2019.100963.

doi:10.3390/su12166675 , 

Response 2: Thank you for noting, we added the references.

Point 3: Please add the scale of available cadastral data also in section 2.2.2.

Response 3: We are not entirely sure how to answer this comment. Do you mean access to cadastral data? or precision of a plot border?

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript entitled "Comparison of the world of legislation with a reality - a case study of tree removal on private land in the municipality of Racibórz, Poland" is a very good improvement of the previous version. The majority of the concerns were properly addressed. The manuscript contains a very interesting subject and application of airborne LIDAR acquired in two different periods for urban trees monitoring. The methodology is better described and allows replication. The results are better described and also discussed. However, just regarding the question directed to point 8, it would be great to add either a footnote or a short description of the "voivo" meaning since non-European readers may not understand it. It can be performed during final proofreading. I also appreciate the addition of new figures in a way to preserve the landowners' anonymity and still present aggregated results. In summary, I would like to support this version for publication in Remote Sensing. Congratulations on the nice work and thank you again for the opportunity to review this research application.

 

 

Author Response

Thank you for noting, we replaced “voivodship” by “provincial” which is clearer, and more universally understandable, we hope.