Monitoring of Plastic Islands in River Environment Using Sentinel-1 SAR Data

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Reviewer’s report

on the manuscript entitled

Monitoring of Plastic Islands in River Environment Using Sentinel-1 SAR Data

Submitted to Remote Sensing MDPI journal (Manuscript ID: remotesensing-1832488)

General remarks

I consider myself an expert in environment and remote sensing, therefore I find the topic of the paper very interesting, and for international readers, it might also deliver general and useful information. In other words, the method and the goal of the paper would fit the scope of the Remote Sensing journal. The authors succeed to detect plastic islands within the River Drina system in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia using Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR). The manuscript is written in readable and clear English. However, it has also some formal problems. Therefore, the manuscript needs to be read for the second time. In summary, my suggestion is to major revise the manuscript. Below, I present some more detailed arguments to support my suggestion for major revision.

·         In some statements the authors used the name of the authors as citations. While the numbering is used for remote sensing style (e.g., lines #41, 45, 49, and 55, “Jambeck et al (2015) [7]”, “Borelle et al (2020) [8]”, “Lebreton et al (2017) [9]” and “Moore et al (2011) [14]”, respectively).

·         In a number of cases, you had facts, information, and ideas that were not your own, which had no in-text citation. It is very important to stick a reference at the end of the paragraph. I noticed, that in some paragraphs, there are no references cited, for example, the sentences between Lines #102-105 are missing references.

·         Location map is missing.

·         Figures need to be improved, particularly in figures 3A, 3B, 4A, 4B, 5A, 5B, 6A, 6B, 8, 9, 18, and 19, which are missing coordinates, north arrows, and scale bare.  

·         The discussion section is short (lines #508-550) and weak and needs to rewrite some of the results and the statements are still not explained in the discussion section.

·         The discussion section is short (lines #508-550) and weak, where forty-five references were used, 43 of them cited in all sections except the discussion section. The discussion section includes only 2 citations (i.e., [22] and [20]). From the above, it becomes clear that the references, cited in all sections except the discussion section, did not discuss in the discussion section.

·         The manuscript is written in well-readable and clear English; however, it has also some, easily resolvable formal problems.

 

Minor

·         Line #15: put a comma after “pollutants”.

·         Line #18: put a comma after “specially”.

·         Line #20: instead of “&” put “and”.

·          Line #41: put a comma after “mercial)”.

·         Line #92: put a comma after “pollutants”.

·         Lines #102-105: need references.

·         Line #115: the subsection of “Study area” missing a location map.

·         Line #118: put a comma before “and”.

·         Lines #20, 75, 77, 122, 126, etc.: Please used one term, either “Drina River” or “River Drina”.

·         Line #131: put a comma before “we”.

·         Line #136: put a comma after “analysis”.

·         Line #142: put a comma before “we”.

·         Line #149: put a comma before and after “therefore”.

·         Line #151: put a comma before “and”.

·         Line #159: put a comma before and after “therefore”.

·         Line #180: put a period “.” after “accumulations”.

·         Line #226: put a comma before and after “therefore”.

·         Line #291: delete the period “.” after “2021”.

·         Line #301: instead of the period “.” after “3” put a comma.

·         Figures 3, 4, 5, and 6: For subfigure “A”, the coordinates and scale bar need to be bigger and clearer. For subfigure B, the map is missing the coordinates, north arrow, and scale bar.

·         Figures 3, 4, 5, and 6: Please make the figures A and B have the same size and dimensions.

·         Line “333”: There is no numbering to the heading “River Drina, Bosnia & Herzegovina”

·         Line #333: instead of “&” put “and”.

·         Line #335: instead of the period “.” after “5” put a comma.

·         Line #336: delete “Please note”.

Author Response

Thank you for your comments regarding our manuscript, please find our detailed responses in the attachment below.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The article “Monitoring of Plastic Islands in River Environment Using Sentinel-1 SAR Data” an important  issue is considered. The authors presented an interesting study. After carefully reading the manuscript, I would suggest making certain changes.

Detailed recommendations are provided below.

1. Materials and Methods - Should be recommended to provide a methodology scheme.

2. Recommended to compare the results of the methodology with existing methodologies.

Author Response

Thank you for your comments regarding our manuscript, please find our detailed responses in the document attached.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The introduction requires rereading and correction. There are repetitions in this chapter, such as Plastics in the river environment are of major concern ... Please also emphasize the novelty of the methodology used, not only in the last two sentences of the introduction. There is no map showing the research area. Due to the nature of the research, both a physical-geographic and a hydrographic map are necessary. Please add links to your data sources. Perhaps previous studies already have used data and can be cited. There is no explanation of how the classification was made. The article lacks a broader analysis comparing the obtained results to other similar studies.

Author Response

Thank you for your comments regarding our manuscript, please find our detailed responses in the attachment below.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Congratulations

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors have corrected the text in accordance with all remarks. It can be published in a current form.