Study of the Application of FY-3D/MERSI-II Far-Infrared Data in Wildfire Monitoring
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 3)
The tracked-changes show additions to the original manuscript, but not the deletions (this is only providing part of the editing lineage, which makes it difficult to track. I also do not see direct responses to my initial comments (this is also a standard requirement for edited work that has been resubmitted).
L59: What do you mean by "region"? Is this a specific spectral region or does it infer some spatial location within an image?
L61: Can you quantify the vague claim of "not accurate enough"?
L96: "Note" not "Notes".
Table 1: Alignment and wrapping make this table harder to read than necessary and also introduce extra (unnecessary) rows. Consistent precision in columns is a standard requirement in tables. Thus, fix the wavelengths (and note that wavelength is one word, not two).
L109: The heading has a spelling mistake ("princeple").
L~112: You list more bands than what you use. How/why do you make this selection? This should be explained.
L116: "Cannot" is a proper word and does not need the space you inserted.
I sense that the font size and spacing change periodically throughout the manuscript. Also, spacing between words and extra spaces need to be checked throughout (e.g., L140-141).
The paragraph starting at L154 is confusing and needs to be edited for clarity.
Table 2: Why do the P-values across the first row repeat? The alignment makes this table very difficult to read. Precision is not consistent in table data.
Figure 1: Why not change line type and use a legend, rather than number the lines? I do not understand the x-axis label; can this be clarified in some way?
L178: In the caption "in an image of real case" is awkwardly stated. How about "case study" or "a real world demonstration"?
Figure 2: The images need a legend to understand the grey tones. The font size for the coordinates is too small. The boxes around the graphs could likely be removed to avoid clutter and also to de-emphasize the spacing and alignment inconsistency.
Table 3: Why are the coordinates here different than in the caption for Figure 2? Why are the coordinates not provided in the same level of precision? The degree symbols are missing. The column headings are lacking spaces before the "(".
Some section headings are really long and wrap lines making them somewhat awkward. Can they be shortened in any way?
Throughout, when you write "fire spots", it may be a regional difference in terminology, but I am more familiar with "spot fires" or "hot spots".
L211: "(regarded as blackbodies)". Plural, since you mention surface features (plural).
Figure 3: Spaces required between values and units and also for labels on axes or lines to separate the text from the brackets. Numeric precision on x-axis needs to be consistent. "Wavelength" is one word and needs capitalization on the x-axis. Similar comments on other figures as well; please attend to all instances.
L241: Awkward spacing in two places. There is a lot of awkward spacing throughout (some of it due the full-justification of text, but some errant spacing (or lack of spaces) create poor presentation.
Table 4: The headings are very long; perhaps transposing your table would be more effective? Or... find ways to shorten the text.
Figure 5: The band combinations displayed need to be articulated. Spaces in the caption between values and units are required. The coordinates are in a font much too small. Generally, there are no increments in minutes or seconds, so you could just post the degrees and make the text larger given the gained space. Panels (a) through (h) are not defined in the caption, thus the image is not self-standing.
L280-281: Not sure what you mean by "as it has uniform underlying".
L291: The degree symbol should not be separated from the value.
L294. The period that concludes the sentence should directly follow the degree symbol. NOTE: Numerous such edits need to be made throughout to ensure the consistency and quality of the presented work.
Figure 6: Similar comments as with others. Shy is the label for "Sun-glint" not capitalized? Why is it hyphenated, but is not so in the body text?
Figure 7: Similar comments as with other figures.
L331, 338: Can the equation be aligned to make the reading of the terms easier?
Your figures all appear to be made by different people (or with different design standards) which makes them not feel uniform throughout the paper. Fonts, font sizes, spacing, colors, styles -- if you keep them consistent, it brings uniformity to your messaging.
Table 4: Generally, units are listed in the headings for table columns, such that the units are not repeated in cells. Thus, you can have "P (%)" and "Rsung (%)" as headings.
L376: Why is the heading italicized? Papers usually have the headings: Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusions. Thus, using "The method" is not only awkward, but unnecessary.
L387: What are "cth" and "wth" and "lwth"?
Sections 2.3.1 and 2.3.2 are not written in proper form and are difficult to follow. My sense is that this may be better presented in a flow chart or table with explanatory text. What are the class definitions and how did you derive them? How did you select the thresholds? This is written as pseudo-code and needs to be converted into a form that is comprehended by a wide audience.
L412: Rather than the letter "X", use the proper multiplication symbol for the font you are using.
The entire methods section is not really written clearly and needs substantial work to bring it to a publishable state. The equation numbers need to be right-aligned and the steps need to be clearly articulated with explanations as to why you are doing certain things.
Figure 9: The figure would be much more pleasing if the boxes were consistently sized and vertically spaced. The sentence structures need fixing along with punctuation (sometimes you use it, sometimes not, sometimes incorrectly). This is sloppy. Are blue arrows required when black ones would be perfectly acceptable? The flow chart may be better to precede the explanations, as to provide the overview context required to follow what you are doing.
L449: "3 Results" is in really large font.
L460: It seems that you introduce a new notation; could this not be made consistent throughout? Format your equations consistently and number them in the right margin.
L462: "kn"? Should be "km".
Figure 10: Similar comments to other figures. The north arrow is not required when you provide a graticule. Legend "Fire" not "fire".
L508 "summer" not "Summer".
It is unclear how you make your assessments based on a scientific assessment or experimentation. Much of the results and conclusions seem to be based on visual assessment (which means that replication is not ensured). I am not understanding how you assess "accuracy".
I believe that the deeper message of the paper, that of separating glint from actual fire hot-spot signatures is important, but the labored reading makes the message hard to accept. I also struggle with the scientific basis by which assessments are made (as there are very few references -- which are also poorly formatted -- that contextualize your study).
The text needs editing for English (specifically grammar and the correct use of articles - namely "the"); this is particularly evident in the newly inserted sections.
L253: One example. The sentence structure here needs work (as in many places). However, let me re-write this sentence as an example: "A typical example of the sun glint phenomenon is illustrated in Fig. 5 that represents a two-day observation." ... The run-on form, coupled with grammatical irregularity make the reader stumble over the words and thus miss the message. While the message of the paper is present, I find the text very hard to read. Professional editing for language simplification, grammar, and correct use of articles is required. A superficial editing is not sufficient.
Does the journal allow 4-levels of headings? I think that you could simplify your structure by merging deeper levels of your hierarchy and focusing on the clarity of your writing.
Author Response
Dear expert,
Thank you very much for your suggestion. We resubmit the lastest version according to your review comment. Please help us review again. Thanks again!
Best wishes!
Wei Zheng
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)
1. In equation (2), the meanings of some variables are expressed in confusion, and it is recommended to rephrase the specific meaning of Timix,Tibg,Nibg.
2. In line 131, TiB does not appear in equation (2), and it is not recommended to explain its meaning here.
3. In line 146, it is recommended to indicate a spatial resolution of 3.8 um.
4. In line 161, the values described do not match the corresponding values in Table 2.
5. In the description of Figure 3, lines 211 to 214 are inconsistent with lines 239 to 241.
6. In Figure 7, it is not recommended to label it as it is now. It is recommended to add legends corresponding to the three curves for easier reading.
7. The numbering of chapters is chaotic.
8. In line 458, the spatial resolution annotation of 3.8um is incorrect.
9. In line 486, the serial number of Figure 10 is incorrectly labeled.
10. The data in Tables 5 and 7 should be briefly explained in the paper.
11. In line 554, the table number is incorrectly stated.
12. In sections 3.1 to 3.3, the author states that "the size of fire spots detected using existing methods is much larger than using the proposed method." What are the consequences or effects of this much larger? Can you further explain?
13. The article only compares the far infrared channel (10.8um,250m) using the proposed method with the mid infrared channel (3.8um,1km) using existing methods. Adding several sets of comparative experiments may be more convincing.
Author Response
Dear expert,
Thank you very much for your suggestion. We resubmit the lastest version according to your review comment. Please help us review again. Thanks again!
Best wishes!
Wei Zheng
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This study explored the utility in fire detection using the FY-3D’s far-infrared spectrum (10.8 μm) at 250 m spatial resolution, and made comparison to the commonly used mid-infrared spectrum (3.5–4.0 μm) at 1000 m resolution. The research is interesting and the manuscript is well written. The authors presented the significant results and have a clear understanding of the limitations of their study. Associated findings in this study could contribute to the reduction of commission error in satellite fire detections due to the noise signals of solar radiation reflection, and have the potential to provide finer fire position information. Some minor modifications are required for the texts, Tables, and Figures of this research before publication. The followings are specific comments.
1. Annotations on Fig.s 2, 3, 4 are suggested to use the same font and font size. Meanwhile, the annotations of the y-axis in the three figures need to be revised. For example, the annotation of the y-axis in Fig. 3 are more likely a series of separate alphabets of “R a d i a n c e” and “W / m 2 s r μ m”.
2. Figs. 5, 6, 9, 10, 11 are suggested to add the longitude and latitude on figure to exactly tell the readers the regions.
3. Lines 273-275: “Figure 7 shows the profiles…along the sun glint from point (149.62°E, 20.94°S) to point B (154.62°E, 20.93°S)”. Is it along the white belt of sun glint from point A to point B shown in Fig. 6? It’s better to clearly clarify it in the text.
4. Lines 317: Repetition of the expression of Formula (6) is found. Please correct it.
5. The Formulas (5) and (6) are suggested to be expressed using the same front and front size of text. And the alignment of Formulas (5) and (6) need to be appropriately revised.
6. In lines 387 and 424, the formulas are numbered as “(3)” and “(4)”, however, another two formulas in lines 305 and 317 are numbered as “(5)” and “(6)”. Please correct this mistake and re-number those formulas.
7. It’s suggested to present the Tables 1-4 using the three-line table format.
8. Line 411: It’s suggested to use a formula in a separate line to show the condition in identifying a suspected high-temperature pixel.
9. Lines 440-441: The texts “wild fire” and “forest” should be “wild fires” and “forests”.
10. Lines 443 and 448: It’s better to use the unified “Fig. 9a” or “Figure 9a” to refer to the figure here and in other places throughout the entire manuscript.
11. Lines 450-451: It’s suggest to visualize the white area in the composited Figure 9c more clearly.
12. Lines 511-512: Does that mean the fire spot identification algorithm based on the mid-infrared channel are not conducted over land surface (e.g., vegetated area) where actually no sun-glint occurs though the sun glint angle is less than 10 degrees? For example, over the “sun-glint” area in Fig. 11a, the sun glints seem only exist over the sea water area but are not found over the land area in region delineated by the yellow box. In such case, using the mid-infrared channel may still can identify the two fires even without using far-infrared channel.
For me, the English writing of the manuscript is good
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear authors：
Thank you very much for your manuscript. I think discussing the features of FY-3D/MERSI-II far-infrared channels in fire monitoring to propose better methods of fire detection by using FY3D/MERSI-II far infrared channel is significant for remote sensing satellite fire monitoring.
There are several comments below.
1. The introduction section is too long, and it is recommended to divide it into three separate parts: Introduction, Related work, and Method.
2. Only one scenario image is given as an illustration for the monitoring images in each Figure, it would be better to have more scenario images to add credibility to the article.
3. It is recommended to increase the number of citations in the article, especially the latest research results within the last five years, in order to enhance the authority and academic value of the paper.
4. An in-depth comparison between remote sensing satellite sensor fire monitoring and other sensor fire monitoring such as ground-based detection and drone monitoring is recommended to analyze their strengths and weaknesses. (e.g.,
[1] Zheng X, Chen F, Lou L, et al. Real-Time Detection of Full-Scale Forest Fire Smoke Based on Deep Convolution Neural Network[J]. Remote Sensing, 2022, 14(3): 536. [2] Sudhakar S, Vijayakumar V, Kumar C S, et al. Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) based Forest Fire Detection and monitoring for reducing false alarms in forest-fires[J]. Computer Communications, 2020, 149: 1-16.
I hope that my comment is useful to improve the quality of this manuscript.
Good luck
Minor editing of English language required
Reviewer 3 Report
Overarching comments
The concept presented in this paper, that of relying on more than one region of the infrared spectrum to detect (I believe) active fires is interesting. The authors provide methodology and demonstrate its use; there seems to be potential here, but my concern overrides this in that there is no comparison to existing methods or any quantification of improvement. I think that such a scientific comparison needs to be presented to allow an apples-to-apples comparison of methodological improvement(s).
General Comments
1. The term “wild fire” used throughout (including in the title), should be written as a single word.
2. Values and their units should generally be separated by a space. This practice is not applied consistently throughout the work and needs careful checking to ensure consistency.
3. Editing for English language use and grammar are highly suggested. There are numerous instances where “the” is missing, or the agreement and tense does not agree. In the specific comments, I identify only a few cases; there are many others that need careful attention.
4. Not all wildfires are “serious disaster[s]”; though they may be intense and violent and sudden. In many areas (specifically the boreal biome), wildfire is a natural disturbance and necessary for the survival of the ecosystem. Painting wildfire in a purely negative context takes a human-perspective that ignores natural processes and ecology. I would suggest a slight re-framing of your introduction in this perspective.
5. Is your paper about active fire detection/monitoring, because this is not clear (but in L70 you mention a “flaming fire” – which I take to mean “actively burning”)?
6. Prefix “resolution” with “spatial” throughout or make it clear that when you mention “resolution” that it is spatial resolution that you mean. In remote sensing there are many types of resolution and you do not want anyone to misunderstand.
7. There is no real test presented in this paper. That is, there is no hypothesis to evaluate or improvement over existing methods demonstrated. This is less of a research contribution than a lengthy discussion of method that gets shown. I liken this to “show and tell” rather than evaluate and test (or even criticize). I believe that this is the greatest weakness of the paper. There is no research question, testable hypothesis/hypotheses, or research design. The work appears exploratory and descriptive rather than scientific but that is not what I was led to expect. The acceptance of the methods presented is not substantiated in any way or demonstrated to be an improvement over existing methods. The attempt to demonstrate utility with the 3 case studies never provided a direct comparison which would be necessary.
Specific Comments
L14: Extra space after “mode” needs to be removed.
L19: The “2” in “m2” should be superscripted.
L20: “…with 250 resolution…” is missing units. Consider “…with 250 m spatial resolution…”
L22: Change to: “…at the same wavelength.”
L29: “cannot” rather than “can not”.
L30: Change to: “…solar radiation is strongly disturbed in the middle…”
L45: Change to: “…high-temperature targets, such as…”
L46: Change to: “…have become important in the approach to research and applications fo forest and grassland…”
L51: Change to: “…the same for the brightness..”
L52: References need to be in the format specified by the journal with the reference number in square brackets.
L72-73: A 1 km spatial resolution pixel covers an area of one square kilometer. Whether that is a large area or not is context specific. I sense however, that you mean that the relatively coarse spatial resolution allows for a large image extent/swath to be imaged. Which of these is what you mean?
L80-89: this is important, as it argues for the sensor that you are using. However, some editing for clarity would help reinforce the importance of the paragraph.
L90: Change to: “…the features of the far-infrared…”
L97-106: This paragraph needs careful editing for language and clarity. It is also evident in the last sentence that you mean a change of scale due to improved spatial resolution, but the “hundred-meter scale” is misleading, as your minimum mapping unit, a single cell is 250x250 m. I sense that you mean, in a general sense, that the scale is on the order of a few hundred meters. The same confusion arises in L111.
L119-122: There exists some strange spacing and the “micro” symbol is raised (unlike in earlier parts of this paper.
Table 1: The boundaries of the table bleed past the margins of the paper, the font changes, and formatting is highly awkward (alignment, variable precision). Further, the table is split across pages without repeating the headings. Are all of these rows required for the work presented in this paper?
L137: In equation 1, the multiplication symbol should likely be provided as an X or a dot, rather than the asterisk, which is computer jargon rather than mathematical typesetting. I also wonder about the complexity of the subscripts and whether they need the excess characters. If the N-terms are fire and non-fire, then for clarity, would subscripts f and n not suffice and improve clarity for the readers? These could be if and in to indicate the spectral band in fire and non-fire respectively.
L132: Why can’t a pixel be fully engulfed by fire? In the boreal forest, this is not uncommon.
L147: The wrapping of the exponent to the next line is poor form.
Table 2: The formatting of the table has similar issues as indicated for Table 1. Further, there is a diagonal line that does not connect properly to the corners of the cell. The headings are not quickly discernible from the data table and the left-alignment makes comparing numbers in the column inefficient.
Figure 1: The caption is on a different page than the figure. The x-axis labels are in the graph and this looks messy as the lines overprint the text. The y-axis text should be rotated (same on Figure 2).
Figure 2: The caption, starting with “Same as in Fig. 1” is awkward. If the only difference between the figures is a multiplication factor of 16, are both graphs required? I offer similar comments for all graphs based on those already mentioned. The rotation of axis text, consistent precision in value presentation, and consideration for the use of line types rather than just colour would facilitate understanding when printed in greyscale or by colorblind readers.
Table 3: The headings are longer than the data in the table. Your tables are not effective at simplifying the delivery of numeric data.
Figure 5: Your maps are not separated from the body text, do not contain a scalebar, north arrow, or a legend. It is unclear where the lake is that you label (and the white background on the label covers part of your image). The cartography needs to be improved. Even the image handles remain on panel (a). Rather than a screen capture, it would be advised to produce proper maps for inclusion as figures in your submission. The purpose of these figures is important enough to warrant inserting them effectively.
Figure 6: Similar comments as with other figures. The text could be inserted as vector rather than be rasterized for quality. How do you obtain the 10 degree indicators and where are they on the figure (this needs to be more clearly marked). It is also difficult to follow without a scale or some indication as to what is being shown (bands/colours/legend… something to assist interpretation). A and B need to defined in the caption and indicate that the cross-section is further used in Figure 7.
Figure 7: Again, similar comments as earlier, specifically the insertion of the vector graphic in its non-rasterized form to substantially improve its quality. It appears that your insertion of labels and the figure were done by copy/paste with reveal codes showing. This must be fixed.
Equations 5/6 are completely out of bounds and inserted with a different font/look/feel as the rest of the document. I also urge you to use a consistent format for the multiplication symbol. In Figure 6, the formatting of the text changes part-way through. All equations need to be edited for consistency and alignment with the journal’s standards.
L324: Change to: “In Equation 6, it is assumed…”
Figure 8: You include labels 1, 2, 3, and 4 on the graph but do not refer to them anywhere (these should be removed). Again, the presentation of the figure needs improvement and different line types would be much appreciated.
Ok, comments on equations and tables continue – I am not going to repeat myself. Please check/fix/improve each instance.
L369-378: This paragraph is wordy and hard to follow.
L382: “Contextual” does not need to be capitalized.
L401-402: You talk about sun-glint and how to detect around this phenomenon, but the mention of cloud is not covered in detail. What is it about the clouds? You then mention water, deserts, and mixed vegetation coverage (this represents much of our Earth’s surface); so how does one handle these states?
L413-418: Operationally, the temperature work that you propose needs much other data handling to happen first; details on this would be beneficial (e.g., processing flow). I also wonder where the 7x7 pixel neighbourhood idea evolved from (reference)? It seems as though there are many steps embedded in the (1) and (2) that you provide in this section; would it make sense to split this into finer steps?
L424-432: Where do the coefficients and specific values come from?
L436: Change to “equation” rather than “formula”.
L442: What is “fireground”? This is not a word/term that I am familiar with. Further “in local area of” is awkwardly stated.
Figure 9: If these are all the same area but different channels/combinations, then the image chips should be identically sized. Having them overlap and run into each other makes them look rushed. Legend? Scalebar? Basic cartographic presentation principles? A map of the fire location would be useful. Yellow line?
Figure 10: Same comments/problems as with Figure 9.
Figure 11: It would be great if the images were properly sized to fit a page and to be at a scale that would permit seeing what the yellow arrows were pointing to.
L528-529: Do you have references to backup this claim that the fire area is less than that which is typically mapped by pixels? How do you assess the accuracy of your method, is it by visual assessment?
L548-551: It would be great to see this demonstrated/illustrated – identify pixels of the various types on a single scene/fire – to show how to separate the various states.
L565: Do you mean “values” rather than “value”? I do not see how you can have a group of a single thing.
L567: The use of “etc.” is not generally considered good scientific writing form.
The language does require editing for flow, grammar, tense, and agreement. I have made some suggestions, but the entire document needs a thorough editing (but more substantive edits should be made first).
