Applying Artificial Cover to Reduce Melting in Dagu Glacier in the Eastern Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper entitled “Applying artificial cover to reduce melting in Dagu Glacier” presents a deep analysis of the feasibility and effectiveness of using geotextile on glaciers. Although the work is not innovative, it is the first study involving a glacier at high altitude and outside the Alps. The paper is well organized and is written clearly. I have found some weakness along the paper which I detail point-to-point. I have only a major comment. This paper has been submitted to Remote Sensing, but the RS analysis here presented are just a small part of the work and are not well explained and not predominant in the work.
In relation with these considerations, I have to recommend rejecting the paper in the hope that it will be re-submitted after further RS analysis.
Some comment in detail:
-line 51: “during specific period”. Please clarify this sentence. It is not clear what happens to the cover during the accumulation season.
-line 77: Please rewrite the caption of Figure 1. In particular, the point C is not clear.
-line 88: Please add more detail on the used geotextiles (i.e. material) and their positioning on glacier (i.e. area covered and layout).
-line 135-152 and 183-206: these sections are the most important considering the Journal. I think that must be improved considering the uncertainty associated with the co-registration procedures between the DEMs and a detailed description of the steps of the whole workflow.
-line 249: In figure 5, figure 6 and figure 8 the colour scale must be modified. I think it is more intuitive using blue colors for low elevation changes and red colors for high.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Figure 2a is a little bit blurred. Quality of the figure must be improved.
line 146. "no 146 GCP has to be installed for the geo-correction of the photogrammetric point cloud". Theoreticcaly Yes, but usage os several GPC will improve overall results. Application of RTK UAV system allows to reduce number of necessary GCP not to fully remove them. Of course controlpoints are necessary as well. Also the distribution of controlpoints could be more even across the glacier. I understand that currently You can not change the obtained data. SO this is a comment for future studies.
Section 3.2.3. More details regarding digital surface model creation process must be included. Currently only software is mentioned. What was the overlap of individual pictures? e.t.c.
Line 227. I do not understand the reason behind simplification of the shape of the covered ice for volume calculations. You have plenty of surface elevation data to precisely calculate the volume by using GIS software.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Please see the comments on the attached pdf file.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
After revision, the text improved considerably. I suggest that the editor accept the article for publication.
