Geometrical Variation Analysis of Landslides in Different Geological Settings Using Satellite Images: Case Studies in Japan and Sri Lanka

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Generally, the manuscript is correctly written, clear and valuable for the study of compare the commonalities and differences in the characteristics of landslides in two regions Ikawa, Japan, and Sabaragamuwa, SriLanka by Google Earth satellite images from 2013 to 2023. The method of the article is relatively simple, which needs to improve the innovation and content depth. So, the paper needs some improvement to enhance comprehension and meet the standard of the Remote sensing journal.

 

1. In the “Introduction” section, there are too few reference articles on the relationship between landslide characteristics and topography, and the analysis of previous authors is not thorough. 

 

2. The resolution of some figures in the paper is very low, like Fig.1. The author needs to improve the resolution, especially the words and lines.

 

3. In the “ Study Area” section, it should first explain clearly the location of the two study areas and the reasons for choosing the two research areas in the first or second paragraphs. Then, you can compare the geology, topography, and climate of the two study areas.

 

4. Lines 233-235: “Individual examination of landslides to plot landslide locations and areas within the study area was conducted using Google Earth Pro satellite images captured from 2013 to 2023.” It is suggested that the author make relevant tables to provide the specific information including resolution of the images used in the two study areas. In addition, there is a bias between landslide images of different years. How does the author deal with this error?

 

5. Is the landslide identification result compared with the existing landslide database to confirm the reliability of the basic data?

 

6. The “Result” section need to be divided into different small units, to make the reader clearly.

 

7. Does the different climatic conditions such as rainfall affect the characteristics of landslides in the two study areas and what is the influence?

 

8. In the “Discussion” section, the content of “4.2 Characteristics of landslide in the area with very old geological formation” and the effect of terrain on landslide morphology is not discussed deeply. This is the key content of the paper, which needs to be sublimated. Moreover, the author should discuss the results with widely topic such as climate change ( https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.170007;  https://doi.org/10.1029/2022JF007047).

Author Response

Dear Professor,

Please find attached the author's response regarding your comment. We apologize for any inconvenience caused and appreciate your understanding.

Best regards

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article "Clarifying the landslide geometrical variation using satellite images: case studies in Japan and Sri Lanka" presents a method, even though is not novel, it represenst probable landslide occurrence based in geometrical variation, as mentioned.

As a method for predicting landslide it is not convenient in the short and medium term. It is a valuable study when sites or zones lack of landslide inventory data. This research must be taken as preliminary studies as the 2 study zones are not sufficient enough base data to provide convincing material.

We can say that as a support tool, complementary for deeper and wider studies, it is useful by using reachable sources as google earth.

limitations are evident as the authors mentioned about limited geographical settings.

It might be useful to talk about landslide prediction methods and how this particular method support these predictions and how should this method influence predictions (is there any probability at the end? long term, medium or short term predictions?)

I suggest to change the title as the word "clarifying" suppose that something is not clear enough, or in other words, it is not well understood.

The title, in my opinion, should declare the use of geometrical variation analysis and comparison rather than clarification....

Author Response

Dear Professor,

Please find attached the author's response regarding your comment. We apologize for any inconvenience caused and appreciate your understanding.

Best regards

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Researchers are looking for commonalities/correlations of various parameters from two landslide areas far apart from each other. They include geological structure, geomorphological features, shapes and sizes of the phenomena manifested.

The article is well structured. The results are correctly presented. A discussion was made on the obtained results and the main conclusions were drawn from them. However, this is not enough for the article to be accepted. There are various flaws that need to be cleared.

Page 2, line 87: what does  "…  from 900"" to 5,500"" … "  mean? Is that how the amounts of precipitation are denoted? What are these quotation marks after the numbers?

Page 3, line 118: 1,000 million years, i.e. (one) thousand million years??? Shouldn't it be 1 billion?

Page 4, Figures 2 and 3: These are 3 patterned pictures (rectangles) showing the geological structure in the two investigated sections. There are no landmarks, they look like a work of art. The boundaries of the two regions (already shown in Fig. 1) must be drawn. Also settlements, river names, etc., otherwise these figures do nothing.

Page 8, Fig. 7. The red line of movement is below the purple and brown polygons, the outlines are rough, like a child's drawing.... This is not serious! This cannot be an illustration of an authoritative journal with a high impact factor! I recommend making a diagram/drawing of a landslide (including the main elements) showing the three zones.

Briefly said, the illustrations are beyond criticism - they need to be fixed! Otherwise, I have no serious complaints regarding the text.

Author Response

Dear Professor,

Please find attached the author's response regarding your comment. We apologize for any inconvenience caused and appreciate your understanding.

Best regards

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The discussion section in this work is not good. There are no references in most parts of this discussion section. I suggest that the author should discuss their work with previous published papers.

Author Response

Dear Professor

Thank you for your valuable feedback. We've revised the manuscript according to your suggestions, with the updated sections highlighted in red for easy reference. Please let us know if our revisions align with your expectations.

Best regards,

Suneth

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I think the team did a good job and accepted my recommendations. I have no further comments and so I accept the manuscript.

Author Response

Dear Professor, 

Thank you for your feedback and acceptance of our manuscript. We are delighted to hear that our revisions met your expectations. We appreciate your constructive suggestions, which have helped improve our work.

Thank you once again for your guidance and support.

Best regards,

Suneth Neranjan