Selecting Erosion- and Deposition-Dominated Zones in the Jezero Delta Using a Water Flow Model for Targeting Future In Situ Mars Surface Missions

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 1)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The content and writing of this manuscript have been well revised, therefore, the reviewer believes that it is worth publishing in the Remote Sensing.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

no comments

Author Response

Thank you for the review, we have corrected several dozen further typo and linguistic issues. We hope the current version is mature enough for publication.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 3)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors' responses to all my substantive concerns are satisfactory, therefore I believe that the manuscript now merits publication in principle on its scientific merits.  However, the English still falls well short of the quality that this journal should accept (see below).  Here, I would call attention to numerous discrepancies between citations in the text and what appears in the list of references at the end of the paper.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

I sympathize with the authors in their struggle to write a coherent scientific paper in English, which is an idiosyncratic and difficult language.  I appreciate the effort they have made to improve the English composition.  Nonetheless, the paper is still filled with poor construction, inappropriate word choices, and faulty syntax.  Because I think this paper deserves to be published, I have suggested improvements as Tracked Changes in the attached version of the text (sorry for the embedded line numbers, which I could not easily remove).  I have made every effort to suggest changes that do not alter the meaning or the intention of the authors. They should carefully check each suggestion and accept changes that they agree with.  Also, please respond to my questions and comments in the margin 

Author Response

Dear Referee,

Thank you for the review and especaly for the specfic suggestions. We used all comments, and correced around 2-3 dozens further typo and linguistic issues. We hope the current version is mature enough for publication.

 

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

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

In this paper, the authors used the SIMWE (SIMulated Water Erosion) model at the Jezero crater and the model reveals erosion and accumulation dominated areas were separated at the top of the Jezero crater’s. I think this is a very meaningful job, but unfortunately, the content of this manuscript is difficult for readers to understand. Firstly, the authors did not provide a specific study area where used the SIMWE model, nor did they discuss the geological background of the study area. Secondly, the expression of each figure in this manuscript is confusing to readers, as each figure lacks coordinate information and many of the information in the figures are not explained in the manuscript. Finally, the author's explanation of the erosion and deposition dominated zones in the Jezero delta is not detailed enough, and readers have not seen the help of the water flow model method proposed by the authors for Mars rover patrols and achieving life exploration goals. Therefore, I believe that this manuscript is not worth publishing in the Remote Sensing.

 

   The author also needs to consider making some modifications to the article or answering some questions:

Line 163-180. Can the authors add some intuitive sedimentary geological maps of the rivers and deltas in the Jezero Crater area, so that the readers can have a better understanding of the geological background of the Jezero Crater, rather than describing it in long paragraphs.

Line 227-231. Please provide a detailed explanation of the values of these parameters modified by the SIMWE model in order to adapt to Mars?

Line 234. topography. this

Line 244. r.sim.water script? Is this a file? Can it be provided in the attachment?

Line 296. Please provide a detailed explanation of this formula, as the reader did not understand it. If necessary, you can give a practical example.

Figure 1. Figure 1b is not explained in the manuscript, and there is no coordinate information for this figure. Please provide the name of the CTX image to the reader.

Line 353. (m2/s)

3. Results. Readers have a big concern, how can the authors prove that their simulation results are correct? Are there any other research results that mutually support each other?

Figure 2. Figure 2 lacks coordinate information. And is the scope of Figure 2 consistent with Figure 1?

The order and content of all the figures in the manuscript leave readers puzzled. Firstly, there are no coordinates on each figure, and readers are unaware of the location and scope of the research area in this manscript. Secondly, what is the relationship between each figure? Since all the figures in this manuscript are research results for the same area, the authors should clearly inform readers of the location of each figure in the research area. Finally, many details in the figure were not explained clearly in the manuscript.

Figure 3. What is the meaning of the red box in Figure 3a? In addition, the authors should at least indicate or divide the riverbed, craters, depressions, and the delta geomorphic or geological units in Figure 3.

Figure 4. What is the meaning of scarp in the figure? Is Figure.4c a box in Figure.4b? What is the relationship between the Figure.4d and the Figure4.abc? Figure.4a makes it difficult for readers to see clearly.

Line 573. 2021. to the

Comments on the Quality of English Language

No comments.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Steinmann et al. aimed to select erosion and deposition domianted zones in the Jezero crater. However, the English usage is very poor and the goal of this paper is unclear. Therefore, a rejection is given but I encourage a resubmission after revise.

Here is some issues:

-Abstract

Line 14-16: This sentence is confusing. Please rewrite it to make readers understand the meaning clearly.

Line 18-19: Numerous literatures about Jezero crater had been published and they contain the analysis of composition, morphology, simulation and so on. Therefore, this reason may not be suitable to interpret the importance of the proposed work.

Line 22-23: It is not a complete sentence and this content is meaningless.

Line 29: potential is not a noun.

Line 44-46: Why the precise identification of subsurface drilling target remains poorly constrained? Since the author provided a novel model-based method, they should provide some evaluated parameters (e.g., RMSE) that can demonstrate the disadvantage of the previous investigations.

Line 51-54: Although the model can provide significant identification of areas with fine sediment, why Jezero delta is more important thant other sediment materials?

Line 58-60: Since Mars is terrestrial planets, it is no doubt that Earth-tested methods can be applied in surface analysis on Mars. Consequently, the authors should provide an interpretation that why Jezero delta is important for us to understand the formation of Martian surface, and why the applied model has higher performances than other similar methods.

Line 60: imaging changed as “images”

Line 70-73: Did any literature support this view? Please annotate them at the end of this content.

Line 110-113: It is not a complete sentence and this content is confusing to understand its meaning.

Line 115-121: The numerical methods is actually limited to characterize the real erosion and accumulation processes. But the authors cannot provide a reason to interpret the advantage of their methods, which is also model-based. In addition, the previous studies having limited efforts should be given in this content.

Line 182-195: Although the authors provided detailed descriptions that aimed to dmonstrate the importance for identifying delta of Jezero crater, the advantage of their proposed method is also unclear and I believe some published papers might provide identification of delta of Jezero crater. I suggest that the authors should focus on the difficulty of identification of delta and the advantage of the proposed method. Some additional figures may be great to demonstrate the low performance in detection of delta from previous studies.

Line234-237: Since the core of this model is based on two open-source GIS packages, it is not a novel method. Consequently, what is the advantage of this model?

Line 298-299: What is the criteria to set x and y?

Line 458-459: What is the evidence can demonstrate that “no better and simpler approach exists”?

Discussion: This content cannot provide evidence that the proposed method has higher performance and there is no new finding to update our understanding of delta in Jezero crater, although the authors provide a long description. I suggest that the authors can demonstrate the importance of their work from two factors: the performance of their method and the new insight of the study of delta.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Quality of English Language is poor.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is an interesting and innovative way to address an important question: What does the near subsurface of Mars look like at points of interest for exploration, and what does it tell us about the history of the planet at that location? It provides indications that are admittedly speculative and prone to wide variation, but the methodology is well-reasoned and suggests a way to estimate what the otherwise invisible subsurface consists of, and how it came about historically. This is important information for making decisions about future targets for exploration.  Unfortunately, the impact of the paper is constricted by very poor English composition, which relegates a potentially worthy paper to a state that is unpublishable in its current form.

The strengths and weaknesses of the paper are as follows:

The paragraph on the aim of this work (lines 58-68) is very important, and the first two sentences do a good job of explaining what the aim is and why it could be valuable. The remainder of that paragraph, however, is so poorly written and punctuated that its meaning is hard to decipher.

The next paragraph (lines 70-79) further clarifies the objective of the study.  The middle of the paragraph consists of run-on sentences that are hard to untangle, but the final sentence (lines 78-79) is a clear statement of the objective and value of the work.

The study site in Jezero Crater is well chosen for the reasons the authors point out.

The remainder of the Introduction consists of valuable information and demonstrates a high level of expertise and a good knowledge of Martian planetary history.

The Methods section is beyond my level of expertise. It appears to be well-reasoned, and to fit within traditional use of the models in analyzing geomorphology on Earth. I defer to other reviewers in assessing the validity of the methods and their mathematical treatment.  I saw nothing in the Methods that raised my concerns; but, again, my knowledge in this area is weak.

The authors do a good job in the Discussion section of pointing out the limitations of their Methods. The Results section points to a broad range of calculated values. A question that logically arises is, how sensitive are the results to the various assumptions that go into the model?  Is the large variation in the results due to a high degree of uncertainty in the assumptions upon which the model's computations are based? The authors do address this issue to some degree, but a clear-cut answer isn’t obvious. Perhaps some thought could be given to addressing this issue more forthrightly.

One obvious source of concern is the assumption that the erosion and deposition patterns seen in Jezero result from a specific amount of precipitation over a period of 1 h.  How sensitive is the model to assumptions of precipitation over 2 h or 10 h?  Should this be a matter of concern, or will the results remain fundamentally the same regardless of the duration of precipitation?

The final section of the Discussion on possible future usage of the modelling approach is a valuable addition and helps to validate the importance of this effort.

After reading this paper several times, I still have a hard time figuring out how the model gives results that satisfy the objective of the work – namely to reveal the composition of the invisible (by remote imaging) subsurface.  At several critical points, the English composition is so garbled that I have a hard time figuring out what the authors are trying to say.  It may well be that better composition would reveal the answers to my questions in this review. For that reason, an improved version of English composition is mandatory for this otherwise meritorious work.  If the paper is resubmitted, it should have the benefit of review by a native or fluent English writer, or an English language service available for this purpose.

 

A couple of additional questions and points

 

What does “0.95 nm – 256<mm” in Table 1 with reference to grain diameter mean?

 

Lines 607-608:  Don’t start sentences with only the numerical indication of the source. Rather, give the name of the author(s), then the reference number, when the reference is used to start a sentence.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The instances of improper and inappropriate English composition are too numerous to point out individually, but the following examples give an indication of the corrections that are needed to make this paper acceptable for publication.

line 23:  “. . . at the top of Jezero Crater’s”  what?

lines 90-93:  This text is incoherent: “. . . concentrating on the shallow subsurface, rather than deeper regions, is beside the observable topography gives the only possibility for this type of reconstruction, and as upcoming rover missions in the next few years lack deep but own shallow drilling capabilities."

Frequent use of “what” when “that” is the more appropriate word choice.

line 216:  My personal preference is to avoid using contractions, like “it’s”, in scientific writing.

lines 320-323:  This sentence lacks a verb: “In this paper, the Dg model [63])

     Where K is the erodibility and Dg is the geometric mean diameter of the surface particle (mm).”

 

lines 323-324:  Incoherent text: “Where is the weight percentage of the particle size fraction. . .”

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf