Land Degradation Vulnerability Mapping in a Newly-Reclaimed Desert Oasis in a Hyper-Arid Agro-Ecosystem Using AHP and Geospatial Techniques

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Authors have done an excellent job overall, however, there are areas which require further work. The implications of the results have not been fully developed and presented in the conclusion section.

In the introduction, there is not logical connection among the paragraphs. Ideas are scatted from one paragraph to another without any connection.

L59-61. The definition of Land Degradation Vulnerability (LDV) provided in not enough. As it is one of the concepts used in this study, authors should give more information about it. In which context it can be used, where has been used before, who created this.

Authors have merely analyzed the results without discussing them. He has just shown what everybody sees on the map without giving further explanation.

Authors should firstly explain his own result, the implication of the findings before comparing to other works.

Furthermore, the authors should provide a section for Future Directions of Research for their work.

The conclusion require work - these should pick up on the salient findings from the study, and those that can be transferred to other locations, thus making this research greater than a case study analysis.

 

Some details of my observations can be see below.

L18 to 19. “In the present work, a trial for integrating… was applied to generate a LDV map. One will wonder “integrating in what?” may be a misuse of the verb “integrate”.

L44. What do you mean by “climate change drought”?

L65-66. “Therefore, a multi-criteria decision method; Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) developed by Saaty represents an effective tool for solving such decision problems”. Is it the only tool that is able to deal with such problem? Authors should give an overview of other tools (weaknesses and strengths), this could help to explain more why AHP is chosen.

L137-138. “It is well known…based on literature (table 1)”. Reference is needed to justify why is “well known”.

Table 1. one more column is necessary for explaining the parameters/indicators. Please refer to Kablan et al. 2017.

Section 2.2.2. remote sensing data” isn’t part of the data used?

Section 2.3.1.  “Modelling land degradation vulnerability”. I personally think that this section should come before and “data used” should be under this section, especially 2.3.1.1.

By “modelling”, do you mean “mapping”?

L249-250.  “Prioritizing…expert opinions”. Who are the experts? What is the statistic of their judgement?

L294-298. “Such a verification…and average standardized error (ASE)”. What do you mean by “some”? it better to provide statistic of those errors.

3.1. Geology index. Figure 2 does not really show the presented results.

Authors have failed in discussing his results. They have just shown what everybody sees. Authors should firstly explain his own result, the implication of his own findings before comparing.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

In this paper, the authors discuss the design and development of a land degradation vulnerability index (LDVI).  The LVDI includes six sub-indices: geology index (GI), topographic quality index (TQI), physical soil quality index (PSQI), chemical soil quality index (CSQI), wind erosion quality index (WEQI), and vegetation quality index (VQI).  The weights for the six sub-indices were derived via an Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP).  The LDVI model output (soil properties) was assessed using kriging, a geostatistical technique that interpolates / predicts values at unsampled locations from sampled locations, and field verification surveys.

The paper is well-written and presented.   The Materials and Methods section clearly summarizes the methodology and provides extensive detail regarding each index and its creation.  The manner in which the LDVI was created will help raise awareness that similar indices could be created using the remote sensing and geospatial techniques employed in the paper / research.  The use of a flowchart (Figure 4) to describe the underlying data structure, along with the various indices, was quite helpful in understanding the problem to be solved and the designed solution.

This is a very good paper and should be useful for the agronomy audience, but also to those wanting to better understand the use of the geospatial techniques for the design, development, and assessment of a similar multi-level index.

If possible, and deeper discussion regarding the AHP process would be helpful – who were the experts, how many, how was it conducted, etc.?

In addition, these two edits should be incorporated:

Line 23
As written: They included geology index, topographic quality index (TQI)
Should be: They included geology index (GI), topographic quality index (TQI)

Line 80
As written: spatial technologies and AHP proved success
Should be: spatial technologies and AHP proved successful

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors,

I have read your manuscript very carefully. I have enjoyed reading your work. The topic is of great interest to many arid and semi-arid areas and is very appropriate for AGRONOMY journal.

Article is well structured and the methodology is appropriate to the objectives. Abstract give a good idea of the work theme.

The references are numerous and very current, but many of them are difficult-to-consult book chapters.

There are some corrections that authors need to make and that I have marked in the attached file.

My decision is minor correction.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx