Climate and Land Use Change Effects on Sediment Production in a Dry Tropical Forest Catchment
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper with Manuscript ID water-1325753, titled "Climate and land use change effects on sediment production in a dry tropical forest catchment" is recommended for minor corrections.
Here are the technical observations:
Strengths:
The paper has good structure and organisation.
The paper has good references and good introduction.
The paper has good use of English Language.
The authors are technically sound in the subject area.
The delivery of the article is good, but can be improved.
Weaknesses:
The article has some nomenclature and words that are new to many audience, especially the non-Latin, non-Spanish, non-Argentine demographies, so words like La Niña and El Niño, need to be explained, especially the first time they are used in Introduction.
The parameters which also appear on the legends used, like on Figures 3, 4 and 8 are events which are also unclear.
Authors should improve on the results but presenting more results.
Authors concluded that "These authors concluded that the increasing trends were mainly linked to human-induced forest clearance and should not be attributed to climate change. In a follow-up study, they quantified the deforestation in the Magdalena basin from satellite imagery and found a 241% increase in deforestation between 1990 and 2010, which led to a 33% increase in erosion rates"... can the authors add some images of the erosion in those areas to substantiate this?
In Introduction, rewrite the last paragraph into 2-3 full sentences. "The specific objectives are:
to analyze changes in rainfall erosivity and vegetation cover as a function of land-use changes, and of seasonal changes affected by ENSO.
to quantify soil erosion rates in the catchment using RUSLE
to calibrate the spatially-distributed SEDD model, by contrasting it with sediment yield observed at the catchment outlet
to apply the SEDD model to estimate the spatial and temporal distribution of sediment yield"
Check that all the abbreviations are identified and defined.
Authors should cross-reference or cite the maps, if they are not originally drawn by the authors, as in Figures 1, 5, and 7.
In the plot in Figure 13, vector profiles with dots, or dashes can also be used for one of the two parameters... as colours alone may not appear well if printed on black-and-white printers or laser printers.
Rewrite lines 458-460 to have a better flow.
How was the data collected validated? Authors should briefly discuss it.
Minor proof-reading and some English Language checks is recommended.
Author Response
Dear reviewer, please see the attachment.
Kind regards
Juan Pablo García Montoya
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
After reading the manuscript, however, the manuscript topic is important but not well described the methods especially in using remote sensing data. Some questions and comments are as follow:
- Line 109:estimate the spatial and temporal distribution of sediment yield, but there is no info about spatial change?
- Which kind of rain data are used from the station in the model? daily or monthly either annually average?
- Line 190-191 font change
- Line 198: How many scenes of Landsat data are used each year for NDVI production? only one? if so which month? Did you consider of seasonal change of vegetation?
- Table 2 is your research classification? or other researchers? please define or make references.
- RUSLE model needs the more valuable how produce them? just based experiment either use remote sensing data?
- Figure 3 why in 1998 was sediment load extremely increasing?
- Figure 4 in 2010 sharply increased the rainfall is it only lanina? did you double check annomally?
- I think need some other GIS map from the study area to understand the change and support the models such as topography, soil, geology etc, it would help to understand the spatial change.
- The conclusion needs more support for the result and research goal.
- Font, grammatical errors need to modify.
Author Response
Dear reviewer, please see the attachment.
Kind regards
Juan Pablo García Montoya
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Thanks to the author for the response cover letter and correct points. I have no more comments just please re-design the layout map, and add the coordinate system and scale, north arrow clearly, and is better not used the black color in the background of maps.
