Numerical Simulation Study on Interactions between the Wave and Newborn Sandbank in the Xisha Islands of the South China Sea
, Chun Chen 5,6,7,*,†, Xiang Lin 1,2, Siqi Li 1,2, Xiantao Huang 1,2, Mee Mee Soe 8 and Mohammad Saydul Islam Sarkar 9Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Please find the review comments in the attached PDF.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Author's Reply to the Review Report (Reviewer 1)
Dear reviewer,
Re: Manuscript ID: 1986284 and Title: Characteristics of wave propagation and newborn sandbank migration in the Xisha Islands of the South China Sea
Thank you for your letter and the reviewers’ comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Characteristics of wave propagation and newborn sandbank migration in the Xisha Islands of the South China Sea” (1986284). Those comments are valuable and very helpful. We have read through comments carefully and have made corrections. Based on the instructions provided in your letter, we uploaded the file of the revised manuscript. Revisions in the text are shown using red highlight for additions, and strike through font for deletions. The responses to the reviewer's comments are marked in red and presented following.
We would love to thank you for allowing us to resubmit a revised copy of the manuscript and we highly appreciate your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
Chun Chen.
Q1：In the Introduction part, some issues on the language and the format are suggested to be corrected.
Line 57: “on three aspects: (1) Emphasize”——>“on the following three
aspects: (1) To emphasize”
Line 60: “ (2) Highlight” ——>“(2) To highlight”
Line 62: “(3) Value” ——>“(2) To value”; Furthermore, the word of “value” is
hard to be accurately understood, and other more proper word
should be used therein.
Line 68, “as the primary stage of islands and reefs in the South China Sea”,
this phrase is not easy to be understood.
For Figure 1, it is suggested to mark the longitude and latitude range in the figure, so that the reader can understand how large the space range considered by numerical simulation is.
Response: We are grateful for the suggestions. According to your suggestions, we have modified the grammar, format and paragraph in the introduction, and added latitude and longitude range in Figure 1.
Q2: In the Introduction part, although the authors have reviewed some related literatures, there are some aspects that need to be mentioned. As we all known, the long-period waves are normally dominant around the coastal zones of the reef islands. The long-period waves are closely to the sediment transport and geomorphic change. In addition, the nearshore topography also significantly influences the long-wave wave field, which further affects the morphology of the coastal zone. Hence, in the introduction, the discussion and citations on long-period waves and the seabed topography near the shore should be appropriately added, such as: * Investigation on the effects of Bragg reflection on harbor oscillations. Coastal Engineering, 2021, 170: 103977; * Numerical investigation of harbor oscillations induced by focused transient wave groups. Coastal Engineering, 2020, 158: 103670.
Response: We are grateful for the suggestions. According to your suggestions, We added some literature in section 1 to further summarize the interaction of dynamics and geomorphology in the shore, port and sandbank area. In addition, these two papers are useful for us to deeply recognize wave actions, thus they are also cited in the paper.
Q3: In Section 2 “Data and method”: Line 103, “Figs.2-3”——>“Figures 2 and 3” Line 104, “Figure 2-3 indicates” ——>“Figures 2 and 3 indicate” For both Figures 2 and 3, there are two sub-figures in each figure. There should be only one caption for each figure, rather than using many sub-captions for all sub-figures.
Response: We are grateful for the suggestions. The captions for Figure 2 and 3 have been modified, as well as the relevant sentences.
Q4: In Section 3 “Model setup”: As a numerical study, the detailed descriptions on the numerical model are necessary. Here, the authors just tell us that the wave-sand coupling model (HHU-WENMS V1.0) is implemented in this paper. And no more information on the model is given. Obviously, it is not enough. The detailed descriptions on the control equation, the discretization scheme, etc., and the model validations are necessary. If these contents had been well done in other literatures, at least these literatures should be mentioned herein. Although Phillips (1960) and Hasselmann (1960) has been cited in the context, there are no the corresponding references in the References section.
Response: We are grateful for the suggestions. According to your suggestions, in Section 3, we have added relevant governing equations in detail, relevant discretization methods and other information about the model used in this paper, and also added some literature to further introduce the details of model. Meanwhile, we further added the necessary validation results to confirm rationality of the established model.
In addition, we firmly deemed that researches of Phillips (1960) and Hasselmann (1960) are very important and prominent for corresponding studies, however, considering that their early literature are a little old to obtain by many readers, furthermore, their contributions have also been implied in the relevant achievements cited by the paper. Hence, we are sorry that we did not cite the relevant references. For this, we also modified the corresponding paragraph.
Q5: In Section 4 “Results and discussion” The captions of Figures 5 and 6 have the same problems with those of Figures 2 and 3.
The numbers in Figures 5-10 are too small/obscure to be well recognized.
Response: We are grateful for the suggestions. The captions for Figure 5 and 6 have been modified, as well as the relevant sentences. Figures 5-10 have also been modified and enlarged.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
- More suitable title should be selected for the article.
- The abstract should state briefly the purpose of the research, the principal results and major conclusions. An abstract is often presented separately from the article, so it must be able to stand alone.
- Can the type and characteristics of adhesion of sand grains be effective in the results?
- Page 5: the following paragraph is unclear, so please reorganize that:
“At the same time, the new sandbank is located in the southern waters of the South Sandbank, near the edge of the reef where the islands are located. The limited elevation of the top of the newborn sandbank results in it getting mostly submerged in the water at a high water level. This makes it difficult for the newborn sandbank to form a significant barrier effect on the incident wave.”
- Methods section determines the results. Kindly focus on three basic elements of the methods section.
a. How the study was designed?
b. How the study was carried out?
c. How the data were analyzed?
- The major defect of this study is the debate or Argument is not clear stated in the introduction session. Hence, the contribution is weak in this manuscript. I would suggest the author to enhance your theoretical discussion and arrives your debate or argument.
- It is suggested to add articles entitled “Truong et al. The Impact of Waves and Tidal Currents on the Sediment Transport at the Sea Port” and “Vonnisa et al. Retrieval of Vertical Structure of Raindrop Size Distribution from Equatorial Atmosphere Radar and Boundary Layer Radar” to the literature review.
- Please make sure your conclusions' section underscore the scientific value added of your paper, and/or the applicability of your findings/results, as indicated previously. Please revise your conclusion part into more details. Basically, you should enhance your contributions, limitations, underscore the scientific value added of your paper, and/or the applicability of your findings/results and future study in this session.
- Much more explanations and interpretations must be added for the Results, which are not enough.
- More suitable title should be selected for the figure 7 instead of “Wave field variation characteristics driven by different grades of wind …….”.
Author Response
Author's Reply to the Review Report (Reviewer 2)
Dear reviewer,
Re: Manuscript ID: 1986284 and Title: Characteristics of wave propagation and newborn sandbank migration in the Xisha Islands of the South China Sea.
Thank you for your letter and the reviewers’ comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Characteristics of wave propagation and newborn sandbank migration in the Xisha Islands of the South China Sea” (1986284). Those comments are valuable and very helpful. We have read through comments carefully and have made corrections. Based on the instructions provided in your letter, we uploaded the file of the revised manuscript. Revisions in the text are shown using red highlight for additions, and strike through font for deletions. The responses to the reviewer's comments are marked in red and presented following.
We would love to thank you for allowing us to resubmit a revised copy of the manuscript and we highly appreciate your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
Chun Chen.
Q1: More suitable title should be selected for the article.
Response: We are grateful for the suggestions. We have modified the title as “Numerical simulation study on interactions between the wave and newborn sandbank in the Xisha Islands of the South China Sea”.
Q2: The abstract should state briefly the purpose of the research, the principal results and major conclusions. An abstract is often presented separately from the article, so it must be able to stand alone.
Response: We are grateful for the suggestions. According to your suggestions, we have modified the abstract in the article, especially rewrote the purpose of the research and the conclusions to make the abstract more independent.
Q3: Can the type and characteristics of adhesion of sand grains be effective in the results?
Response: We are grateful for the suggestions. The type and characteristics of adhesion of sand grains would inevitably influence sediment transportation. However, according to the sample data in the Xisha Islands, its fine grains are with average median diameter about 0.52mm, which has been added in the first paragraph of the section 2. Hence, this paper just adopted the sediment type, but did not consider the adhesion of sand grains in the numerical simulation.
Q4: Page 5: the following paragraph is unclear, so please reorganize that:
“At the same time, the new sandbank is located in the southern waters of the South Sandbank, near the edge of the reef where the islands are located. The limited elevation of the top of the newborn sandbank results in it getting mostly submerged in the water at a high water level. This makes it difficult for the newborn sandbank to form a significant barrier effect on the incident wave.”
Response: We are grateful for the suggestions. We have reorganized this paragraph in the section 4.1 as “As the Figure 4 shown, the newborn sandbank is located at the southeastern margin of the Qilianyu and closes to the the South Sandbank. Its top elevation is limited, in result, it gets mostly submerged in the water during high water level duration. Hence, the newborn sandbank is difficult to induce significant barrier effect as islands and reefs on the incident wave during high water level period.”.
Q5: Methods section determines the results. Kindly focus on three basic elements of the methods section.
- How the study was designed?
- How the study was carried out?
- How the data were analyzed?
Response: We are grateful for the suggestions. According to your suggestions, we have added research ideas and study methods in detail in the section 2, meanwhile, we also added detailed information about model setting in the section 3. Through all of these modification, we tried to clearly describe our basic study design in detail.
Q6: The major defect of this study is the debate or Argument is not clear stated in the introduction session. Hence, the contribution is weak in this manuscript. I would suggest the author to enhance your theoretical discussion and arrives your debate or argument.
Response: We are grateful for the suggestions. According to your suggestions, we added some literature and readjusted the introduction section 1 to show our study objectives and argument more clearly.
Q7: It is suggested to add articles entitled “Truong et al. The Impact of Waves and Tidal Currents on the Sediment Transport at the Sea Port” and “Vonnisa et al. Retrieval of Vertical Structure of Raindrop Size Distribution from Equatorial Atmosphere Radar and Boundary Layer Radar” to the literature review.
Response: We are grateful for the suggestions. We added some literature in section 1 to further summarize the interaction of dynamics and geomorphology in the shore, port and sandbank area. Wherein, the first paper “The Impact of Waves and Tidal Currents on the Sediment Transport at the Sea Port” is great helpful for us. And then this paper was cited in the introduction.
Q8: Please make sure your conclusions' section underscore the scientific value added of your paper, and/or the applicability of your findings/results, as indicated previously. Please revise your conclusion part into more details. Basically, you should enhance your contributions, limitations, underscore the scientific value added of your paper, and/or the applicability of your findings/results and future study in this session.
Response: We are grateful for the suggestions. According to your suggestions, we completely rewrote the Conclusions’ section, and further emphasize this paper’s contributions and its scientific value.
Q9: Much more explanations and interpretations must be added for the Results, which are not enough.
Response: We are grateful for the suggestions. We added more explanations and interpretations in nearly every sections of the paper, as well as the introduction and conclusions, and try to further analyze the results to reveal more laws.
Q10: More suitable title should be selected for the figure 7 instead of “Wave field variation characteristics driven by different grades of wind”
Response: We are grateful for the suggestions. According to your suggestion, we have changed the title of figure 7 in section 4.3.1 to more accurately describe meaning of the figure.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The article has been revised very well, so I would suggest to accept in its present form.
