Understanding Hydrological Processes under Land Use Land Cover Change in the Upper Genale River Basin, Ethiopia

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 2)

Why authors have considered the analysis period only upto 2016. Why they have not considered the latest years?

Authors are suggested to add the recommendations in context of problems detected in the study area through the analysis. It will help the readers to focus on the better management and planning in such kind of scenarios.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)

Comments are provided

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)

 Accept in present form

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

The paper “Understanding hydrological processes under land use land cover change in upper Genale river basin, Ethiopia” evaluated the performance of Soil and Water Assessment Tool model and its applicability in ast5sessing the effects of land use land cover (LULC) changes on hydrological processes of the upper Genale river basin. The paper is interesting and can suggest useful indications for further studies on the same argument. The article matches the scopes of the journal but, in my opinion, the paper needs some deep revisions both in written form and research discussion.

 There are some specific comments for the authors:

(1) In the article, authors mentioned land use land cover change many times, but the authors used “LULC changes”, “LULCC”, “LULC change” etc. Please be consistent.

(2) Line 62: “The changes LULC” should be “The changes of LULC”?

(3) Line 100: “Now a days” should be “Nowadays”

(4) Table 1: Rainfall Period, but for Temperature is “Periods”, should they be the same? On the other hand, each column in the table should align, please check the fourth column.

(5) The fonts are different in the formulas.

(6) Line 364: “were” in “the PBIAS were computed….” should be “was”.

(7) Figure 4: The text “Land use land cover change % (1986-2016)” in the figure is not necessary because we can get the information from the caption of the figure.

(8) Lines 467-490：The discussion is not strong and persuasive.

(9) Line 491: Should the “Accuracy Assessment” be “Accuracy Assessment of LULC images”? Furthermore, should the “Accuracy Assessment” be assessed before the analysis of LULC change dynamics?

(10) Lines 528-529：The authors used the streamflow data from 1991-2000to calibrate the model, and do the validation with the data from 2005-2011. You used the 2001 LC map in this research, then how is the model’s performance of 2000-2004?

(11) Table 10: What does “LC” stand for?

(12) Figure 5: Please check the format of X-axis and Y-axis. And what is “RF” should also be mentioned.

(13) Figures 8-10: ①Please rewrite the captions of these figures. ② In addition, they are different figures, why did the sub-figures name follow figure 8, i.e. from (d) … and (g)?③ You mentioned sub basin numbers in the text when explaining the spatial distribution of water -balance components, but we can’t see the locations of sub basins. So, I suggest to show the sub basin numbers in the figures as well.

(14) There are quite a lot of extra blank spaces between two sentences or in a sentence through the article, for example, Line21, Line 69, Line 71, Line 74, Line 110, Line 182, … please check very carefully and remove all the extra blank spaces.

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

Authors needs to do final editing and cross check.

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

This paper is in line with the scope of WATER, presents an interesting topic, and the result is useful for land and water resource management planning. The paper has been arranged in a well systematic manner. Several things still need attention, including:

·   In the introduction section, the authors should state consideration for choosing the upper Genale basin as the focus of the research area.

·      Please add remarks inside the bottom-left map (Figure 1).

·      Line 177-180: soil properties from the SWAT database were compared and verified with the soil survey reports, but the results were not stated in the “Results and Discussions” section.

·    Table 1 is unnecessary because the information can be seen in Figure 1. The incomplete data in the column “Temperature periods” can be explained using one sentence in section 2.2.4.

·     Forest cover decreased the most compared to other cover types. Authors should add an explanation from the literature study on how forest cover can affect the hydrological response, in this case, the annual runoff, total water yield, and lateral and groundwater flow variables.

·     In the discussion section, it is better to add a discussion on how the LULC change occurred in Ethiopia, especially in the upper Genale basin. Are these changes following the planning documents issued by the government, or are these changes made illegally?

·   The land status also needs to be explained, whether the changes are mostly carried out in the state forests or community-owned land.

·     Section 4 should only present the conclusion, and there is no need for a summary. The conclusion should focus on the research results that answer the objectives.

·      References and citations should match with the journal (MDPI) template.

Author Response

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