Review of the Ecosystem Services of Temperate Wetlands and Their Valuation Tools

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

GENERAL COMMENTS

This manuscript concerns a literature review of published studies dealing with the ecosystem services of temperate wetlands. The authors highlight the need for more scientific attention on the ecosystem services from wetlands, and more specifically, on intermittent karst lakes. The study is interesting, but there are important issues that need to be addressed. 

- In the Abstract section it is mentioned as one of the objectives the following: "ES have not been valued for some categories of wetlands like intermittent karst lakes (poljes/turloughs) which may require more bespoke methodologies ...". A mention of karst lakes appears also in the Conclusion section. However, throughout the remaining text, karst lakes are mentioned only once, in the last sentence of the Discussion section. This is very strange for something that appears to be one of the main objectives and conclusions of this study.

- The literature review of ES has not included a significant service, the temperature regulation, especially in urban areas affected by the urban heat island effect (see related references).

- There are plenty of vague sentences (see specific comments).

- The authors need to proofread the text. There are many grammatical errors (see specific comments).

 

SPECIFIC COMMENTS

Location: "Blankespoor et al. [6] estimate that with 1 m of sea level rise being predicted as a result of climate change ... "
Comment: Over what period the sea level will rise 1 m?

Location: "More specifically, the value of ecosystems services ..."
Comment: "ecosystems services" -> "ecosystem services"

Location: "A focus on adaption strategies ..."
Comment: "adaption" -> "adaptation"

Location: "... the realization that wetlands are some of them most valuable ecosystems."
Comment: "of them most" -> "of the most"

Location: "... probably due to the fact that in most application of ES studies ..."
Comment: "application" -> "applications"

Location: "Some researchers have highlighted the risk of the commodification of ES, which reproduces the market logic and structures and applying them to ecosystems [10]."
Comment: The syntax is not correct.

Location: "... contributed to raising the attention of the important of such services."
Comment: "important" -> "importance"

Location: "... monetisation of ecosystems services ... "
Comment: "ecosystems services" -> "ecosystem services"

Location: "... , pest/disease regulation an invasion resistance in all ecosystems."
Comment: "an invasion" -> "and invasion"

Location: "... are not accounted in the relevant EU programs ..."
Comment: "accounted in the relevant EU programs"  -> "accounted for in the relevant EU programs" 

Location: "... this is true for wetlnd ES quantification ..."
Comment: "wetlnd" -> "wetland"

Location: "... and studies were a quantification and/or valuation had been performed,..."
Comment: "were" -> "where"

Location: "... linked to the preference of public for a ..."
Comment: "of public" -> "of the public"

Location: Section 4.3
Comment: There is no section between 4.2 and 4.4.

Location: "the ecosystem service quantified, (e.g. number "
Comment: "quantified, (e.g. number " -> "quantified, e.g., number "

 

REFERENCES

Cavan, G., Lindley, S., Jalayer, F., Yeshitela, K., Pauleit, S., Renner, F., Gill, S., Capuano, P., Nebebe, A., Woldegerima, T. and Kibassa, D., 2014. Urban morphological determinants of temperature regulating ecosystem services in two African cities. Ecological indicators, 42, pp.43-57.

Kong, F., Sun, C., Liu, F., Yin, H., Jiang, F., Pu, Y., Cavan, G., Skelhorn, C., Middel, A. and Dronova, I., 2016. Energy saving potential of fragmented green spaces due to their temperature regulating ecosystem services in the summer. Applied energy, 183, pp.1428-1440.

Rozos, E., Tsoukalas, I., Ripis, K., Smeti, E. and Makropoulos, C., 2017. Turning black into green: Ecosystem services from treated wastewater. Desalin. Water Treat, 91, pp.198-205.

Author Response

Please see attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper is interesting, well-written and brings a lot of synthetic information to the actual topic of ecosystem services. I appreciate that the authors focused on wetlands – very important ecosystem (in many aspects), but also extremely sensitive to anthropogenic impacts. Therefore, I have just a few comments and suggestions which might improve the quality of the paper.  

Specific comments:

Keywords: the term “temperate wetland ecosystem services” is copping the title of the paper, thus, it would be replaced by any another words, which are different from the paper title.

Subsection 1.1. In the end of the subsection a sort of the main aim of the paper is mentioned. I feel like more specific and detailed sub-items of paper aim would be explained.

Subsection 1.3.1 The authors would cite to any relevant work which provided the definition. The subsection would be slightly longer – to bring any additional information about this method (e.g. parallel with another field where the method has been implemented).

Figure 1. – I wander whether number of papers published in 2020 represents the full year (if it is so - no problem) or just part of it (in that case some note about the exact period is needed).    

Figure 4. Perhaps any explanation for the category “World” would be done (works covering the entire Earth???). Is any reasonable argument to show separately UK and England?! Moreover, y-axis might be modified, I mean giving range for instance up to 50. That allows seeing better differences among the countries. In such case number of papers for China, USA and World would be written over the column or by using a disrupted axis line and columns. The authors would consider whether to put some minimum number (e.g. five) of works to make the list of countries shorter, consequently simpler for readers to follow the list…

Personal suggestion: It might be a good idea to show a sort of global map indicating distribution of the largest (or most valuable) temperate wetlands – placing somewhere in the early part of the paper???  

Conclusion

I feel like last two paragraphs would be a part of the subsection 4.4. Instead of those two paragraphs, any stronger ideas coming from the review would be written. I mean some “smart” generalization and/or ideas for practical implementation of the findings.   

Author Response

See attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors, thanks for revision of your manuscript! It has been improved greatly in comparison to the previous version I reviewed before. Indeed, this manuscript is novel, informative, and appealing to the international research community. It provides with a fresh view and puts new issues to the research agenda. It is well-illustrated and well-referenced. Nonetheless, I see three issues for further consideration.

• Are you sure that the term "polje" is necessarily linked to lakes? In my opinion, this term from karst geomorphology is broader. Please, provide the related terminological explanations/justifications.
• The subsection 4.1 appears to be a part of Results, not Discussion.
• Can you summarize the achievements and the biases of the international research in the considered issue in any figure or table? This would be helpful.
• Additional comment: please, try to write about some sustainability issues and the UN SDGs (this is not mandatory, but may be helpful).

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have completely ignored my suggestions. They have not even corrected the grammatical errors (e.g., see comments of my initial review about "wetlnd", "ecosystems services", "of them most", etc.). The overall manuscript quality (clarity, literature review, language) has not improved. In fact, the structure of the manuscript appears more confusing than the previous version.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, 

we are sorry that a wrong version of the manuscript was uploaded previously. The grammatical errors have been corrected and Sections have been restructured so that the manuscript is clearer and more readable. 

In Particular, what was previously Section 4.1 (Discussion on the ES of wetlands) has been moved to 3.2 (in the Results Section) and what was Section 3.2.3 ("ES provided by intermittent karst wetlands) has been moved to Section 4.3 in the Discussion. 

Kind regards

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

Please, find the review and comments included into the PDF of your manuscript in the attached zip file.

Comments for author File: Comments.zip

Author Response

All comments on the two files have been implemented, but: 

1: Title: two options are given, feedback would be appreciated. 

Discussion:

Comments 3 to 7 still to be implemented because of lack of time (to be done asap). 

Reviewer 2 Report

The present review paper describes the ecosystem services of temperate wetlands. Evaluation of ecosystem services of wetlands is an important issue for promoting conservation of wetlands. And hence the establishment of common scale of evaluation of ecosystem services is required by collecting and analyzing literatures dealing ecosystem services of wetlands. The present paper aims to review two different topics, review on intermittent karst wetlands and review on method of quantifying ecosystem services in temperate wetlands. Although authors conclude the necessity of appropriate quantification of ecosystem services of intermittent karst wetlands, the relationship between these two topics are not clear.

              Authors review literatures on intermittent karst wetlands in lines 102-225. The description covers natural and social scientific point of view, and then the review is individually consistent. Authors review literatures on ecosystem services of temperate wetlands in lines 264-506. In this part, authors listed some previously published review papers on ecosystem services of wetlands (lines 336-356). Authors should show how authors' review differ from these previously published review papers. Authors' analysis on literatures shown in Figures 2-10 is difficult to understand how these results contribute to improve the method of evaluation of ecosystem services. Authors should describe the objectives of the authors' analysis in more detail.

              It is evident that the quantification of ecosystem services differs between methods included in respective literatures. Then, one possible objective of authors' investigation is to quantify and compare the ecosystem services of intermittent karst wetlands by using different method of evaluation. If such comparison is included in the present review paper, the two different topics in the present review paper has make sense. Anyway, the present review paper is difficult to understand, and then the manuscript will be evaluated after authors' thoroughly revision of the manuscript.

Author Response

I amended the structure of the paper, so that a general description of intermittent wetlands is in the first chapter. I showed the articles that I found about turloughs and poljes in the Results Section and added further comments in the discussion. I added an average value for the ES of turloughs that is the result of my thesis. I look forward to further comments. 

Reviewer 3 Report

This is nice contribution to the knowledge of ecosystem services of wetlands. It offers a concise bibliographical survey on the solid theoretical ground. Indeed, this work will be interesting to many researchers on international scale. I feel the manuscript was written in rush, and, thus, it needs various amendments. Nonetheless, it leaves positive impression, and, thus, it deserves publication in "Water".

• Please, provide full affiliations of the authors with precise street address.
• Abstract: it is not clear enough whether you write about wetlands in general or only those specific from Ireland.
• Key words: these should not repeat the words from the title.
• Subsections 2.1 and 6.1: you are right citing many works by R. Costanza, but you should know that he has updated his earlier views substantially in the second half of the 2010s. So, please, work with Scopus, find his newer works, and cite these works. This one is especially important: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212041617304060
• Subsection 2.2: can you give photos of these ecosystems?
• Section 4: why only Scopus? I do not question this choice, but ask for argumentation.
• Figure 9 indicates software, but not all are aware of these (and not all are aware of the related abbreviations). You need either explain all these tools in the text or summarize this information in a table.
• If you write about Irish examples in the title, the related subsections should exist in Results and Discussion.
• In Discussion, you have to offer a kind of conceptualization of ecosystem services of temperate maritime wetlands resulting from the literature and your own thoughts.
• ATTENTION! The writing is ok, but I strongly encourage to avoid shortcuts and to write more consistently.

Author Response

-I provided the address for the authors

-I propose two different title the can help with the confusion

-I didn't review the mentioned article Costanza (2017) for lac of time but will do it asap

-I inserted a photo of a turlough (Figure 1)

-I put a reference that confirms the validity of the Scopus database

-I explained the different software tools in Table1

-I added subsections about intermittent wetlands both in the Results and Discussion Sections

-I added more discussion about the ES of wetlands

Please let me know if you have further comments

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Please, find my review report + PDF of your paper with a few minor comments in the attached zip file.

Comments for author File: Comments.zip

Author Response

1) Title – the authors provided two version of the modified title and requested my opinion.

Personally, I would prefer the first option for the title. However, I would say that both titles

are rather long and at least the parentheses with „turloughs/poljes“ could be deleted. The

term „turloughs“ is involved as a key word, so may be the term „poljes“ could be also added

there?

Agreed. We have chosen the first title but modified it somewhat to make it shorter and more reflective of the objectives of the paper.

2) Introduction

– L 132 – L157 – please, add Latin names to all the species and/or genera, when they appear for the first time in the text (here only the first water bird species has the Latin name).

The Latin names have now been added for these birds, although this section has now been moved to the revised results section

 

3) Results – it seems that some parts of the text were moved into the figure captions. I do not

consider it as a good idea. When I recommended to put more information into the captions,

it was meant as the better description of the figure, not the comment of the result displayed!

Such a comment really belongs to the main text, not to the caption.

We are not clear about which figures are being referred to in the Results section as no text was added to the Figure captions in the review and all of the captions seem to be very short (which is a point being made by the same reviewer below and which we have addressed by making the figure captions more comprehensive)? However, we modified the former Figure 1 and Figure 12 somewhat to remove the more descriptive elements in the captions.

 

4) Discussion – below I copy again the not yet solved points from my last review (I just updated the line numbering). Still, I would like to encourage the authors that they for the next time ask the editors for a bit more time for preparation of the revised version of the manuscript, to be able to incorporate all the suggestions addressed. Finally, it would save a time of all  people – the authors, the reviewers and the editors, because it always takes a time to come back to the paper again.

 

- L614–615 – the authors give Bulgaria and the Czech Republic as an example of countries,

where the wetlands have high per hectar values because of low GDP. I checked the

original publication, cited by the authors, and I found in the figure 9.5., that not the Czech

Republic but Croatia fell into the same category as Bulgaria.

Yes, apologies for the mistake, it should read Bulgaria and Croatia – now corrected.

 

– L637–638 – please, give a period for which the increase of the number of papers for

wetland ES is valid

This period (1980 to 2020) has now been added.

 

- 668–669 – do the authors mean just the position in landscape, e.g. the urban wetland

may have more valuable ES than the wetlands in a free landscape? Or do they also mean

the position on the globe, i.e. in various countries where the valuation (particularly the

monetary one) may differ based on the different value systems?

This has now been clarified in the text – we are manly refereeing to the position in the landscape, but the position of the globe is also a relevant factor which is now metionned.

 

- L679–695 – it seems that in this text ES of all habitats, not only of wetlands are

considered, it should be explicitly given in the text.

Yes, the first sentence has been edited to make this point.

 

5) Figures – the information at some figures is still very brief. For instance, the Figure 3 – the reader may ask e.g. “What articles were used?” It is written in the methods but each figure must be self-explaining. That means if you delete the whole text, the reader must understand from the figure + the caption, what the figure displays, and be able to make some conclusion. So, you should add the information into the caption that the articles from journals in SCOPUS between 1980 and 2020 were searched, using the wetland-related key words (for their list you can refer do the methods).

The caption of Figure 3 (now Figure 2) has been augmented, as requested, as well as Figures 4 to 8 to make them all comprehensively titled.

 

Another example – figure 4. It might be questionable what the depressional wetland is. Isn’t it there overlap with the seasonal and temporary wetland, if it is situated in a shallow depression.

That is correct, therefore seasonal wetlands have now been added to the "Depressional" category.

 

Figure 5 – I suppose that there are also the countries with 1 or 2 papers but they are not displayed. It should be explicitly written at the figure.

The Figure has now been modified to include countries with 1 paper.   

 

Figure 9 – may be difficult to understand by the readers who are not specialists for ES. It would be useful to put at least some reference into the caption to the literature containing the presented classification.

A reference has now been added to the figure caption of what is now Figure 8.

 

Figure 10 – I highly appreciate the explanations in the table 1! However, I would move the table into the Appendix (on the end of the file with the main text), as it is rather long and breaks the text flow.

This Table has now been moved to an Appendix at the end of the paper, as suggested.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reviewer 2 Report

Authors have reconstructed the manuscript and added some descriptions to the original version of the manuscript. However, authors never answered properly to my comments to the original manuscript. Description on objectives and conclusion of the revised manuscript are still not clear. Authors' numerical analysis of published papers dealing wetlands ecosystem services is interesting. However, authors should add descriptions how authors' review advance the investigation on wetland ecosystem services. There are some published review papers dealing wetland ecosystem services, such as Okrusko et al. (2011) in line 603. What is the advantage of authors' review paper compared as the published review papers? Authors should describe the necessity of numerical analysis of published papers.

              Authors found that the literatures on ecosystem services of karst ephemeral lakes are quite rare. It is surely an important result of authors analysis of published papers on wetlands ecosystem services. However, authors' investigation on ecosystem services of Irish karst lakes should be published as original paper and should not be included in a review paper. These two different papers can be included in two different chapters in the Ph D thesis of the first author. However, these two chapters should be published as independent papers.

              Thus, I suggest authors to separate the article on ecosystem services of Irish karst lakes from review paper dealing wetland ecosystem services. Authors should add more exact description on both the review paper and article.

Author Response

Authors have reconstructed the manuscript and added some descriptions to the original version of the manuscript. However, authors never answered properly to my comments to the original manuscript. Description on objectives and conclusion of the revised manuscript are still not clear. Authors' numerical analysis of published papers dealing wetlands ecosystem services is interesting. However, authors should add descriptions how authors' review advance the investigation on wetland ecosystem services. There are some published review papers dealing wetland ecosystem services, such as Okrusko et al. (2011) in line 603. What is the advantage of authors' review paper compared as the published review papers? Authors should describe the necessity of numerical analysis of published papers.

The point of the review from our perspective was (i) to provide an updated review on how ES of temperate wetlands are being determined, given that it is a still relatively new concept that is developing and that, as the numerical analysis of published papers shows, there is an ever-growing number of studies on this and (ii) show how these methodologies might be applied to the less studied ephemeral karst wetlands.

The advantage of the paper in comparison to the previous Okrusko et al. (2011) review paper (for example) is that our paper presents an up-to-date assessment which considers all of the more recent studies carried out over the past 10 years since that paper was published (which is the majority of studies to date), and also looks to see how methods could be applied to ephemeral karst wetlands. In light of the reviewer’s valid comments, we have changed the title and abstract slightly, made a significant change to the Introduction (as well as more clearly stting the objectives of the paper) and restructured the results section on the intermittent karst wetlands.

              Authors found that the literatures on ecosystem services of karst ephemeral lakes are quite rare. It is surely an important result of authors analysis of published papers on wetlands ecosystem services. However, authors' investigation on ecosystem services of Irish karst lakes should be published as original paper and should not be included in a review paper. These two different papers can be included in two different chapters in the Ph D thesis of the first author. However, these two chapters should be published as independent papers.

Yes, we agree that the results of our work on the ES of karst lakes in Ireland should not be included in this paper but should be published as a separate paper and so have deleted the results of that study. We do, however, feel that presenting a list of potential ES for such intermittent lakes is a worthwhile addition to the paper (not least because this has been noted by the two other reviewers) and so have kept that section in. As mentioned previously, the structure of section of karst intermittent wetlands has been changed to help with the flow and objectives of the paper.

              Thus, I suggest authors to separate the article on ecosystem services of Irish karst lakes from review paper dealing wetland ecosystem services. Authors should add more exact description on both the review paper and article.

As described previously, a more exact description of the objectives of the paper has now been stated and we have made a change to how the description and analysis of the karst intermittent wetlands are presented in the paper. Again, we do think that there is value in including the section about ephemeral karst lakes (as do the other reviewers)but have modified its prominence in the paper by some restructuring.

Minor edits on marked up copy of paper

These have all been addressed.

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors, I'm generally satisfied with the extensive revisions (although it's pity that you preferred not to cite the fresh works by R. Costanza), and I think it is acceptable now.

Author Response

Dear Authors, I'm generally satisfied with the extensive revisions (although it's pity that you preferred not to cite the fresh works by R. Costanza), and I think it is acceptable now.

Thankyou for your positive review and we have also included the reference to the more recent works by R. Costanza, as requested