A Geospatial Modelling Approach to Assess the Capability of High-Country Stations in Delivering Ecosystem Services

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper applies the Land Utilization & Capability Indicator (LUCI) to assess the capability of a landscape in New Zealand. Various data including topological, land cover, soil, climate and others are used as the input. With the LUCI, the study area is clustering into different levels in aspects including agricultural productivity, flood risk, carbon sequestration, erosion/sediment delivery, nitrogen and phosphorus load. Then the trade-off tool in LUCI is used to identify areas that need interventions or not. 

 

The biggest concern to me is the academic contribution and novelty of this work. I would suggest the author to do a better job explaining this. What are the previous related work and what research gap this paper tries to fill in?  Method-wise, to me, it is mainly utilizing the LUCI tool with different types of data as the input. Finding-wise, what is the outstanding findings that previous related work did not spot?  

 

Also, structure and writing wise, I would suggest the authors to separate Introduction section into Introduction (that explains clearly the context and the academic significance of this work) and Related work section (that reviews the related work and points out the research gap).

 

Figure 4a caption seems not matching the description. 

Author Response

The authors appreciate and value the comments and suggestions of the reviewer, acknowledging that they add clarity to the presented work and enrich the message conveyed in it.

 

The goal of our work is to reinforce the need for context-adjust and holistic management to enhance the health of grasslands. We used high-country stations as a model due to their complexity and the fact that management usually taken in those landscapes is based on reductionist and generalist approaches. While studies mapping ecosystem services in high-country stations are scarce, studies conducted on a large scale can be a starting point for a paradigm change. We rewrote the introduction, research objective, and conclusion to make our intention clearer.  We also have separated the introduction section as suggested.

We submitted a new version of the manuscript with the comments addressed.

 

Reviewer 2 Report

A novel work with really practical information. Please see for the sticky boxes embedded in the manuscript itself for my comments.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

The authors appreciate and value the comments and suggestions of the reviewer, acknowledging that they add clarity to the presented work and enrich the message conveyed in it. Please see response to comments below:

Comment 1: We appreciate your comments and suggestions. We have changed the introduction accordingly.

Comment 2: Thank you for your suggestion. We used tonnes per hectare as it is the unit used in the model. We changed it now to megagrams as suggested.

Comment 3: Thank you for your comment. The model used in this work does not calculate potassium load.

Comment 4: Thank you for your comment.

Reviewer 3 Report

This study utilized the LUCI model to measure and evaluate several ecosystem services and examine the trade-offs between these services using a case farm in New Zealand. The research topic is interesting, and the study's findings, particularly those related to the spatially-explicit information on ecosystem services, provide some useful implications for the advancement of sustainable land use planning and management strategies specifically tailored to the farm level. However, there are certain issues that the authors should address in order to enhance the quality of the current manuscript.

Major limitation of the study is the authors' reliance on national/regional scale data to quantify ecosystem services (ES) for the case study farm. It is crucial to acknowledge that coarse scale/resolution data at the national or regional level cannot accurately represent the spatial patterns of land use/land cover (LULC), soils, and land resources at the farm scale. This issue becomes particularly important when dealing with a complex landscape such as a high country farm. National/regional scale data fails to capture the nuanced variations that exist at the farm scale. Furthermore, modeling ES at the farm scale necessitates the inclusion of farm-specific information related to animal and nutrient management practices to appropriately quantify nutrient load and loss. By relying on national/catchment scales data, ES maps obtained from the model are often inaccurate or too coarse. This means the obtained information is insufficient for spatial-based planning and management at the farm level. This inadequacy is evident in certain ES maps where a similar pattern of ES provision is observed over a large area, despite the landscape's complexity. It is understood that acquiring comprehensive farm-scale data is both time-consuming and expensive, making it infeasible for the authors to address this concern entirely. However, it is recommended that, at the very least, the LULC data be updated. Given that the research presents the geospatial modelling approach for ES assessment, current method authors used to derive the LULC (i.e., distributed proportion of LULC class) is inappropriate. The LULC data for a farm can be derived from freely accessed remote sensing data (e.g., Sentinel 2) or aerial photo. Also, the absence of other farm-scale data, such as soil information, should also be acknowledged and discussed as a limitation of the study.

The trade-off analysis, which explores the interrelationships between ecosystem services (ES), presents an important contribution of this study. However, the authors have only provided a concise description of the results. Considering that the approach applied in this study is not new and the data is readily available from national databases, the trade-off analysis contributes significantly to the study's results. Therefore, it is crucial to provide additional details regarding the interactions between ES. For instance, it is important to identify the ES bundles observed in the case study farm and explore the level of interactions in terms of degree or intensity. Such information is essential for the development of specific land management strategies tailored to the farm's requirements. Offering a more comprehensive understanding of these interactions will greatly enhance the study's value.

The discussion section of the manuscript offers several implications and suggestions for land use and management practices. However, these recommendations are somewhat general in nature. Many of them could potentially be derived from existing literature without the need to run the model for the case study. To enhance the discussion's relevance and impact, it is recommended that the authors specifically connect their findings from the case study to the provided implications. By doing so, they can highlight the key advantage of utilizing spatial information on ecosystem services (ES), which lies in its ability to answer the crucial question of "where." By demonstrating this advantage in relation to the case study, the authors can effectively link their findings to a broader context and relevant literature, further strengthening the discussion section.

Author Response

The authors appreciate and value the comments and suggestions of the reviewer, acknowledging that they add clarity to the presented work and enrich the message conveyed in it. 

Please see response to comments in the attached document. We resubmitted a new version of the manuscript with the addressed suggestions.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thanks for addressing the review comments. 

Author Response

Thank you