Geo-Based Assessment of Vegetation Health Related to Agroecological Practices in the Southeast of Togo

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The author assessed vegetation health related to agroecological practices in the Southeast of Togo by using spatial data.  It is really novel and high-performance. 

Some comments are given as follows:

1. For the title: Geo-Based ***

2. Please give the full form of  SR

3. How to determine the buffing range? 

4. Optical satellite-based NBR is easily affected by vegetation structure, and it could be corrected in your future research.

 

 

 

Author Response

Reviewer 1

1. For the title: Geo-Based ***

Title was improved

2. Please give the full form of SR

The SR (simple ratio vegetation index) is calculated by the NDVI; it represents the richness of vegetation, but almost affected by the region and seasonality (Jiang et al. 2008).

 

 

3. How to determine the buffing range? 

Buffing is set up with the prospective to know how far local people should move to look for mulch material or promote it use locally.

4. Optical satellite-based NBR is easily affected by vegetation structure, and it could be corrected in your future research.

Thanks for this valuable information, we will do the exercise with next research Topics

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper “GIS/Remote-Sensing-Based Assessment of Vegetation Health Related to Agroecological Practices in the Southeast of Togo” present a very good study about the vegetation health of the study area using vegetation indices. Overall, this paper has some potential but it lacks some very basic data that should be present in the study to make it more impactful. Without clearing the major comments given below I don’t think this paper should be published.

 

Figure 1 caption should include the name of the study area. Also, what it shows it should be in the caption as well.

Page 5 they mentioned SR which came in the text without any explanation before and they did not even mention the abbreviation as well. A description of SR should be mentioned before putting it in the formula.

Figure 5 – In the Pie chart 2017 writeup is going outside the pie chart. It’s a small error but these errors should not be present in the journal paper.

Overall Comments

ESA provide surface reflected imagery why the authors have not utilized those images and save time for atmospheric correction. They have not elaborated on why their atmospheric correction method is necessary for this study.

Preprocessing steps explanation of this paper needs proper explanation as well. They mentioned all the bands but, in the study, they only utilized selected bands for the indices calculation so they should only mention those bands which were used in the study.

They utilized December images for all the years. They should present a table of the selected dates in December which were used in this study. Also, how they tackle the cloud in the images. If they have processed the monthly mean then it should be mentioned in the paper with the detail regarding the removal of the cloud in the images.

Which bands were used in NDVI and SR calculation?

This study is about vegetation health and the assessment of stress. There should be a land use and land cover map for a better understanding of the whole region. There is a gap in this research which makes it unclear what kind of agricultural data we are talking about. Is it just an agricultural region or is there any other type of vegetation cover that exists? If we are talking about vegetation stress then we should know what kind of vegetation we are dealing with. A classified map which shows types of agricultural land, grasses bushes or any other tree cover type.

Another important aspect is the urban area because they mention using the population data as well. Where is the population exist in the whole region? This can be shown in the land cover map in the urban area class.

Also, how much population exist in the region there is no mention of that. Is the stress caused by anthropogenic sources or by natural causes?

The authors also claimed they have utilized the climatic data in the analysis. It is better to analyze the rainfall and temperature trend from 2015 to 2022 as well.

 

In the paper, they used fire indices to assess the health of vegetation. They should also mention from the reports or papers or any news event if there is any fire event in the region during the study time period. 

English of this paper is really good

Author Response

Authors thank a lot the reviewer for making time to revise deeply the MS. Necessary will be done to improve the quality of the MS.

Figure 1 caption should include the name of the study area. Also, what it shows it should be in the caption as well.

The name of the study area is indicated in the legend by “Research buffer zone” and FeMoDo Agroecology Farm

Page 5 they mentioned SR which came in the text without any explanation before and they did not even mention the abbreviation as well. A description of SR should be mentioned before putting it in the formula.

It is corrected in MS

The SR (simple ratio vegetation index) is calculated by the NDVI; it represents the richness of vegetation, but almost affected by the region and seasonality (Jiang et al. 2008).

 

 

Figure 5 – In the Pie chart 2017 writeup is going outside the pie chart. It’s a small error but these errors should not be present in the journal paper.

The error is corrected

Overall Comments

ESA provide surface reflected imagery why the authors have not utilized those images and save time for atmospheric correction. They have not elaborated on why their atmospheric correction method is necessary for this study.

Author have used optical data instead of surface reflected imagery, because of the need to employed moderate resolution image to address fire issue with the same algorithm common use with Landsat data. The atmospheric correction method was necessary to reduce the scattering effects in the satellite scenes.

Preprocessing steps explanation of this paper needs proper explanation as well. They mentioned all the bands but, in the study, they only utilized selected bands for the indices calculation so they should only mention those bands which were used in the study.

Thank Reviewer for this valuable comment, but authors kindly like to keep the full description of raw image bands. For them it is a way to disseminate knowledge in francophone west Africa especially in Togo.

They utilized December images for all the years. They should present a table of the selected dates in December which were used in this study. Also, how they tackle the cloud in the images. If they have processed the monthly mean then it should be mentioned in the paper with the detail regarding the removal of the cloud in the images.

Sorry, it is images of December’s 2015, 2017, 2020, and 2022.

Which bands were used in NDVI and SR calculation?

The NDVI was computed by using Band 8—NIR and Band 4—Red

 

This study is about vegetation health and the assessment of stress. There should be a land use and land cover map for a better understanding of the whole region. There is a gap in this research which makes it unclear what kind of agricultural data we are talking about. Is it just an agricultural region or is there any other type of vegetation cover that exists? If we are talking about vegetation stress then we should know what kind of vegetation we are dealing with. A classified map which shows types of agricultural land, grasses bushes or any other tree cover type.

Authors have added the layer of land cover in Figure 1 and add explanations.

Another important aspect is the urban area because they mention using the population data as well. Where is the population exist in the whole region? This can be shown in the land cover map in the urban area class.

 

Based on locality and villages distribution on the figure 1, Authors think readers can easily understand where in the landscape anthropogenic activities may affect more vegetation component. Base on population census 2022, the study area is occupied by  35 296 habitants.

Also, how much population exist in the region there is no mention of that. Is the stress caused by anthropogenic sources or by natural causes?

The stress is also induced by human activities such as cropping, vegetation fire, ….

The authors also claimed they have utilized the climatic data in the analysis. It is better to analyze the rainfall and temperature trend from 2015 to 2022 as well. In the paper, they used fire indices to assess the health of vegetation. They should also mention from the reports or papers or any news event if there is any fire event in the region during the study time period. 

The data about climate, population and other events produced in the landscape were qualitatively used to discuss the results. Another paper is ongoing with these aspects and have to employed InVEST modelling.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

 

The article ‘GIS/Remote-Sensing-Based Assessment of Vegetation Health Related to Agroecological Practices in the Southeast of Togo’ is an interesting paper; however, some improvement needs. Please see the below comments.

 

1. In the abstract, avoiding the ‘we’ word is better. Although the first line mentioned stakeholders’ contributions, there is nothing in the methods about stakeholders. In my opinion, authors should rewrite the first sentence.

 

2.     In the introduction section authors should mention the hypothesis.  The hypothesis of this article should be clearly described in the introduction section.

 

Author Response

comments.

In the abstract, avoiding the ‘we’ word is better.

It is improved

 

In the introduction section authors should mention the hypothesis.  The hypothesis of this article should be clearly described in the introduction section.

Although the first line mentioned stakeholders’ contributions, there is nothing in the methods about stakeholders. In my opinion, authors should rewrite the first sentence.

The word “stakeholders” was removed

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

In the section "Study area and scope" authors should stress for clarification the rationale for choosing the Donomadé village. Why did the authors have chosen that village, and how that choice will be used to discuss the output need to be exposed?

In some of the formulas on page 6, e.g. in the W formulae, there is nowhere EET estimation was explained.

in the formulae of  ?, I couldn't see where ?° was defined.

It is not clear if the authors have done some ground truth assessment mainly the reflectance of burnt areas and other land use patterns!

Fig 18 on page 10 showed a relation between important regrowth after stress and the scope of vegetation stress. How could the authors explain that fact?

On page 11 you wrote: "Available biomass or NPP was 115.62 kgC/ha and after some words, Total available biomass estimated was 3,741,715 kgC/ha/y, and also, annual average biomass was 3401.55 kgC/ha/y". Could you make it more clear what you mean by these different biomass data, and explain in the methods the manner you proceeded to get such results?

In the Discussion, the two first paragraphs deal more with general information, not a formal discussion of your data per se.

On page 13 I could read "The increases and decreases of NPP may be influenced by the expansion of settlements and population growth". Could you clarify that statement?

Author Response

In the section "Study area and scope" authors should stress for clarification the rationale for choosing the Donomadé village. Why did the authors have chosen that village, and how that choice will be used to discuss the output need to be exposed?

The choice of the study area was motivate in introduction “The Model Farm of Donomadé (FeMoDo) initiative was established in 2015 near the National Park of South Togodo to mitigate the long-lasting effect of vulnerability in the Donomadé ecovillage [20]. The main objective of FeMoDo is to promote agroecological best practices among rural communities to add value to food crops.”

In some of the formulas on page 6, e.g. in the W formulae, there is nowhere EET estimation was explained.

The PET and EET employed in the study were those estimated by Adamou in the framework of climate classification followed vegetation, rainfall and temperature research. Thus, PET is possible evapotranspiration, which is calculated by Thornthwaite formula; while the estimated evapotranspiration EET is estimated by soil water molecule model.

in the formulae of ?, I couldn't see where ?° was defined.

ε° = globally uniform maximum equal to 2.5 g/MJ

Fig 8 on page 10 showed a relation between important regrowth after stress and the scope of vegetation stress. How could the authors explain that fact?

On page 11 you wrote: "Available biomass or NPP was 115.62 kgC/ha and after some words

(NPP) ranged from 4.15 to 115.62 kgC/ha in 2022, explain how the NPP is spatially distributed on NPP map.

Total available biomass estimated was 3,741,715 kgC/ha/y,

3,741,715 kgC/ha/y represent the sum of NPP of the whole area

annual average biomass was 3401.55 kgC/ha/y".

3401.55 kgC/ha/y represent the average obtained after descriptive statistics.

In the Discussion, the two first paragraphs deal more with general information, not a formal discussion of your data per se.

On page 13 I could read "The increases and decreases of NPP may be influenced by the expansion of settlements and population growth". Could you clarify that statement?

Certainly, because the population was grown from 30 843 habitants (2015) to 35 296 habitants (2022). These population is rural/farmer at 90 % and almost use agriculture on slash burned for cropping, vegetation fire for field preparation and hunting purpose. Since 2018 agroecology practices was highly promoted by in the area. Mulching associated to agroforestry in common use by local community.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper “Geo-Based Assessment of Vegetation Health Related to Agroecological Practices in the Southeast of Togo” presents a very good study of the vegetation health of the area using vegetation indices. In the second attempt, the authors have presented their findings in an appropriate manner and they have explained the gaps in their research as well. After some minor grammar corrections, I think this paper can be published. One minor correction. Authors should write full abbreviations whenever any abbreviation comes like SDG2 which is (Sustainable Development Goals) in the first line of the abstract. 

minor grammatical errors can be corrected in the final review. 

Author Response

The revision is done ''Sustainable Development Goals''