Conceptualizing Aeolian Sediment Transport in a Cellular Automata Model to Simulate the Bio-Geomorphological Evolution of Beach–Dune Systems

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The references used to show what has already been studied on the subject show a rate of old recent material (only 24% of the last 5 years), with a lot of material researched in the last two decades (74% between 2003-2019) and more than 24 % of articles searched with more than two decades. It is recommended that every manuscript have at least 25% to 30% of recent material (2019-2023) and with as little material as possible very old, something like 5% to 10% of material older than 2003 only. a detailed search should be carried out in the world databases of scientific literature for articles related to the work presented and thus have a more up-to-date and robust literature review, which proves that what was presented as a manuscript is inept, one of the precepts for a manuscript is accepted for publication in the Journal of Marine Science and Engineering - Section Coastal Engineering.

 

Doing a quick search on ScienceDirect for the term "aeolian transport" found over 4,492 articles from 2019-2023. If we raise the search to "aeolian transport + dune vegetation" we will find more than 1,073 published articles. Searching even further for the term "aeolian transport + dune vegetation + DuBeVeg" we found 6 articles from the last 5 years, only 01 of which is cited in the manuscript, "The Effects of Beach Width Variability on Coastal Dune Development at Decadal Scales", this being a self-citation by one of the authors of the manuscript, which demonstrates that there is a latent need to increase the researched material to improve the bibliographic review of the submitted manuscript. Considering that the term DuBeVeg is an acronym of the term Dune-Beach-Vegetation and doing the same search in Science Direct, we found over 441 articles published in the last 5 years.

 

All the figures presented in the manuscript are in poor quality, requiring that they be added in better quality, mainly for the Boxplot graphs, where some points are so blurred that it is not known whether they are graph points or blurring of the figure added in the manuscript.

 

Even with the need for a better literature review, the subject addressed in this manuscript is well written, with demonstration of the models used with statistical validation, which demonstrates a concern for the manuscript to be published in the Journal of Marine Science and Engineering - Section Coastal Engineering , however its being mandatory the improvement of the material presented.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

 

The reviewed manuscript concerns the proposal of simulation of the development of the coastal zone, the low coast modelled by transport and aeolian sedimentation in interaction with dynamic processes occurring in the shelf zone (underwater beach). The purpose of the manuscript is clearly stated. The methodology is well explained. Results relatively well presented (see minor notes) and well discussed. In the discussion, the authors criticized the results of simulation studies, referring to the actual phenomena occurring in nature, referring to the relevant items in the literature. The conclusions are short but well-founded. Congratulations on a very good manuscript.

 

Minor notes:

Line 31 disagree with this statement: “sandy coastal areas are frequently associated with 30 high population densities [6] and intensive economic activity [7}. Line 31 disagree with this statement: “sandy coastal areas are frequently associated with 30 high population densities [6] and intensive economic activity [7}. Referring to two positions of literature does not prove the universality of the global phenomenon. Coastal dune areas are often under natural or landscape protection and therefore are neither densely populated nor intensively developed.

 

Line 399 fig. 3. I suggest adding transverse profiles of the dunes to the figure. The authors' description of the distribution of the dunes cannot be verified in this figure.

Line 429 Figure 4 Please add to the figure description what the colours blue, red and black mean.

Line 700 fig. 11 The proposal is the same as in the note to fig. 3.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf