Multi-Decadal Assessment of Soil Loss in a Mediterranean Region Characterized by Contrasting Local Climates

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

General comments on the manuscript

Thank you for providing the opportunity to review this contribution, which in general is well written and documented, with the exception of some omissions (see below).

The (R)USLE (Wishmeier & Smith 1978, Renard et al. 1997) is a well-known, intensively reflected model to assess soil loss from agricultural fields due to sheet and rill / inter-rill and rill erosion. The purpose of the model was to advice farmers how to best reduce soil loss by selecting appropriate cover management and apply support practices. The standard reference for any management option (C-factor) are “clean-tilled continuous-fallow conditions” (Yoder et al. 1997, 146). Please, be aware that bare soil usually does not reflect these conditions!

The model has been often as well applied to catchments or other regional entities to identify potential hotspots of soil loss on agricultural (crop) land rangeland and disturbed areas. However, in order to provided reliable soil loss estimates, the model needs to be applied exactly, as instructed / defined. Any deviation in calculating the factors will inevitably lead to differing results. Therefore, any deviation from the RUSLE standards need to be made clear to the readers already in the methods chapter. No reader wants to read a paper and find out at the end, that the standard protocol was not observed.

The biggest problem which exists with this work is the fact that some crucial factors (i.e. the C-factors is derived from one observation in ten years only (one Landsat acquisition in May every 10 years), instead of using the standard protocol, which accounts for seasonal variation in R, K, C and P-factors. Based on this, it remains completely unclear, how reliable the presented soil loss values are. They might easily deviate by an order of magnitude from ‘true’ values. The reviewer is fully aware, that similar papers with similar limitations have been published elsewhere and previously as well. Nonetheless, the reader needs to be made clearly aware of these limitations.

Concerning the alleged plagiarism, we found only one incidence in line 288, see inline comment. Nonetheless, based on this incidence, it is advisable to apply a professional software to check the ms.

Although added as well as inline comment, one needs to point out, that the way the authors did not provide proper references to the data sets they used, is dissatisfying and needs profound revision. In addition, references to Web-pages are not in agreement with international standards (see APA 2020).

Considering that every measurement has an uncertainty, one actually would like to see an assessment of uncertainty for the values presented (like e.g. the standard error of the mean at the 95% confidence level).

The reference list seems to need some attention, number of references should be limited to the once really needed. And one should reflect on the quality of some of the references.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

We would like to thank the Reviewer for their insightful comments and suggestions. His help is highly appreciated and we believe it has significantly contributed to the improvement of our manuscript, giving  us the opportunity to better clarify aims, approach, and results of our work.

We report reviewer’ comments in the attached file, followed by our reply with an indication of the resulting modifications in the text. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Review comments on land-1731460-peer-review-v1(1)

 Multi-decadal assessment of soil loss in a Mediterranean region 2 characterized by contrasting local climates

Dear Editor,

This study has merit but I’m afraid the paper still requires thoroughly editing to reach the level of international publications and before publication is granted. The main issue is convincing of the novelty of the research and discussing it in respect of the existing research on the subject. This is missing in the present manuscript. Both the abstract and the introduction sections should convince on the novelty of the work and this can only be done by (1) acknowledging the existing literature on the subject; what has be done so far on the subject by referring to existing research studies with quantitative information, and reporting ones; referring to methods and ideas associated with other researchers; (2) discussing the existing finding and identifying research gap(s); critically discuss these existing works to summarize research advances and  gaps in knowledge of the subject (3) clearly state the research objectives, which should be in accordance with the identified gaps. Finally, the discussion section should compare the obtained results with the existing literature (the ones cited in the introduction section but not only). How do the obtained results compare to these obtained in similar regions or elsewhere at othr similar climates (see existing review papers)? on other objects? What are the possible explanations of the trends? What do we learn from the results?

Another important issue lies into the need to validate to a certain extent the obtained results by using here or there some published or other available data.

Tips for scientific writing

There are many different ways of writing an abstract and an Introduction. This depends on the academic subject involved, the journal itself and the specific topic of the article. It is important for the purpose of the research that authors can identify the patterns used in abstracts of comparable articles published in the same area, and for journals that authors might write for.

Abstract

1. Topic sentence (s) on the subject (its importance) and research question(s): what is(are) the research gaps in this field of research?
2. Objectives of the study
3. Materials and methods used in the study
4. Main results (with quantitative information, tests of significance)
5. Conclusions: how these results respond to the objectives; general implications of the research

 Soil erosion is one of the most widespread soil degradation phenomena worldwide. The Mediter-9 ranean landscapes, due to some peculiar characteristics, such as the fragility of soils, the steep 10 slopes and the rainfall distribution during the year, are particularly subject to this phenomenon, 11 with severe and complex issues for agricultural production and biodiversity protection. T

• The research gaps and objectives are missing here

his paper 12 presents a diachronic analysis of soil loss in a region of southern Italy (Basilicata) characterized by 13 different local climates and ecosystems (temperate – Csa, Csb; arid steppic – Bsk; and cold – Dsb, 14 Dsc), suitable to represent the biogeographical complexity of the Mediterranean Italy. The 15 well-known Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation is applied for a multi-decadal assessment of the 16 annual soil loss and its change along the period 1994-2021 (estimates in 1994, 2004, 2014, 2021). 17 Among the factors taken into account by the RUSLE method, changes in rainfall regime and vege-18 tation cover, both deduced from remote sensing-based time series and datasets (CHIRPS and 19 Landsat), have produced the most marked changes. For the analysed region, soil loss has shown a 20 slight reduction (albeit always remarkable) over the whole period, with a maximum in 2004, and 21 distinct spatial patterns between lowland Bsk and montane Dsb, Dsc climate areas. The spa-22 tial-temporal patterns, instead, have enhanced the relevance of using the factor C derived from 23 satellite data rather than the land cover maps, as remote observations are able to highlight the 24 heterogeneity in vegetation density within the same type of class, particularly relevant for agri-25 cultural areas.

• It is important to support the results with data

For montane areas, the adoption of a satellite-gridded rainfall dataset has allowed 26 the evaluation of erosion rate oscillations, mostly due to rainfall variability, also in case of sparse or 27 absent ground pluviometric stations. The CHIRPS and Landsat time series represent a precious 28 added value for the soil loss assessment and monitoring at regional level in areas with complex 29 biogeography.

Author Response

We would like to thank the Reviewer for his insightful comments and suggestions. His help is highly appreciated and we believe it has significantly contributed to the improvement of our manuscript, giving us the opportunity to better clarify aims, approach, and results of our work.

We report reviewer’ comments in the attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors,

Congratulation to your interesting paper. It is well prepared, anyway, I miss there a discussion, and in "Conclusions" you substituted the role of abstract. Therefore, you should probably add a chapter "Discussion and conclusions" where the discussion will be provided and followed by a short and comprehensive concluding remarks.

Author Response

We would like to thank the Reviewer for his insightful comments and suggestions. His help is highly appreciated and we believe it has significantly contributed to the improvement of our manuscript, giving us the opportunity to better clarify aims, approach, and results of our work.

We report reviewer’ comments in the attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf