The Influence of Ecological Engineering on Waterbird Diversity in Different Habitats within the Xianghai Nature Reserve
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This is a paper with an important and interesting objective: verifying if restoration measures improved the habitat quality for waterbirds. However, the presentation needs a thorough revision before it is possible to evaluate the value of the manuscript. I fail to see the value in most tables and figures as they do not really address the objectives of the paper (to assess the restoration). You need to clearly put the results in the context of the restoration measures, not just present all your results. In the title, you put the emphasis on diversity, but the results do not seem to show differences before and after restoration, you need to put the focus on those results that actually show if the restoration was a success or not. I also recommend to avoid the passive voice in scientific writing, the active voice will also greatly improve the readability. If you did something, always write “we”.
Some detailed comments:
Lines 16-17. “Ecological engineering construction” sounds awkward (and later you use other equally awkward terms such as “project construction”), I would use the term “restoration measures” throughout the manuscript.
Line 60. Provide the area in km², is it 405 km²? (hm² is no SI unit). Same for line 74.
Line 66. “obvious seasonal distribution of rainfall” is awkward, better just write “most rainfall occurs in summer”.
Line 68. “Evaporation…” the whole sentence is superfluous as you give the values in the sentence before.
Line 76. Do you mean no water diversion was the original level?
Line 88. “shallow/deep water swimming birds” is grammatically incorrect, you probably mean birds that mainly frequent shallow/deep water.
Line 107-139. The whole chapter can be reduced to one sentence, the proportion of individuals is a simple analysis and Shannon-Wiener and G-F (if useful at all) can just be cited.
Table 1. unnecessary information without any practical value.
Table 2. Instead of the most common species the table should provide raw data (e.g. number of individuals observed) for all species (can also go to a supplement). The table itself does not respond to the objectives.
Fig2. I fail to see the value in the figure. There does not seem to be any trend, so how do you link this with the objectives?
Fig 3. What is the value of this figure, how does it reply to the research questions?
Fig 4. This is the first figure that addresses the research objectives, but for all analyses you need to clearly mark the timing of restoration, so that the reader does not need to check every time with the methods. Also, it is not clear what first, second class and new animals are. Why do you not use e.g. red-list status?
Fig 6. To me, all this does not look like clear trends.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments
- - 26: “it is suggested to….” Could be replaced with “we suggest to….”
- 56: where are the aims / goals of the study? These should be specified at introduction - 63-64: please, cite a study / publication regarding these two species within the area - 66-69: please, cite a study / publication regarding clime (precipitation, evaporation…) within the area if these data were not measured by you in this study - 70-76: The entire paragraph should be reworded. Let it be much clearer and start with the problem that existed for the ecosystem, then with what has been done and what was changed after the application of the project - 82-83: what did you mean by: “historical stopover sites of waterbirds in the study area” ? Please, cite a study about this subject. - 147-150: what did you mean by: dominant, common and occasional species ? Is there a definition or a quantification of these categories ? If yes, please cite a study about this subject. - 154, 157-158: as I pointed out before, please quantify the categories dominant and common. - 154: I think that table 2 is not relevant or can possibly be used if the situation of species from different threat or conservation categories is compared before and after ecological engineering. - 160-169: what is the connection between the number of species and individuals and the ecological engineering project? It should be statistically demonstrated, otherwise we cannot consider the consequences of the project (e.g. water level increase, wetland surface area increase) as variables with significant influence for increasing of species number for example. Could there not be other variables independent of the study area that have a significant influence on the number of species and individuals in different periods of time, seasons, years…? - 170-171: Fig. 2 is too small and probably is a mistake – x 103 should be on the figure about individuals not species ! - 173-190: how the influence of ecological engineering is demonstrated regarding the habitat types ? A statistical demonstration of the types of habitats before and after the project would have been necessary, which could result in a significant increase in the areas of different habitats or an improvement in their quality (e.g. a certain depth of water) - 197: please cite a publication on National List of Key Protected Wildlife - 208: statistical analysis should be applied to demonstrate if the changes of species number and populations between years are significant. - 264-275: I have the same comment as in previous paragraphs (there is no statistical analyze). For all aspects that require the use of statistics - 286-288: it was necessary to statistically highlight the differences regarding the number of species and populations before and after the application of ecological engineering, especially on these flooded areas (vantage points within these areas where the habitats have changed). - 300-305: it should be moved to the study area section where you described the effect of ecological engineering - 306-308; 358-359: a correlation between the water level and the number of species and the size of the populations would have been necessary (including statistical analysis) to demonstrate the effects of the fluctuation of the water level (results section) - 320-328: idem 306-308 regarding correlation between number of species / population size and water level / food resources and their accessibility - 345-348: idem 320-328 regarding water level / food resources and their accessibility - 356-359: these data should be used and correlated with the indices, number of species and population size - 411-418: the correlation between biodiversity indices / populations and the volume of water or water level in different periods before and after the intervention had to be demonstrated statistically (results section) - 427-429: birds’ distribution within the study area was not an aim of this study - 431-432: this was not demonstrated
Suggestions
1. I suggest applying regressions or correlations depending on the case to demonstrate the fluctuations in the number of species and populations (especially their increase after the application of ecological engineering) and the link with the habitat types (expansion of the marsh area), water level, maybe wetlands connectivity (correlation analyze). You could try these analyses also for applied indices. I think you have enough literature and data to make such analyses.Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The revision has improved the manuscript a little, but in my opinion the presentation is still not sufficiently well developed. You need to present the results in a clearer, more standardised way. Most figures could for example use years as x axe, like that you can pool them in a single figure that makes the results easy to grasp. In general, the figure legends are poorly labelled, you need to provide all information necessary to understand the figure here, not in the methods. I also recommend reducing the passive voice, best use it not at all.
Some detailed comments to the figures:
Fig.2. You need to improve the readability of the charts. E.g. in one chart you put the years as x axe whereas in another they are in the y axe. This makes the data difficult to compare, use the same x axes and put the data either in the same chart or place the charts vertically with year as x axe. The x axe for water body area also misses several years, even if you do not have data, you need to present all years, so that the reader can compare water surface vs waterbird abundance/species richness. As you use water diversion (is this the amount used by people?) against water body area, you should also present the amount of water diversion against years here. Later, you speak about area of marsh, but these data would be useful as well to present here, not only in Fig 4. Besides, why are only 3 years presented?
Fig 5 and Fig 6. I do not see the value in presenting 2 figures. As you write for an international journal, the presentation of the IUCN categories is more useful than national categories. If you insist using also the national categories, you need to explain them in the legend. The presentation in fig 5 is better than in fig 6, I propose to use the IUCN categories, but you present data as in fig5 (with regressions).
Fig 7. I think that fig 3 presents this aspect sufficiently, I see no additional info here. If you want to present also rare species, you could add them as proportions in fig 3.
Fig 8. The legend is insufficient to understand the figure, the trends are not convincing, I recommend reducing the charts to the most informative chart. What are the differences in charts b-d? The y axe labels are identical.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
No comments on the revised form
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Round 3
Reviewer 1 Report
The revision has improved the manuscript, but the presentation is still not ideal. E.g. in Fig. 2, the years would be much better in the x axes, especially as you use this later in other figures. You would also greatly improve the readability if you grouped the charts that have the same x axes in one (or two if too many charts) figure, e.g. the left charts of fig.2 could then be pooled vertically with fig 3-6, so that you can easily see factors and results together. In Fig. 7 it would be better to arrange the charts vertically as you use the same x axes. The figure labels are still insufficient, e.g. in fig 6 you present a “diversity index” in the legend, which? As you probably mean both indices it would be “indices” but you need to fill in all missing information and explain, e.g. what means “study area”, I assume this is all data (reservoir and marsh) together. You also need to mention here in the legend the study area (your reserve), each figure must stand alone without referring to the methods. Fig. 5 needs also a legend, “IUCN bird population” does not mean anything, I guess you mean here “bird numbers in relation to their IUCN red list status”. You also need to write in the legend the categories in full as you cannot expect that all readers know the abbreviations. I also think that a complete list of species (here you can also include their status) with the number of individuals recorded (best grouped by year) should be included as a supplement, otherwise you loose much of the information value. Finally, the manuscript needs a deep proofread, there are many grammatical errors throughout the manuscript, often poor word choice (e.g. “obvious seasonal migration” line 36 should be “clear…”, “global changes” line 44, you probably mean climate change) and the language could still be much improved (e.g. by removing the excessive amount of passive voice often combined with wrong grammar, e.g. throughout the abstract). You will probably need the help of a native speaker to bring the text into a publishable form.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 4
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript has further improved. The result presentation and the writing is still not ideal, but this is finally the authors decision. I recommend another proofread. Line 59: Are you sure your reserve is 105000 km² large? From the map it looks more like 1050 km².
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
