Review Reports - Natura 2000 Areas and Sites of National Interest (SNI): Measuring (un)Integration between Naturalness Preservation and Environmental Remediation Policies

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper is interesting and fits well Sustainability issues.

Please check eventually (self) plagiarism.

Minor English improvement is recommend

Bests

Author Response

Thank for your positive feedback. Following your suggestion, a verification of eventual (self) plagiarism was also carried out and found to be fulfilled.

An English proofreading was performed.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

General comments:

The reviewed paper provides properly structured and thoroughly described research of a problem caused by the currently fragmented governance over the two types of strategic sites in Italy (SNI and part of N2K Network), which includes comprehensibly written introduction and methodology, logical presentation and appropriate discussion of the results, as well as proposed solution and its expected implications for practice.

The presented research is innovative and cross-sectoral one, and -besides highlighted weaknesses of proposed monitoring and decision-making tool- research results provide good argument for greater adoption of the GIS and related technologies into the public administration and governance activities.

Comments and suggestion by headings:

Introduction - provides clear definition of the research problem and aim, as well as description of research-relevant ES theoretical framework and practical/professional/legal/EU aspects of the same (problem)

Background (Study area) - presents the comprehensive and chronological description of the research problem within the study area, making readers enough familiar and interested into this research paper topic. Suggestion for the authors for this chapter is to consider providing the additional explanations of presented features by the Figure 1 and Figure 2 based on existing legends (which are in Italian language)

Methodology - presents scientifically strong and properly explained problem-solving approach for a building sites common management model, i.e. tool for monitoring as well as decision-making for focused strategic sites management. Also, here created methodology could be repeated and used again in the other research/studies. Also, suggestion for the authors for this chapter is to consider providing the short explanation of applied weighting rules, that is, criteria for assigning certain weights to listed variables (threats) as part of the Table 1. chapter

Results and discussion - gives clear description of the performed data analyses' results, along with proper findings interpretation and discussion, as well as methodological weaknesses explanation. In order for the analyses results presentation to be improved, suggestion for the authors is to consider including/better highlighting the boundary data of the SCI/SPA and SNI sites on the Figure 4. images, as well as boundary data of the SCI/SPA sites on the Figure 5. images. Also, in the Figure 5. chapter, label A and B for scenarios should be replace by the "Partial reclamation" and "Total reclamation" respectively, since these terms are used throughout the paper; also, this replacement would improve understanding of the Figure 5 content

Conclusions - logical wrap-up of the performed research and data analysis results. Suggestion for the authors here is to consider adding sentence or two about possible directions/extensions of performed research in future

General suggestion:

Please check the acronyms appearance order

Author Response

Thank you for the interesting and stimulating review. The paper has been integrated and modified according to the reviewers' suggestions. Following your comments, the structure of the paper has been reworked and additions have been made to the introduction, methodology and conclusions. The paragraphs of the results and the discussion have also been separated. Below are the answers to your individual observations.

Background (Study area) - Figures 1 and 2 were cut.

Methodology - As for the weights assigned to threats, some lines of explanation have been added to the text. They, ranging between 0 and 1, have been assigned on the basis of expert advice. The highest value was attributed to SIN's industrial areas considering that remediation actions lead to a reduction of 40% (from 1 to 0.6). The minimum value (0.2) was assigned to rural buildings located in the study area. Further explanation about values assigned to all the variables was added in the text.

Results and discussion - Thank you for the suggestion, images and relative titles have been modified.

Conclusions - Thanks, conclusions have been integrate with further future development about the research issue.

Finally, all the acronyms were checked.

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper presents an important dilemma on contradicting management of selected area. However, althought the idea of the paper is clearly presented and it is really a burden issue not only in Valle Basento but also in many other places in the planet, the paper doesn't provide novel suggestions how to efficiently and holisticaly tackle this challenge.

So I suggest that authors consider the issue deeper, more holisticaly and discuss the following :

As for the appropriate managements of Nature 2000 sites it is true that technical instruments such as GIS and remote sensing can show discrepancies and support implementation od spatial planning, but these tools do not carrie out managing itself – it is another process requiring different skills, so authors could open and discuss the issue on limitations of methodology such as InVEST that seems to be mostly depend on technical instruments. What would be authors' suggestion towards more efficient, appropriate and holistic management of such sites? Which concrete actions should be taken and how? In discussion I was missing an explanation on how and why it was possible that the same area (part of the valley of the Basento river) was once proposed for Nature 2000 and in another case recognized as the Site of National Interest. How such contradicting case should be managed (what works and what doesn't)? How does this influence on quality of human life as highlighted in the introduction? It is encouranging that reclamations (at least on longer term) will have positive effects, however, it should be also stressed that living environment is not like a laboratory but a living organism influenced by several factors (authors already mentioned morfology of the territory, but there are also unpredictable social ones), therefore the reclamation taken into account provides only a part of potential future scenarios. What about other aspects such as priorities by different actors and general public, additional interventions etc.? For a reader it would be also interesting to know what kind of reclamations/actions are considered to be going on and what is forseen to be most effective for improving habitat quality and foster biodiversity? What kind of action should be taken to improve habitat quality of wooded and cultivated areas? Additionally, the framework of ES in the introduction section should be more elaborated and biodiversity is not an ES, but rather a result of well preserved and healthy ecosystems. This should be bear in mind in the paper, particularly in methods.

I believe these kind of questions would significantly improve the paper, contribute to more novel insights and advance the future studies. Please, find below also a few more technical suggestions:

introductions should be shortened, text from line 75–86 is already describing study area; text from line 94–99 should be part of methods and text from 99–101 belongs to a conclusion section or to an abstract; the study area sections is too detailed and exhaustive comparing to other sections while the section »results and discussion« should be separated to clearly define what are results and what is your opinion; the explanation of SCI/SPA is missing in introduction; text from line 156–162 is a duplication, almost the same as in the first paragraph in introduction; LULC and MATMM acronims should be explained; legends in some maps should be translated into English language.

I recommend all these topics to be implemented and Moderate/Minor reviews necessary before publication.

Author Response

Thank you for your interesting and stimulating suggestions. Following your comments, the structure of the paper has been reworked and additions have been made to the introduction, methodology and conclusions. The paragraphs of the results and the discussion have also been separated. Below are the answers to your observations.

The issue of contradictions in the management of some sites is indeed of great interest and involves authorities and sectors even very different from those we examined (ref. Balletto et al. 2020, Military Training Areas as Semicommons: The Territorial Valorization of Quirra (Sardinia) from Easements to Ecosystem Services). The intent of the paper is to propose a methodology capable of taking up the challenge and approaching territorial governance in a more holistic way, just as you suggest. In fact, it is a potential that we recognize in the ecosystem services approach. The work, in particular, investigates the variations in habitat quality due to the remediation operations carried out within the SNI, capable of generating a benefit in the SCI/SPA sites. The results obtained doesn’t show high quantitative estimations of the benefits deriving from remediation. We considered the scenarios (mid term and long term) depending on “remediations programs” in terms of: removing the threats without any specific information on the remediation action for each specific sites (those information are not available). Even little share in habitat quality on the extended study areas represents in any case a spatial assessment of expected improvements that could be compared with the results of other actions on the same areas (i.e. additional protection sites, new industrial plants, new infrastructures, remediations on water resources etc.)

As added in the conclusions, the research methodology is adequate and the conflicting domain (natural protection vs environmental pollution remediation) is relevant for planning issues but additional tools and technologies as to be experimented in order to achieve more reliable results.

The explanation for how it happened that SCI/SPA and SNI overlapped is due to the fragmentation of competences and sectoral policies. In the introduction we have tried to chronologically trace the (long) processes that led to the definition of the two perimeters in a completely independent way from each other.

A governance tool useful to manage such contradicting cases should be, according to the regulatory framework of planning in Italy, the Regional Landscape Plan. This plan is absent in Basilicata and is still being drafted. The regional scale is the only one capable of detecting such territorial contradictions.

Concerning biodiversity considered by us as ES, we agree with you. However, the topic of ecosystem services classification is still widely debated. We have referred to the quality and degradation of habitats as a proxy for biodiversity. Within our discipline, spatial planning and territorial governance, it is useful to use methodologies based on land use classes and spatial information to obtain an assessment of the spatial distribution of biodiversity. Therefore the specific analysis of ‘genetic resources’ is out of our scope. We preferred to give priority to the application of “land use based” approach in the management of a problem related to the overlapping of sectoral policies and competences, focusing on the use of tools (INVEST) that do not require specific knowledge on habitat biology/genetics/ecology.

Thanks to your suggestions, we have worked on following points:

The introduction has been modified even if it is considered necessary to introduce the study area explaining the process that led to the overlapping of an area of naturalistic-environmental value with a particularly polluted site. We took your suggestion and shifted the considerations on the Invest to the method paragraph. We have left only a hint in the introduction to the tool that was used. We are thankful for your advice but we prefer to leave in the introduction a brief anticipation of the conclusions we came to. Thank for your suggestion about the paper's structure. Two paragraphs "Results" and "Discussion" have been separated. Figures 1 and 2 were cut. “text from line 156–162 is a duplication” Thanks for the advice. We have carefully reviewed the two paragraphs and we believe that both are necessary for the following reasons: The first paragraph of the introduction aims to introduce the concept of biodiversity as a ES intended as a priority for EU sectoral policy making. Even though several policies had been undertaken at EU, National, Regional level, biodiversity remains a vulnerable due to the un-effective application of protection policies. In the second paragraph included in the description of the study area, and in particular of the SCI/SPA sites, this concept of Natura 2000 selection had been included in order to highlight that “N2K project assigns great importance ….. also to semi-natural environments, which are essential for connecting areas …. within a Europe-wide network”.

Finally, all the acronyms were checked.

Reviewer 4 Report

Poor English and circular arguments throughout make this manuscript very hard to understand. After reading it twice, I am still not certain what the findings actually were. Even if they were clearly articulated, the methods and rationale is not.

Author Response

We widely improved the readability of the paper according to the suggestions of other reviewers.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 5 Report

The research topic is very actual, so any new knowledge in this area is useful. However, the presented approach has fundamental shortcomings - therefore, I strongly recommend a significant and complete re-working of the manuscript; for the following reasons:

1) The title of the article does not correspond to the content - it is not really about "ecosystem services scenarios based measures " but rather about "an assessment of changes in the landscape degradation due to the reclamation measures".

2) Moreover, the article itself is not about ecosystem services (none of the services is in fact evaluated); only the methodology is based on one of the InVEST models used for ES assessment.

3) The methodology of habitat quality determination through the habitat degradation is not clearly described. The formulas are not fully explained. E.g., the Hj element is not explained; the same for the sensitivity of land use classes (Sj) and scaling parameters (z) and (k). By my opinion, the authors did not sufficiently explained the InVEST HQ model.

4) The results in the form of maps, graphs and also their explanation are presented not conclusively. The appropriateness of the selected model area is also questionable if the required change (degradation reduction) was only reflected in 3.8% of the area (r. 320). On the other hand, there are large areas with documented improvements that are situated relatively far from the sites of projected reclamation (Fig. 6). How is it possible?

5) In fact, only the information about land use was taken into consideration - no real values of habitat quality (species composition, biodiversity, important species and habitats...); no information about the real quality of the environment or environmental pollution. This is a very strong simplification of reality, which don´t provide sufficient information and support for decision-makers or conservationists (what authors promised).

Other comments:

Research does not evaluate the scenarios in the true sense, but only three horizons of one "reclamation" scenario.

Figures (maps) are mostly difficult to read, unclear; and require major adjustments. Furthermore, degradation maps (Fig. 4) are entirely inconclusive and thus unnecessary.

I do not mention minor contextual and language discrepancies; due to the proposal of a complete revision of the manuscript.

Author Response

Thank you for your interesting and stimulating review. Following your comments, the structure of the paper has been reworked and additions have been made to the introduction, methodology and conclusions. The paragraphs of the results and the discussion have also been separated. Below are the answers to your observations.

1) Thanks for your suggestion, title was changed.

2) Thank you for that very interesting comment. Indeed, the topic of ecosystem services classification is still widely debated. We have referred to the quality and degradation of habitats as a proxy for biodiversity. Within our discipline, spatial planning and territorial governance, it is useful to use methodologies based on land use classes and spatial information to obtain information on the spatial distribution of biodiversity and genetic resources.

'Genetic resources' constitute a Provisioning ES according to Millennium Ecosystem Services Assessment, 2005 while the more recent The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) consider 'Habitat for Species' and 'Maintenance of genetic diversity' as Supporting ES.

We preferred to give priority to the application of this approach in the management of a problem related to the overlapping of sectoral policies and competences, focusing on the use of tools that do not require specific knowledge on habitat biology/genetics/ecology, but on the characteristics of the territorial components.

3) Missing explanation about all the parameters was added to text. Furthermore a summary table was attached in order to specify all the values used during the elaborations.

4)-5) As specified in the discussion paragraph, the results obtained are strongly influenced by the land use class since both the suitability habitat values and the vulnerability value to each single threat (represented by the variable Sjr), are linked to it. Moreover, it must be considered that agriculture, in the light of the anthropic presence it requires, the works it involves and the substances used (fertilizers, herbicides, etc. ...), is considered a threat. The composition of the landscape in the study area provides numerous interface areas between natural land use classes (woodlands) and agricultural land parcels. This means that in some cases the decrease in degradation due to remediation operations is not very significant compared to the action of the 'agriculture' threat that persists.

Although the model simplifies the management of information related to complex processes (biology, ecology, etc...), the evaluation of variables (H, S, d, decay function, distance, threat weight) is a synthesis of expert evaluations. As suggested by the InVEST user manual available online, the variables to be included in the model are designed to synthesize evaluations that go into the merits of the populations surveyed for each species, for the extension of the areas, etc...An example of such an evaluation by experts is the work of Sallustio et al. 2017 (Assessing habitat quality in relation to the spatial distribution of protected areas in Italy) conducted on the Italian territory. Of course these values change with reference to the area and scale of study, the species considered, the habitat types.

In the field of spatial planning, it is an advantage to have tools of this kind, as they allow considerations that have been excluded from the evaluation process until now.

We agree with you on the limitations of the model in representing certain territorial characteristics. In fact, we have highlighted in our conclusions that future developments concern research and the application of tools capable of overcoming these limits.

Concerning term 'scenarios', as you have well understood in the text we refer to them as projections of habitats quality following the reclamation activities divided by time steps (programs already approved and programs only submitted but still under evaluation).

Figure 4 is actually not very significant because, as also stated in the text, the differences at the scale of the whole study area are not highlighted. This is the reason why maps of the same magnitudes have been produced for the difference between two consecutive moments of time. The scarce relevance of the results obtained in terms of habitat quality improvement, which is difficult to represent in the map, can also be seen from the histogram in Figure 5.

However, we accepted the suggestion and tried to improve the readability of the figures by inserting the perimeters of the SIN and SCI/SPA areas.

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

The second version of the paper has been slightly improved, however, some burden issuess still remained:

The explanation of different scenarious, and action to be taken, are still not sufficiently addressed. We don't learn what will be done to improve quality habitats, what to improve quality of human life as highlighted in the introduction.
The habitat quality is not considered to be part of Provisioning ES. TEEB classification from 2012 is a bit obsolete. One of the most recent ES calssification is the CICES v5.1 from 2018 https://cices.eu/resources/. This classification doesn't mention »habitat quality«, habitat is included under »Regulation & Maintenance (Biotic)« category (eg, »Lifecycle maintenance, habitat and gene pool protection«). And once again, biodiversity is not an ES, but rather a result of well preserved and healthy ecosystems. Furthermore, a habitat quality analysis conducted based on general land use categories is highly questionable.
The new location of the Figure 1 is helpful, however, it could be improved by setting more clear boundary for the SCI/SPA area. In the Figure 2 it seems that numbers on the map above are not adequate to the cases in smaller maps below. In addition, I don't really notice differences between scenarious – maps are still unclear and difficult to read.
The paper should be checked for typo errors.

I still recommend all these topics to be implemented and Moderate reviews necessary before publication.

Author Response

REVIEWER 3

The second version of the paper has been slightly improved, however, some burden issues still remained:

The explanation of different scenarious, and action to be taken, are still not sufficiently addressed. We don't learn what will be done to improve quality habitats, what to improve quality of human life as highlighted in the introduction.

The aim of the work is to suggest a methodology based on the ecosystem services approach to overcome the limit of the regulatory framework that appears to be overly fragmented due to sectoral policies (and their competent authorities) and scales. The work, in particular, addresses the instance of overlapping policies on a specific site: remediation of a Site of National Interest that partly overlaps with the Natura 2000 site. One of the contradictions highlighted in the paper concerns the absence within the N2K Site Management Plan of any reference to the SNI remediation plan. On the other hand, there is not yet a complete Land Reclamation Plan with a detailed description of the timescales, methods and actions to be carried out on the individual industrial sites included within the perimeter of the SNI. This is why the elaborations were carried out assuming values of hypothesis relating to the decrease in the degree of threat following remediation. Since there is no data on the remediation actions and considering that the N2K site Management Plans and their consequent regulations are in force and updated under conditions of absolute blindness of the presence of the SNI, it is necessary to define measures to understand the interactions between the two policies (protection / remediation).

The habitat quality is not considered to be part of Provisioning ES. TEEB classification from 2012 is a bit obsolete. One of the most recent ES calssification is the CICES v5.1 from 2018 https://cices.eu/resources/. This classification doesn't mention »habitat quality«, habitat is included under »Regulation & Maintenance (Biotic)« category (eg, »Lifecycle maintenance, habitat and gene pool protection«). And once again, biodiversity is not an ES, but rather a result of well preserved and healthy ecosystems. Furthermore, a habitat quality analysis conducted based on general land use categories is highly questionable.

As explained in the paper (line 408), we refer to Habitat Quality as a proxy (and as a measure) for biodiversity in general. Biodiversity has been declined in various ways as the classifications of ecosystem services evolve:

the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment the closest reference is to "Genetic Resources", included in the Provisioning Ecosystem Services;
TEEB distinguishes between "Habitats for species" and "Maintenance of genetic resources", ecosystem services classified as Supporting
CICES v.5, as you point out, further explores the various aspects related to biodiversity. The closest reference to the meaning by which we have dealt with habitat quality is SECTION: Regulation & Maintenance (Biotic) DIVISION: Regulation of physical, chemical, biological conditions GROUP: Lifecycle maintenance, habitat and gene pool protection CLASS: Maintaining nursery populations and habitats (Including gene pool protection).

Following to your suggestion, we we thought it useful to add in the text of the paper this additional reference to the most recent classification scheme.

The work is based on land use, but also on hypotheses concerning the components affecting environmental quality which are the result of hypotheses as no more detailed analyses and data concerning remediation are available.

The analysis of habitat quality on the basis of land use categories is an approach used in a wide scientific literature. Concerning the case study, the land use classification is still the only layer that allows to monitor at the appropriate scale a temporal horizon long enough to cover remediation actions for which the provisions of the SNI do not set a fixed time frame. Of course if “on field” analysis and surveys will be done their results will represent better the site specific conditions, but this is not the case not only in the specific case study areas but in several sites where conflicting policies are adopted in terms of territorial planning (i.e. remediation vs preservation).

The new location of the Figure 1 is helpful, however, it could be improved by setting more clear boundary for the SCI/SPA area. In the Figure 2 it seems that numbers on the map above are not adequate to the cases in smaller maps below. In addition, I don't really notice differences between scenarios – maps are still unclear and difficult to read.

In order to reduce the weight of the file, the quality of the images on the .pdf is low resolution so some details are not clearly visible.

However, images and graphics have also been modified to meet the requests of other reviewers.

Below we report the image with the changes due to the reclamation in order to highlight the pixels to be observed more carefully.

We understood the difficulty in appreciating the changes from the previous image and replaced it with this one with some enlargements. It seems to us not very useful to increase the zoom inside these boxes because you risk to lose the orientation with respect to the polygons that are the threats inside the SNI.

In addition, to facilitate the readability of the results obtained, Figure 3 has been inserted in the text that shows the effects of partial remediation (obtained from the difference between the degradation maps relating to the first phase of remediation and the current trend) and total remediation (obtained from the difference between the degradation maps relating to total remediation and the current trend).

The paper should be checked for typo errors.

Thanks for the advice, mistakes were made because of the revision mode used.

I still recommend all these topics to be implemented and Moderate reviews necessary before publication.

Thanks for the suggestions, we have furtherly modified the paper to make it more readable.

Reviewer 4 Report

Thank you for the revised manuscript. While the English has been substantially improved, it still requires major editing. Terms are are not defined or used appropriately (current trend NOT state-of-the-art), and many sentences are still quite circular in their arguments.

However, I do now understand more of the nature of the study, and agree that it is important to use a tool like InVEST to "game" whether remediation strategies are likely to meet the requirements of the N2K Network.

Sadly, there is still too many methods missing for me to say this is a scientifically-defensible effort. The remediation efforts that are used in the 'scenarios' (I still maintain, as other reviewers noted, that these are not actual scenarios, they are just trend models) are never defined. The methods for assigning habitat sensitivity and threat definition are not described (i.e. expert opinion, meta-analysis?), nor is the data used in these models documented very well.

The maps are very hard to read, perhaps because of the PDF conversion, but there is no locator map, no roads or villages provided for context, it is very hard to make sense of the key figures.

Figure 2 in particular needs a lot of work, as I don't actually see any difference between the time periods.
Figure 3 needs to define what partial reclamation means (mid-term time period?).
Figure 5 makes no sense. What are the degradation classes? Why are they so small?

Overall, discussion and conclusion is not supported by the results. No definition of significant on p11 L326. I am afraid this still is not sufficient for publication in Sustainability.

Author Response

REVIEWER 4

The term "state of the art" has been replaced by "current trend". Some sentences have been revised and reworded.

The aim of the work is to suggest a methodology based on the ES approach to overcome the limit of the regulatory framework that appears to be overly fragmented due to sectoral policies (and their competent authorities) and working scales. Although we need to test some methods to face these problems concerning the specific case study area where more detailed data are not available. However, at this stage we are more oriented to propose a methodology through which site specific assessment can be realized in order to evaluate on quantitative basis intervention scenarios (in the specific case this result has been achieved even if it ranges in very small percentage).

As reported in the paper, indeed, there is not a complete Land Reclamation Plan with a detailed description of the timescales, methods and actions to be carried out on the individual industrial sites included within the perimeter of the SNI. This critical lack is due because the national rules and procedures doesn’t request it formally (!).

Since there is no data on the remediation actions and considering that the N2K site Management Plans and their consequent regulations are in force and updated under conditions of absolute blindness of the presence of the SNI, it is necessary to define measures to understand the interactions between the two policies (protection / remediation).

For these reasons, as you rightly pointed out, the elaborations were carried out assuming values of hypothesis relating to the decrease in the degree of threat following remediation. The values assignment comes from a qualitative expert interpretation of case study specific land use features.

As explained also in the paper - paragraph n.3 “Methodology” - the expert’s assessment followed the following criteria:

- for the same land use class, those falling under the N2K site have a higher suitability value (i.e. naturalness but also vulnerability)

- for the same source of threat (e.g. industrial areas), the expected impact (threat value and distance of impact) is greater for the plants included in the SNI perimeter.

Another important working hypothesis is that the remediation process cannot recover a full degree of naturalness but has to shift the environmental conditions of the sites comparable with other industrial ones. Although this affects the readability of the results, it seems to us the most appropriate and most realistic choice.

The territorial extent of the sites is very small compared to the study area therefore the variation obtained in the scenarios is minimal but represents a measure of the effect of the remediation operations on habitat quality and, in particular, on the N2K site.

The maps are very hard to read, perhaps because of the PDF conversion, but there is no locator map, no roads or villages provided for context, it is very hard to make sense of the key figures.

Yes, the transformation into pdf has reduced the quality of the images.

Figure 1 shows the study area on a land use map. It can be seen that the perimeter of the SNI follows the course of the Basento river valley and is crossed by a primary road. The areas in grey and black are the artificial surfaces that include residential buildings, industrial areas and transport infrastructure.

Figure 2 in particular needs a lot of work, as I don't actually see any difference between the time periods.

In order to highlight some areas where the changes are better visible, we have included below an additional image for reviewers.

Figure 3 needs to define what partial reclamation means (mid-term time period?).

As defined in the caption in Figure 3: “Figure 3 – Effects of reclamation procedure: decrease of the degradation degree in mid-term (Partial reclamation) and long-term (Total reclamation) scenarios”, partial reclamation means: reclamation carried out in the mid-term time period.

Figure 5 makes no sense. What are the degradation classes? Why are they so small?

Figure 5 has been included to provide a better understanding of the degradation value distribution in the three different scenarios. The degradation classes are the ranges for which the values have been extracted. The values are very small, as we have specified different times in the text, but they still manage to give a reading of the differences between the various scenarios.

Overall, discussion and conclusion is not supported by the results. No definition of significant on p11 L326. I am afraid this still is not sufficient for publication in Sustainability.

The sentence on p11 L326 has been changed as follows:“Within the SCI/SPA site, the partial reclamation (mid-term scenario) has no effect on changes in habitat degradation or quality…”.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 5 Report

Positive features of revised manuscript:

The authors tried to deal with almost all the reviewer's comments, which I consider positive. Most of the problems were solved, or the at least improved (it means mainly Introduction and Methodology sections) The manuscript has undergone proofreading, which has improved its quality.

On the other side:

I still do not consider the used methodological tool (specific InVEST model) and the data used as appropriate for solving of investigated problem. Land use remained an essential (if not the only) source of data. The quality of some figures is poor, and there are also grammar errors.

Nevertheless:

If the manuscript will have three positive reviews, it can be published - its further use and citations will verify the quality of the paper. I strongly recommend improving the graphical quality of the figures.

Author Response

REVIEWER 5

Positive features of revised manuscript:

Thank you, we're glad it's improved

On the other side:

We understand your critical position regarding InVEST and we share your concerns about the oversimplification of the input variables. We ourselves have highlighted the limits linked to the model, which does not take into account important variables, especially with regard to complex phenomena such as the diffusion of pollutants. On the other hand, there is a wide scientific literature that demonstrate its applicability. In our case it represents a useful analysis tool that allows us to overcome the problem of the lack of specific data and information on remediation programs and to represent the effects of conflicts between protection policies and the management of the risk of environmental pollution due to the missed remediation of industrial sites included in the SNI.

For these reason, as you rightly pointed out, the elaborations were carried out assuming values of hypotheses relating to the decrease in the degree of threat following remediation. As explained also in the paper - paragraph n.3 “Methodology” - the expert’s assessment followed the following criteria:

- for the same land use class, those falling under the N2K site have a higher suitability value (i.e. naturalness but also vulnerability)

- for the same source of threat (e.g. industrial areas), the expected impact (threat value and distance of impact) is greater for the plants included in the SNI perimeter.

Another important working hypothesis (also affecting the results) is that the remediation process cannot recover a full degree of naturalness but has to shift the environmental conditions of the sites comparable with other industrial ones.

Thanks for your further suggestions, typo errors and mistakes were caused by the revision mode used.

As for the images (some of which have been replaced), the low resolution is due to the .pdf format. The images provided to publishers have a higher resolution.

Nevertheless:

Thank you, we have improved the quality of the figures.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 3

Reviewer 4 Report

Thank you for your continued effort to improve this MS. I do think it is coming along well. Below are still some concerns I have (in no particular order):

All figure legends need to include more information (context, 1-sentence description of what's going on, etc).
It is still very hard to see any changes across the different remediation scenarios in Figure 2. Even the circles on the reviewer responses were hard to see any differences - much less in the actual MS.
Figures 3 & 4 seem to have a double negative (i.e. high decrease in degradation). Suggest cleaner language (reduced degradation vs. increased or same levels of degradation).
I think some of the citations are weak (for example, citation #42 is just the InVEST user manual, not a peer-reviewed article on what habitat quality = higher species abundance).
Figure 5 doesn't really make much sense. Why so many groups of degradation classes, when that is a qualitative measure? Is the difference between 0.0007 and 0.0008 really that important? If so, please explain why.

Author Response

Thanks for your comments which gave us input for further reflection. Below are the answers to each of your specific comments:

All figure legends need to include more information (context, 1-sentence description of what's going on, etc).

Thanks, additional information has been added in all figure captions.

It is still very hard to see any changes across the different remediation scenarios in Figure 2. Even the circles on the reviewer responses were hard to see any differences - much less in the actual MS.

We don't know a better way than the detail boxes to show the changes made.

The results are very small also because of the working hypothesis that the remediation would lead to a decrease in the value of the threat equal to that of the industrial areas not included in the SNI. Moreover, within the study area the effects of all the other threats (agriculture, primary roads, railway line) continue to be felt.

However, arrows have been added to guide the reader in detecting changes due to remediation.

Figures 3 & 4 seem to have a double negative (i.e. high decrease in degradation). Suggest cleaner language (reduced degradation vs. increased or same levels of degradation).

For both figures, the captions have been changed.

The color degradation related to Fig. 3 - from low to high - refers to the difference, so the greater the difference, the greater the benefit for the habitat.

The same applies to Fig. 4, where, however, there is a percentage reduction compared to the current trend due to partial and total remediation.

I think some of the citations are weak (for example, citation #42 is just the InVEST user manual, not a peer-reviewed article on what habitat quality = higher species abundance).

Thanks for the suggestion, other references have been added.

Figure 5 doesn't really make much sense. Why so many groups of degradation classes, when that is a qualitative measure? Is the difference between 0.0007 and 0.0008 really that important? If so, please explain why.

Thank you for your advice, even if the measure is qualitative, we believe it is useful to represent the distribution of values. Since the variability is minimal, a larger number of classes allows us to appreciate the variations.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx