Implementing Nature-Based Solutions in Rural Landscapes: Barriers Experienced in the PHUSICOS Project

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This manuscript aims to explore the barriers experienced in the PHUSICOS Project using Nature Based Solutions (NBS). This paper is well written and can contribute to the international literature about the implementation of the NBS-based projects. There are two points provided below for the authors to further improve the manuscript.

1. There is a lack of a methodological section to explain the methods and procedures conducted in the study. For example, why were the cases selected for the study? What criteria were used for the selection? The current explanation is insufficient to support the reasons of the inclusion. Also what were the data collection and analysis methods used in the research?
2. The key points of conclusions are not clearly presented. I suggest the section of conclusions needs to be rewritten and the key findings/arguments of the study must be clearly pointed out.

Author Response

The authors wish to thank the reviewer for considering the work interesting at international level. We have addressed the two points emerged from the revision, which helped us to improve the quality of the manuscript. As response to the comments from this and the other reviewers, we hav also improved the language and included more relevant references.

Regarding the two specific points, this is our response:

1. 

We have re-structured the manuscript by adding a methodology chapter, into which we have moved some text originally placed in another chapter, as well as adding more information to the chapter. A flowchart (suggested by another reviewer) has been included to graphically show all the phases and evaluation processes followed to select the NBS interventions at the case study sites and in which phase of the workflow the action "identification of barriers" (aim of this study) is taken. We sincerely hope that the methodology part is improved. We have in addition emphasized the objective of the paper (the barriers) in the introduction, to differentiate it from the overall objectives of the PHUSICOS project. We see that we were not sufficiently clear regarding this differntiation.

2.

We have added text to the conclusions chapter and done some re-structuring of some of the points. We believe this has made the conclusions clearer. We have also tried to point out better that we focus on the challenges and barriers, rather than the project as a whole.

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript is interesting. Nevertheless, it needs some further improvement before being accepted for publication. In general, there are still some occasional grammar errors throughout the manuscript, especially the article ‘’the’’, ‘’a’’ and ‘’an’’ is missing in many places; please make a spellchecking in addition to these minor issues. The reviewer has listed some specific comments that might help the authors further enhance the manuscript's quality.

1. Specific Comments
2. Please remove the acronyms from the abstract.
3. Please include a list of acronyms and abbreviations.

• Introduction

• The objectives are not explicitly stated.
• The authors need to enrich the background further. The following literature might be useful in this regard <> and <> you may review other additional relevant references as well.
• What is the novelty of this work?

• Methods

• This section is missing. Although you present a project, you still need to describe the methodology applied to that project.
• I would suggest showing the methodological approach through a flowchart
• Methodology limitations should be mentioned.
• The objectives of the project are not presented.

• Results

• In general, the primary outcomes of the project are presented.
• In figure 2, the north arrow and scale bar is missing.
• Figure 3, scale bar missing.
• Please, check the citation along with the entire manuscript; there is an error with the citations.
• Figure 5, scale bar missing.
• In figure 7, the north arrow and the scale bar is missing.
• Figure 8, the drawing part is not clear and very low resolution.
• Figure 9, why do you write 2 times, ‘’opportunities’’?

• Discussion

This section is missing. The discussion should summarize the main finding(s) of the manuscript in the context of the broader scientific literature and address any limitations of the study or results that conflict with other published work.

Author Response

We wish to thank the reviewer for the valuable specific comments, which we address in the attachment. Regarding the language and the possible problem with the missing article 'a' and 'an', two of the co-authors are Americans, who have now gone thoroughly through the language, which we believe is significantly improved. We have also done a final spellcheck as suggested and we sincerely believe that now the manuscript is improved in its quality and is now more easily readable.

For the more detailed sopecific comments, we have addressed all of these. Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Review of the paper: “Implementing Nature Based Solutions in Rural Landscapes; Barriers Experienced in the PHUSICOS Project” by Anders Solheim, Vittoria Capobianco, Amy Oen, Bjørn Kalsnes, Turid Wullf-Knutsen, Mari Olsen, Nicola Del Seppia, Idoia Arauzo, Eva Garcia Balaguer, and James M. Strout1:

Line 83: this sentence is not clear, add a coma in “the intention of sharing experiences, and discussing how problems can be avoided, is to reduce such barriers”.

Line 90: some error in text: “in Italy (Error! Reference source not found., Figure 1)”.

Line 102- Table 2: some typo errors “Implmented” and “implmentation” in last two rows.

Line 116: some error in text: “G1 in (Error! Reference source not found”.

Line 141 (Figure 3): some error in text: “Location G1 in (Error! Reference source not found”.

found”.

Line 145: some error in text: “Location G2 in (Error! Reference source not found”. More similar along the whole article.

Line 160 (Figure 4): some error in text: “Location G2 in (Error! Reference source not found”.

Line 205: bigger font size in 'European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation

Line 211: bigger font size “because the of the ...” in 'European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation

Line 244: check the use of passive form “have been proved” rather than have proved. bigger font size in 'European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation

Page 9,Figure 7: the projects in this Figure are not clear, they should be named in the caption, ie. P1 is Santa Elena, etc.

Page 10,Figure 8: the projects in this Figure are not referred in the text (only the Santa Elena one.

Page 11,Line 315: the paragraph starts with a reference (17), it is not a proper object.

Page 11,Line 323: the paragraph starts with a reference (1), it is not a proper object.

Page 11,Figure 9: this figure is not referred in the text (maybe it is some of the reference source not found errors!

Page 15,Line 502: the sentence should be “may therefore also be classified as hybrid”

Page 17, Line 587: Appendix B is not after Appendix A, where is App. A?

Page 17, Reference 5: The e-link would be better in a separate line.

Page 18, References 10 and 18: The year is after a point, better a comma.

Pages 17 and 18: review all the references, there is no consistency and there are formatting issues.

Kind regards.

Author Response

We wish to thank the reviewer for these valuable and detailed comments, which we have followed and to which we provide our response in the attached file.

In the revision of the manuscript, one of the co-authors, which is American, has significantly improved the language. Therefore, some of the sentences pointed out below, may have been somewhat changed after this thorough 'language – wash'.

Please see the attachment for our detailed response.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript has been greatly improved.

Author Response

Thank you! Both for the initial comments, and for the good words.

Reviewer 2 Report

Well done.

Author Response

Thank you, first for the valuable comments, and noe for the good words.