Safeguarding Free-Flowing Rivers: The Global Extent of Free-Flowing Rivers in Protected Areas
, Jonathan Higgins 4, Dieter Tracey 2 and Michele Thieme 1Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
An excellent MS. Easy to ready and understand and a valuable contribution to conservation science.
Just a few specific comments:
Line: 42 reference targets: https://www.cbd.int/sp/
Line 78 insert: ...loss of land, "subsidence", and ....
Line 129: Section is a nice description of limitations.
Line 161 replace with numbered citation
Line 407-409 consider adding increased human access and use of border rivers as a stressor not so applicable for rivers entirely in protected areas. Fishing vs no fishing areas for example.
Discussion section is very well done and offers useful recommendations for future consideration.
Author Response
Thank you for the review and your suggestions; my responses below:
Line: 42 reference targets: https://www.cbd.int/sp/ (done)
Line 78 insert: ...loss of land, "subsidence", and .... (done)
Line 129: Section is a nice description of limitations.
Line 161 replace with numbered citation (done)
Line 407-409 consider adding increased human access and use of border rivers as a stressor not so applicable for rivers entirely in protected areas. Fishing vs no fishing areas for example. (done)
Reviewer 2 Report
This manuscript, written from a group leader in the field, does an excellent job demonstrating the importance of free-flowing rivers and their conservation for humans and, more in general, for living organisms. The article highlights important data not considered before and that might have been overlooked.
In general, I noticed Authors often escape rules:
- The abstract should align to the instruction for Authors claiming for about 200 words. It needs to provide detailed information on the approaches adopted for ensuring sound results and outputs.
- In general, the reference citation in the text should follow the instruction for authors. Frequently, the Authors left the citations with the name of the author(s) and year
Minor corrections suggested:
Line 54: pg. 216 – what they mean? are they indicating the exact page where it is possible to find something in support of their hypothesis?
Line 144: subsection like the present one Hydrographic & Geographic Framework needs to be numbered
Line 146: report the link to your dataset if deposited in a publicly available database
Line 150: a discharge larger than 1 150 cms …I think here a specification of what is cms is needed to broad the accessibility of this research paper to non-experts
Legend of figures: palatino 9 is the style for legends
Figure 1. Level 4 basins. Please, repeat here repeat the meaning of level 4
Line 253: then the at the scale of the world…I suggest to delete “the”
Figure 4. All the long (>500 km) …I am Italian and in the figure, River Po is missing (562 km)
Figure 5. Please, change numbers with symbols, because the figure shows symbols, or delete the explanation from the legend, because a legend is already present in the figure
Figure 6. This figure is not necessary. The text is self-sufficient
References: the references do not follow the Instructions for Authors: please, conform them to the instructions
Tables: Tables needs to be organised following the format given by the journal, and should be placed in the main text near to the first time they are cited
Author Response
Thank you for your review and helpful suggestions. Responses below in italics.
Reviewer 2:
In general, I noticed Authors often escape rules:
- The abstract should align to the instruction for Authors claiming for about 200 words. It needs to provide detailed information on the approaches adopted for ensuring sound results and outputs.
I somewhat reduce the word count of the abstract and compared it to other published papers in Sustainability and believe it now qualifies as “about 200 words”
- In general, the reference citation in the text should follow the instruction for authors. Frequently, the Authors left the citations with the name of the author(s) and year
There were some situations where actually identifying the author in the flow of the text made sense and I edited these to a style consistent with other articles in Sustainability; One place had a leftover (author, date) and I corrected that.
Minor corrections suggested:
Line 54: pg. 216 – what they mean? are they indicating the exact page where it is possible to find something in support of their hypothesis?
The sentence includes a fairly long direct quote and it’s common to include a specific page number when using a direct quote. We can let the editor decide if they would like to keep the specific page number
Line 144: subsection like the present one Hydrographic & Geographic Framework needs to be numbered
done
Line 146: report the link to your dataset if deposited in a publicly available database
This doesn’t reference our dataset but a publicly available dataset with reference included
Line 150: a discharge larger than 1 150 cms …I think here a specification of what is cms is needed to broad the accessibility of this research paper to non-experts
Now spelled out
Legend of figures: palatino 9 is the style for legends
Done
Figure 1. Level 4 basins. Please, repeat here repeat the meaning of level 4
Clarified that it means “Level 4 basins as defined by HydroSHEDS
Line 253: then the at the scale of the world…I suggest to delete “the”
Done
Figure 4. All the long (>500 km) …I am Italian and in the figure, River Po is missing (562 km)
The original Figure 4 only shows long rivers that are designated as free flowing (sensu Grill et al. 2019) and the Po is not free-flowing. However, we revised the figure to include all rivers, with free-flowing shown in color and non-free flowing shown in grayscale
Figure 5. Please, change numbers with symbols, because the figure shows symbols, or delete the explanation from the legend, because a legend is already present in the figure
I clarified that the numbers are just to present an organized list and made more clear reference to the association between a category and a symbol
Figure 6. This figure is not necessary. The text is self-sufficient
done
References: the references do not follow the Instructions for Authors: please, conform them to the instructions
Corrected non-conforming references
Tables: Tables needs to be organised following the format given by the journal, and should be placed in the main text near to the first time they are cited
I moved images of the tables into the text. However, these are big tables, that take up nearly a full page landscape style, so integrating into the flow of the text in Word is not easy. The original versions of the tables are also at the end of the document in case that is easier for the layout process
Reviewer 3 Report
This is a very interesting and well-established study about the protection of the free-flowing rivers. Apart from the recommendations that I have above-mentioned I would also suggest to authors the following:
- In the Introduction section a more extensive reference should be reported about the ecosystem services, and thus the significance of protection of free-flowing rivers (e.g., Auerbach, Daniel A., et al. "Beyond the concrete: accounting for ecosystem services from free-flowing rivers." Ecosystem Services 10 (2014): 1-5, or Nikolaidou, Charitini, et al. "Ecosystem Service capacity is higher in areas of multiple designation types." One Ecosystem 2 (2017): e13718).
- Discussion: this section should be reduced to include in a more compact and clear way the necessary findings of the research.
- Conclusions: this part of the manuscript should also be limited. Conclusions should include a small summary of the main findings of the research as well as future perspectives. It is not about re-writting the Discussion section.
Author Response
Thank you for your review and suggestions. Responses below in italics.
- In the Introduction section a more extensive reference should be reported about the ecosystem services, and thus the significance of protection of free-flowing rivers (e.g., Auerbach, Daniel A., et al. "Beyond the concrete: accounting for ecosystem services from free-flowing rivers." Ecosystem Services10 (2014): 1-5, or Nikolaidou, Charitini, et al. "Ecosystem Service capacity is higher in areas of multiple designation types." One Ecosystem 2 (2017): e13718).
I found the Auerbach reference was particularly relevant, so I added that as a citation for this sentence: “Free-flowing rivers are particularly important for maintaining many of these values”
- Discussion: this section should be reduced to include in a more compact and clear way the necessary findings of the research.
I tightened up the language in some places but this discussion section has much to cover including the summary of key results by geographic region, by size of river, and how the relationship between land protection and river protection varies by size of river. We also wanted to discuss some of the limitations of using protected areas as the proxy for river protection, which required discussion of: (1) other protection mechanisms not included in the WDPA; (2) rivers as boundaries of protected areas, and associated issues and (3) the variability of how protected areas actually protect rivers, as many hydropower dams are under construction, or have been built in protected areas. Finally we also wanted to talk about methodological challenges of defining a free-flowing river as protected by protecting that actual stretch of river (whether with a traditional protected area or a river-specific mechanism) – and that’s because a free-flowing river is defined in part due to characteristics of the drainage network, but up and downstream. So we also wanted to cover some recommendations of methodological improvements.
- Conclusions: this part of the manuscript should also be limited. Conclusions should include a small summary of the main findings of the research as well as future perspectives. It is not about re-writting the Discussion section.
I do not think that the Conclusions is a re-write of the Discussion. It has a few short paragraphs summarizing the key points and then includes a bulleted list “road map” for what should be included in a more comprehensive quantification of river protection. While some of the concepts in this road map were referenced earlier, this is the first time they are laid out in this type of framework.
