Response of Water Yield to Future Climate Change Based on InVEST and CMIP6—A Case Study of the Chaohu Lake Basin

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript presents an analysis of the impacts of climate change in the Chaohu Lake Basin, China, which falls within the scope of the Journal. The work is interesting, though not new and quite simple. There are excess of figures/tables that should be eliminated or go to the appendix - for example figures 5, 7, 8. table 4.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This research was performed logically. I found the approach and result reasonable. But I have some minor comments.

 The manuscript is very long and includes 11 figures and seven tables. Thus, following them is pretty tricky. The authors should summarize the manuscript.

The caption of Fig.11 comes on a page before. 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Manuscript Number: Sustainability-1978029

Response of water yield to future climate change based on InVEST and CMIP6-A case study of the Chaohu Lake Basin

I would like to thank the authors for their hard work on this manuscript. I have the following comments:

This study applied the InVEST model to simulate the water yield in the Chaohu Lake Basin from 2000 to 2019, and compared the results with the observed statistical runoff data as well as forecasted the water yield under climate change scenarios. There are many aspects should be clarified before evaluate to publish.

Abstract

-        According to the instructions for authors "abstract should be a total of about 200 words maximum". It seems that the word count of the abstract of this paper is far above 200 words. Please follow the instructions for authors and revise your abstract.

Introduction

-        In the introduction, further studies of the Invest operation and its comparison with other models should be written to show how much more the Invest performs over other techniques, for example in calibration or calibration.

-        The authors should describe clearly the overall nature of the problem they intend to solve. In particular, problems arise from the management of this Basin to highlight the importance of this work

Method

-        In Figures 2 and 3, is there a complete information until 2019?

-        In Table 1, the authors have selected land use and land cover raster for several years, including 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015, 2018. The authors should provide more detail on how each year LULC is used to obtain different water intakes, each map being taken to estimate water yields for different years and then combined or run separate maps. This should provide a further picture of the yearly land use change during that period that would also be helpful in the description of Table 2.

-        Please check the font in writing equation.

-        The authors should explain what principles they use and why they choose to predict future water yields to 2100, whether the model's advantages or limitations arise. This principle should also be explained further in the literature review.

Results

-        The authors should demonstrate that the results are useful not only for this specific case study but they can be used for other regions. In order to be used in related investigations, some features may be given in an understandable and schematic form.

-        In section 3.2.1 "The results in Figure 8 and Table 4 show that the independent variables of the factors explain the spatial differentiation in the water yield of the CLB." The values in Table 4 and Figure 8 can be collapsed and displayed as either an image or a table to simplify reading. Because the results are quite multi-subtopic.

-        In Figure 11 there is a huge fluctuation between SSP126 and other SSPs, can you explain why that is the case?

Conclusion

-        At the end of the conclusion, the authors should provide more details on how the new gains from this study can be used in planning future water production management is one of the objectives including being able to apply the methods and models used in future studies.

-        The findings should be utilized to show that they are applicable to other areas in addition to this particular case study. In order to be used in related investigations, some features may be provided in a simple and understandable manner.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf