What Is the Socioeconomic Impact of the Tucuruí Dam on Its Surrounding Municipalities?
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors look at the impact of megaproject on the socio-economic development of regional municipalities in the Amazon. The study uses three scenarios to measure of quality of life changes over an extended period of time. It is such an interesting field of study that can be explored to improve in future public policies intervention. However, there are issues that need to be addressed.
- the context of the mega project need to be aligned with the progressive path of the Brazil state intervention of providing energy access to every citizen. Mega projects in hydropower are not knew effort by government but are driven by development knowledge which must have a clear theoretical debates to support the context. This will make the readers gain more knowledge rather being to descriptive from the beginning.
- No research questions to guide the study - there is need to generate the investigative questions that the study aim to address rather leaving it out for the readers to figure them out. This must be relevant to key issues the study is trying to address.
- You stated that this study (para 57, 58) is about the relationship between deforestation and available socio-economic indicators. Yet in the detail texts engagement, there is comparison in terms of quality of life before, during and after. I think this is contradictory.
- discussion is missing or rather descriptive in nature. We need a section in discussion well attended to. I would be interesting to see this study have analytical discussion about the mega dam projects and their potentials in contributing to quality life.
Author Response
Dear reviewer. We thank you for your suggestions and comments. You can find the pertinent answers in the attached file below
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
1. The technical description shall be improved.
2. Authors shall include more graphical representation.
3. Research outcome is not clear.
Author Response
Dear reviewer. We thank you for your suggestions and comments. You can find the pertinent answers in the attached file below
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
See attachment.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear reviewer. We thank you for your suggestions and comments. You can find the pertinent answers in the attached file below
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Accepted
Author Response
Dear reviewer. We thank you for your previous suggestions. They were very helpful to us when improving our paper.
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments:
Thank you for submitting your revisions.
1. I am ok with the way you describe your PC2 now. My suggestion is to further downplay it since you don't really have a good definition to conclude what it actually is about. And since the variance it explained is rather small across all snaps, it is probably better to remove some of its discussion to keep the story concise and to the point.
2. About my point 2, you've provided a lot of background information, but given your design, I don't think you have an adequate identification strategy to claim any type of causal relationship - analyzing snap data like this simply isn't enough to do so. That was the point I was trying to make and wanted the authors to be on the same page. Therefore, I don't want to authors to over state/claim anything and leave the reader with a false impression. It probably makes sense to include a couple of sentences to acknowledge that the differences you observe is the result of a variety reasons, not necessarily just the dam.
I am Ok with your other revisions.
Author Response
We appreciate the time you took to thoroughly review our work, which allowed us to identify opportunities to improve our writing. Below, we respond to each of your comments:
Point 1. I am ok with the way you describe your PC2 now. My suggestion is to further downplay it since you don't really have a good definition to conclude what it actually is about. And since the variance it explained is rather small across all snaps, it is probably better to remove some of its discussion to keep the story concise and to the point.
Response 1: We agree with your recommendation. To address it we have made some edits and took some of the discussion from lines 226 to 251.
Point 2. About my point 2, you've provided a lot of background information, but given your design, I don't think you have an adequate identification strategy to claim any type of causal relationship - analyzing snap data like this simply isn't enough to do so. That was the point I was trying to make and wanted the authors to be on the same page. Therefore, I don't want to authors to over state/claim anything and leave the reader with a false impression. It probably makes sense to include a couple of sentences to acknowledge that the differences you observe is the result of a variety reasons, not necessarily just the dam. I am Ok with your other revisions
Response 2: We understand your recommendation. As a result, we included sentences addressing this issue at the end of the conclusion (lines 381-386)
We would like to thank you for the observations you made in the first and second review. Your suggestions were very helpful to us when improving our paper. We hope to have addressed all the observations in the best way possible.
