Peanut Drought Risk Zoning in Shandong Province, China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

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Review of sustainability-1540697 Drought Disaster Risk Zoning for Peanut in Shandong Province, China

The topic of the paper is suitable for the journal, and the work is in principle relevant, but the methods are not explained in an understandable way.

The word "disaster" in the title and main text needs to be replaced by another word, e.g. impacts. In common English, the word "disaster" is not used in the same way as it is by the Chinese authors.

In the abstract, I miss mentioning of soils. I would suppose that soil type is a major factor determining drought risk in an agricultural system. I also miss information on water table, which is another key factor in drought risk. Authors need to explain why this information is missing and justify that their analysis is relevant even without this information.

Conceptually, if I have understood well, the paper seems to calculate a risk score by combining information of different kinds (equation 1). As such the principle and formula 1 are self-evident and easy to understand. It gets confusing when the authors in line 124 suddenly start talking about a dry-heat wind risk assessment. Should I understand here that the overall model is for the risk of dry-heat wind? What exactly is the hazard of dry-heat wind, and is that the overall risk that you are considering in this paper or is it one of the component factors? Please clarify.

Figure 1 shows a map of the region with several rivers. Please indicate the names of the rivers Huang, Huai and Hai in the map so the reader can understand where these rivers are.

Formulas 2, 3, and 4 are different ways of writing a weighted sum. I have no trouble understanding the concept of a weighted sum, but the authors fail here to provide a transparent explanation of the relationship of the variables F, Y_i and Y that are calculated in equations 2, 3, and 4, respectively. The connection between the equations needs to be explained, not only mathematically, but also conceptually, because this is the basis of the risk score. As it is, the text on page 4 of the manuscript appears disconnected and incomprehensible as an integrated whole. This is a serious problem, because the reader should be able to understand how risk factors are integrated into an overall score for drought risk.

Figure 2 looks nice, but the meaning is unclear. Please provide a text explaining what the figure shows.

Page 5 describes an analytic hierarchy process. It is not clear why this process is needed at all. What problem does it solve in the overall topic of the paper? Do you use this process to derive weights? Is there a relationship between the equations 5 and 6 and the equations 1-4 that were given before? What is the relationship? Again, there is a problem of disconnect in the explanation.

Due to the noted problem, I could not interpret the weights matrix and it is also not clear what the standardizations in equations 7 and 8 are used for.

The maps in the results look basically interesting, but without a proper understanding of the methods, I cannot interpret the maps properly.

In the first paragraph of the discussion you state that the zoning indices proved to be good. What evidence do you have for this? What evaluation method did you use, and what data were available for evaluation of the risk model? What data go into the risk model and what data come out and can be compared to reality? How is the comparison (validation) done?

Overall, I would say that authors need to frame their work in an international context, comparing their work on drought risk to work done in other parts of the world. I am sure that such work has been done, and authors should place their work in an international context or submit to a more local journal.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors have presented drought risk zoning in Shandong Province using the AHP technique. It is well presented but it requires some improvement and clarity.

Major Comments:

1. The objective of the study is not clearly mentioned.
2. In section 2.3.1: Under Hazardous factors, meteorological factors, authors have only considered precipitation data. What about other meteorological variables (like temperature, ET, so on..) that are also strongly connected to drought risk
3. 2: It needs more description on the selection of weightage factors
4. Table 3: Is there any reference exist for this
5. Section 3.1.1: It should be moved to a part of Methodology (until L249)
6. 3: It has been generated based on which dataset. It is not clear
7. The meteorological factor risk is only based on P data and therefore possible limitations should be discussed under discussion section
8. In line 452-481 & Figure 10: The application of four different interpolation methods are checked for the meteorological factor risk. Why only to meteorological and why not to others (like vulnerability, drought prevention and mitigation capacity, and so on …). What is the logic behind this
9. I was expecting that at least, drought comprehensive risk index zoning map should be validated with independent datasets. Which is missing   
10. Abstract: Write the last sentence as the significance of the study

Minor comments

Line 242: P dash is missing

Line 451/571: Check the placement of Wei’  s and people’  s

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors conducted spatial zoning research on Shandong Province's peanut drought risk in China. They employed daily precipitation data, combined with other environmental and socioeconomic independent variables like the annual provincial GDP, soil texture, slope, etc. Then, they used a hierarchical analysis with weighted comprehensive evaluation and ArcGIS spatial analysis to zone the province's peanut drought risk. The research topic is of interest from a methodological point of view and also particularly relevant to the study domain, given that Shandong Province is a major producer of peanuts in China. My comments are listed as:

• It is unclear what the authors mean by "agricultural drought." Defining drought as a rainfall deficit with respect to the long-average means of precipitation may characterize "meteorological drought". Rather, using some well-established drought indices like SPEI or SPI at different timescales is more appropriate to delineate drought characteristics than using simple rainfall anomalies. Also, the applied methodology does not allow for comparisons between different parts of the study region over both space and time, as rainfall anomalies can vary greatly from one area to another.

• The purpose of using different environmental and socioeconomic variables for drought zoning should be justified. From a conceptual perspective, this is incorrect, as drought variability over space and time is independent of these variables. I am wondering why other relevant variables (e.g. soil moisture) are not included in the analysis.

• The introduction chapter failed to discuss the different available methods for delineating drought characteristics or zoning them and how hierarchical analysis with weights can be advantageous in this context.

• The manuscript lacks the opportunity to provide a comprehensive description of the meteorological data used in this study (e.g. number of stations/grids, quality, homogeneity, etc.).

• Why did the authors rely alone on precipitation data to characterize drought, while other meteorological variables (e.g. relative humidity, wind speed, evapotranspiration, etc.) can also have a significant impact?

• It is not only the drought severity (light, moderate, and severe) that can affect agricultural areas, but the duration and frequency of drought events are important as well.

• Section 3.2.1 can be summarized.

• A comprehensive description of the prevailing meteorological conditions and topographic gradient in the study domain is needed.

• It is recommended to explore the spatial consistency between the hazard, exposure, and vulnerability indices. It is unclear how the weight for each of these indices was computed.

• The spatial data used in the GIS environment should be better described; remembering that these data have varying spatial resolutions, how was this resolution matched for the various variables? Have you applied any resampled procedures?

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors have responded adequately to the comments raised in the earlier revision and I believe that the manuscript can be endorsed for publication.

Author Response

Thank you.