Nature’s Contributions to People in Vulnerability Studies When Assessing the Impact of Climate Change on Coastal Landscapes

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The theme of the article is very interesting. It presents a very complete analysis about Nature's Contributions and its vulnerability to climate change. In my point of view the article is very good, with just a few small problems, mainly regarding the figures, which were cut. I believe that the error occurred at the moment of generating the final PDF. I recommend a revision of the text, since I saw some words with wrong letters. Apart from that, I recommend the article for publication with minor revisions.

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

This manuscript studies the feasibility of Nature's Contributions to People (NCP) on describing the exposure component in vulnerability assessment studies of geographic landscapes to climate change using a case study of a fragment of the Pacific Coastal Plain in Mexico. Please find the comments below.

Line 96: "we use as a case study" changed to "we use ** as a case study"

Line 102: may add a map for better illustrating the study site

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

This analysis uses the “Nature’s Contributions to People” framework to assess ecosystem contributions to people on the coast of Mexico.  This concept is based on the idea that there is no way to replicate nature’s value to people and thus the authors dismiss the competing ecosystem services framework.  However, the authors encounter problems later in the text in that there is no way to compare between ecosystems or trade offs, which is the goal of converting ecosystem value into a common currency.  While ecosystem services are not my area of research and have acknowledged problems, a more nuanced discussion of how a common currency may allow rigorous discussions of trade-offs would make this a better paper.  I also found the writing a bit hard to understand at times- the authors may consider hiring an editing service as it is beyond simple typos that I am able to correct.  Finally, I didn’t see a good explanation for how the researchers chosen the overall boundary of the study system.

Specific comments

Line 27 human population?

Line 28 “categories of contribution” is confusing phrasing, contributions to what? (also see line 29)

Line 48 what are “territories”

Lines 83-88  This idea is repeated in the conclusion- but I would suggest that the authors examine this in a more balanced way- it also prevents examination of trade-offs or times when there is an often-costly commercial alternative to a natural resources- e.g. storm protection from a sea wall rather than mangroves, as coastal storm protection is one of the most valuable human services coastal ecosystems can provide.

Line 99-101  The fact that mangroves have the greatest contribution does not render that ecosystem most vulnerable (ecologically) to climate change- could the authors rephrase to make their meaning more clear?

Line 203 and elsewhere- do you perhaps mean “broad” groups?

Lines 222-227 Can the authors justify the use of photos?  Especially only 271 photos, potentially many of which were taken by tourists and the biases that this may introduce. 

Lines 263-269 Not all of the wastewater may be processed by the ecosystem, nutrients etc. likely enter the coastal ocean in an area with poorly maintained septic systems etc.

Lines 293-299 define m.a.s.l.

Lines 280-287 It seems that reference to specific figures would be beneficial here.  Also I don’t understand how “exposure” is generated here- it seems like it is just describing the ecosystem contributions as exposure?

Lines 323-349 Is it really necessary to use new names (e.g. CLP-AS) that are unfamiliar to most readers, they are used infrequently enough that I think they could use words

Line 376- “livestock food” general means food for livestock- I think you mean beef etc.

Lines 525- 565 Can you clarify that “most exposed” just means the highest values in your indexes earlier in the text- it might be useful to even in a non-quantitative way address how these factors might be altered under global change.  This would raise the impact of this material and would align better with the title of this work. Some of this is covered in later sections- but more integration with the results would strengthen the paper.

Figure 3 is cut off in the review manuscript

Author Response

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