Global Mangrove Deforestation and Its Interacting Social-Ecological Drivers: A Systematic Review and Synthesis

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors, you are presenting a great piece of paper and research.

I only add some recommendations in the attached PDF.

All the best.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear authors, you are presenting a great piece of paper and research.

I only add some recommendations in the attached PDF.

All the best.

Dear Reviewer,

We are grateful for your inspiring comments. Below are the point-by-point responses to your comments:

P 1 L 27-28: what about increased salinization and acidity of the coasts???

We have now indicated these drivers in P 1 L 28.

P 11 L 390-391: There are a few examples of cases which deforestaton were reversed, check and add the following case:

Acuña-Piedra, J. F., & Quesada-Román, A. (2021). Multidecadal biogeomorphic dynamics of a deltaic mangrove forest in Costa Rica. Ocean & Coastal Management, 211, 105770.

We have added reference to this case in P 15 L 559, where it was the most appropriate.

P 13 L 470: Excellent figure!!

Thank you.

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper well represent the global mangrove deforestation. This is a interesting and good paper.  I suggest this paper should be acceptted after minor revision.

1. The language should be polished by a special professor.
2. I suggest author added more data about Asia and Africa
3. The author should add a schime about the method and procedure.

Author Response

This paper well represent the global mangrove deforestation. This is a interesting and good paper.  I suggest this paper should be acceptted after minor revision.

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for your comments. Below are the point-by-point responses to your comments:

1. The language should be polished by a special professor.

The language of the paper has been thoroughly checked and revised for grammatical and spelling errors and logical flows.

2. I suggest author added more data about Asia and Africa.

We have now added more data about Asia and Africa, particularly in the drivers interaction section. 

3. The author should add a schime about the method and procedure.

We are grateful for this comment and added a figure illustrating the schema for our systematic literature review is now added to the Appendix A. We have also added a sentence referring to this schema in L 119-121.

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper has presented the result of a review of about two hundred published scientific articles  that dealt with key social-ecological drivers of global mangrove deforestation focusing on both natural and anthropogenic drivers of deforestation. It reported a decline in mangrove coverage  over the last four decades and identified threatened species.   The paper has also reported aquaculture and agriculture as the predominant driver of deforestation of mangroves. The possible contribution of this study is on interaction of drivers of mangrove deforestation and synthesis of social-ecological drivers of the same. 

Below are my comments (minor and major):

I. Minor comments:

• line 26: Is "impacts varied" a typo error? If not, what do you mean by that?
• Lines 37-38: "comprise" may not be an appropriate word; "an unique" to "a unique"; consider revising the sentence
• Lines 60-63: the phrase "now endemic" is confusing here. Does it mean these species can be found around the globe but are now endemic to the mentioned regions? But the preceding sentences are somehow contradicting to this statement.
• Line 108: "ranges"-> do you mean "coverage"?
• Line 126: "urbanizations" to "urbanization"
• Line 218: remove "is"
• Line 220: "use" to "which used"
• Line 222:  "which" to "but"
• Line 225: wrong Table number: "3" to "2"  
• Line 292: "will" to "may"
• Lines 321-325: Consider revising the sentence for clarity.
• Line 327: incomplete phrase -> "sudden.."
• Lines 361-366: Consider revising the sentence for clarity.
• Line 364: "was related" to "were related" OR "were reported to be the cause"? It's confusing, please revise.
• Lines 376-377: The order of presentation is not correct. Better to mention first the country with highest mangrove area conversion then the next up to the lowest.
• Line 400: remove "the" in "the urbanization"
• Line 401: "low-lying" to ""low-lying areas in the"
• Line 404-405: Consider revising the sentence for clarity. What do you mean by "geographic ranges"? Do you mean geographic locations or area?
• Line 428: What do you mean by "resulted"?  Consider revising the sentence for clarity.
• Line 480: "coastline is a strong" to "coastline is an example of a strong"
• Line 528: "with" to "to the"; remove "the" in "the mangrove"

II. Major comments:

• Line 276: the claim that "Summer heat waves are results of the global warning" is a strong claim.  The authors need to substantiate this with a number of references.  Climate change may induce a longer and more extreme and frequent heat waves but not its mere occurrence per se.
• Page 9: "Table 2" should be "Table 3".  Also, values inside the table are not explicitly defined. For instance, do these pertains to the count of the number of references/literatures reviewed?
  Discussion on 7. Interactions among drivers" is not clear. The authors should explicitly use the driving groups found in Figure 3 as a guide in the discussion and be consistent with the terms used.    
• Line 489: NDVI was mentioned but did not provide enough background on the use of this index.
• How about mangrove species that can withstand or easily recover from the effects of strong typhoons? Are they considered here? The natural ability of mangroves to recover without human intervention is not covered in this review article.  Or are these mangroves considered not deforested since they have recovered naturally?
• The low deforestation rate in some areas may be due to artificial reforestation. Other countries have aggressive reforestation efforts but some do not have reforestation programs at all.  Do the literatures reviewed have discussions on this?  This, I think, should also be included as this have an impact to the content of this review article.   

Author Response

The paper has presented the result of a review of about two hundred published scientific articles  that dealt with key social-ecological drivers of global mangrove deforestation focusing on both natural and anthropogenic drivers of deforestation. It reported a decline in mangrove coverage  over the last four decades and identified threatened species.   The paper has also reported aquaculture and agriculture as the predominant driver of deforestation of mangroves. The possible contribution of this study is on interaction of drivers of mangrove deforestation and synthesis of social-ecological drivers of the same. 

Below are my comments (minor and major):

Dear Reviewer,

We are very grateful for your comments. Below are the point-by-point responses to your comments:

I. Minor comments:

• line 26: Is "impacts varied" a typo error? If not, what do you mean by that?

The typo is now corrected in L 26.

• Lines 37-38: "comprise" may not be an appropriate word; "an unique" to "a unique"; consider revising the sentence

"comprise" has been replaced by "contain" in L 38 and "an unique" has been changed to "a unique" in L 39.

• Lines 60-63: the phrase "now endemic" is confusing here. Does it mean these species can be found around the globe but are now endemic to the mentioned regions? But the preceding sentences are somehow contradicting to this statement.

We are grateful for this comment. "endemic" is now replaced with "threatened to extinction" in L 67.

• Line 108: "ranges"-> do you mean "coverage"?

"geographic ranges" has been replaced with "geographic coverage" throughout the manuscript.

• Line 126: "urbanizations" to "urbanization"

Corrected in L 133.

• Line 218: remove "is"

"is" has been removed in L 220.

• Line 220: "use" to "which used"
• Line 222:  "which" to "but"
• Line 225: wrong Table number: "3" to "2"  
• Line 292: "will" to "may"
• Lines 321-325: Consider revising the sentence for clarity.
• Line 327: incomplete phrase -> "sudden.."
• Lines 361-366: Consider revising the sentence for clarity.
• Line 364: "was related" to "were related" OR "were reported to be the cause"? It's confusing, please revise.
• Lines 376-377: The order of presentation is not correct. Better to mention first the country with highest mangrove area conversion then the next up to the lowest.
• Line 400: remove "the" in "the urbanization"
• Line 401: "low-lying" to ""low-lying areas in the"
• Line 404-405: Consider revising the sentence for clarity. What do you mean by "geographic ranges"? Do you mean geographic locations or area?
• Line 428: What do you mean by "resulted"?  Consider revising the sentence for clarity.
• Line 480: "coastline is a strong" to "coastline is an example of a strong"
• Line 528: "with" to "to the"; remove "the" in "the mangrove"

We are grateful for these comments and all suggested modifications are conducted in the manuscript.

II. Major comments:

• Line 276: the claim that "Summer heat waves are results of the global warning" is a strong claim.  The authors need to substantiate this with a number of references.  Climate change may induce a longer and more extreme and frequent heat waves but not its mere occurrence per se.

We are grateful for this comment and have now rewrote the sentence in L 292-294.

• Page 9: "Table 2" should be "Table 3".  Also, values inside the table are not explicitly defined. For instance, do these pertains to the count of the number of references/literatures reviewed?

We agree and have now added an explanatory sentence for the values in Table 3 in L 333.

• Discussion on 7. Interactions among drivers" is not clear. The authors should explicitly use the driving groups found in Figure 3 as a guide in the discussion and be consistent with the terms used.

Section 7. " Interactions among drivers" is now thoroughly revised addressing this comment.

• Line 489: NDVI was mentioned but did not provide enough background on the use of this index.

We agree and have now replaced "reduced Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI)" with "degraded vegetation health" in L 528.

• How about mangrove species that can withstand or easily recover from the effects of strong typhoons? Are they considered here? The natural ability of mangroves to recover without human intervention is not covered in this review article.  Or are these mangroves considered not deforested since they have recovered naturally?

In this review, we studied net changes in the mangrove forests coverage. We clarified this is the methods section in L 158-159. Some mangrove species may indeed recover from the aftermath of cyclones but a net decline in mangrove forests coverage occurs as a result of the interactions with anthropogenic drivers. We elaborated on this in L 556-559.

• The low deforestation rate in some areas may be due to artificial reforestation. Other countries have aggressive reforestation efforts but some do not have reforestation programs at all.  Do the literatures reviewed have discussions on this?  This, I think, should also be included as this have an impact to the content of this review article.

We agree and expanded our discussion about mangrove forests restoration and reforestation in L 648-655.