Decadal Impacts of Climate Change on Rainfed Agriculture Community in Western Somaliland, Africa

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you giving me an opportunity to review the paper entitled ,, Decadal Impacts of climate change on Rainfed agriculture community in western Somaliland,,.

There are several suggestions given for the improvement of the paper:

1.The introduction section should briefly explain what is the issue, why is it an issue, how in the past/current this issue is being dealt with and final, the structure of the paper. Also, the introduction is difficult to understand as there are many sentences structure issue, and grammar mistakes. This paper required proofreading and editing services by native speaker.

2. What is the uniqueness of this study as compared with past empirical studies?

3. Material and method

The procedure of data collection is limited. Should provide more information about how authors collect the data, how to approach the respondent, how to identify them to participate in the survey?

4. Results are acceptable

5. Discussion. Please include, How the government intends to address the situation in the future?

Best regards

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

 

 The topic is appropriate for the Journal of Sustainability, however, I am concerned about the novelty of the study especially in methodology section. The methodology used for rainfall and temperature trend analysis has no novelty and is used frequently for trend analysis of hydro climatic data. In addition, the results pertaining to the second part of the manuscript have been reconfirmed trough qualitative analysis. Also the results have not been discussed fully and the reader is left with some superficial findings. For these reasons, I do not recommend be accepted in its current form.

 this article has sought to investigate the relationship between climate variables and the rained agriculture community in Western Somaliland, Africa. The idea of ​​this study is attractive, but the method used has serious shortcomings that question the validity of the results.

1- It would have been better for the authors to use more weather stations for the vast area under study. If there is a limitation of weather stations in the region, it would be better to use global gridded or reanalysis data.

2-In the trend analysis of climate variables, why haven’t the authors used Mann Kendall test? This method has been used extensively in many studies to analyze the trend of climate data.  It is also recommended that other variables such as the evapotranspiration, which directly determine the plant's water needs be used.

3-In the qualitative analysis section, it is not clear what the authors were looking for; because in my opinion, the results are a repetition of the previous section, only stated by the local community, and so these subjective results may not be as valid as the quantitative analysis. If the authors were looking for the relationship between climate change and rainfed agriculture, it would be better if they studied the land use changes during the study period. In this regard, they could reach the relevant result by analyzing the spatiotemporal variation of vegetation indices such as NDVI.

 

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper is about analysis of climate change impact on Rainfed Agriculture in Western Somaliland, Africa. The novelty of the paper is not clear and needs a major revision to reach the journal level. The comments are as follow:

Data validation and control is necessary and must add to the paper. Gap filling, Data control and validation of recorded data must discuss. Mass curve between yearly precipitations must control and samples add to verify data. Some stations do not follow other stations pattern. May be regionalization can improve your results. Table 1, Minimum and maximum precipitation, temperature need monthly variation.

The novelty of the work is not clear. The study related to this subject and different climate variation analysis in east Mediterranean countries is necessary. The work entitled Regionalization of watersheds based on the concept of rough set‏ and Regionalization of watersheds by finite mixture models‏. A feature weighting and selection method for improving the homogeneity of regions in regionalization of watersheds, investigated climate variation in east of Mediterranean which can help to improve the literature review and also it is good for example research. The introduction section and literature review must improve. At the end of introduction section you must discuses about innovation of your work compared with previous works. Also, you need clustering for analysis of variation. The suggested works are good sample and can improve the literature.

In evaluation of precipitation trends and variation, selection of indexes and indicators, statistical analysis and validation of results are important. These must discuss in the methodology. In the paper (Figure 3), only yearly precipitation Trend is discussed which is not enough. analysis for monthly precipitation variation and its relation with crop need is important and must discuss. Discussion about exposure, statistical analysis and … are necessary.

Page 13, Figure 8 needs more discussion and analysis. Compare results of Figure 8 with previous figures and statistical analysis of events. The year interval you consider for Figure 8 must discuss.

Figures 3 to 6 quality must improve. For presentation of drought analysis must use practical method. By trend test you can check the break point and then discuss about variations. The figures are not use full and also you have limitation for your paper. Figure 8 need more introductions.

Conclusion section is very short and must improve. Talking about trends is not enough. Variation of precipitation between season and different month must discuss. More introductions about crop production variation due to climate change impact are important.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Based on the respected authors’ responses, I did not find any improvements in the methodology section and the lack of novelty issues which was reflected in my first review report still remain. Therefore, due to the weak methodology which has seriously affected the validity of the results, I cannot change my first recommendation and therefore do not suggest the manuscript for publication in the present state.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper is well revised. It is important the author compare their results with neighboring country results published in the papers. Please add them to your work.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 2 Report

Based on clarifications and limitations that provided by the authors in use of methods and data, I think the manuscript may be accepted for publication
Kind regards