Morphological Characteristics of Tidal Creeks in the Central Coastal Region of Jiangsu, China, Using LiDAR

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

dear Editor and Authors, the manuscript shows an interesting work about tidal creeks, obtained with the analysis of aerial Lidar survey. Introduction and Results are well reported, whereas the Methods section should be revised. Discussion is missing, since just more results are shown. Figure are mostly well done. Unfortunately, the text and the structure are quite poor, so English must be definetely improved and the structure of the manuscripts done with a logical sequence of concepts. Here down I leave my suggestions. 

Overall, the structure of the paper should also be revised. As suggestion, try to use less Heading 3 (ex. 3.1.1) and try to explain with Heading 2 what you are going to show. For example, 2.3.1 + 2.3.2 +2.3.3 can be just removed, and 2.3  saying Tidal Creek exctraction/detection.

Although I am not an English mothertongue, in the manuscript English must need to be deeply revised. Avoid the use of ";", check the length of your phrases, and try to explain clearly the concepts. The reading is often "heavy" and in many parts, and I could not understand what you want to state in many others.

17-end of Abstract: please check punctuation and try to re-write explaining better the results

Figure 1 add inset in a) with world location. d)-g) locations should be indicated in c), it would help to read better the Figure. Although you speak of zonation in the Intridcution, the text should specify briefly the zonation you show in c), because the caption does not help

2.2.1 airborne Lidar. You should specify that firstly, they conducted a fly. Also in the introduction and Abstract, please always specify "airborne" or "aerial" Lidar, to distinguish from terrestrial Lidar survey.

112-113 vertical accuracy is about 0.25m

156-162 please explain better , in particular how a tidal creek order is defined.

2.2.2 rewrite with shorter phrases, explaining one single concept in each one.

2.2.3 I did not understand. Please , explain carefully why registering the images and DEM, how you surveyed in the field, and what you did with UAV. Finally, you need to say here how and with which scope you used this data in this work.

2.3.1 although the method is "explained in literature", a reader should be able to understand it reading your paper. COnsider, for example, to add a flowchart which shows the steps explained in 138-146.

2.3.1 -2.3.2 - 2.3.3 these should be togheter, and be introduced explaining that you analyse the DEM to extract the tidal creeks. just Figure 3 should be shown

2.3.4 can be also put prior the extraction in the manuscript 

RESULTS

Figure 2 is your first result and should be created a 2.4.1 with that 

307-314 it is quite confused and may be some mistakes...please rewrite trying to clarify the concepts.

Discussion. Your Discussion is bascally one more section of Results, so please move it to Results. Discussion should describe in general your findings and results, discussing advantages and backwards of your analysis, and comparing your results with other works. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors have presented clear relationships between different tidal creek parameters (drawn from LiDAR and other data sets) applied through a case study. The work could readily be applied to other regions. 

The recommendation is for minor revisions, which have been identified in the attached manuscript with comments and general comments below:

Ensure clarity across all figures, especially legibility of text. For example, Figure 2 is very busy. Try increase clarity and decrease text.  Additional information should be provided on the way in which the LiDAR data was collected and the method for atmospheric correction. Consideration of adding a reference to work by I. Florinsky on curvature mapping. Minor grammatical considerations.

Kind regards,

Author Response

Comments and Suggestions for Authors: The authors have presented clear relationships between different tidal creek parameters (drawn from LiDAR and other data sets) applied through a case study. The work could readily be applied to other regions.

The recommendation is for minor revisions, which have been identified in the attached manuscript with comments and general comments below:

Point 1:  I Ensure clarity across all figures, especially legibility of text. For example, Figure 2 is very busy. Try increase clarity and decrease text.  Additional information should be provided on the way in which the LiDAR data was collected and the method for atmospheric correction. Consideration of adding a reference to work by I. Florinsky on curvature mapping. Minor grammatical considerations.

Response 1: First of all, we are really very grateful for your positive comments, and we thank you for offering this constructive suggestion.

We have checked and modified the clarity of all the figures. For example, in the original manuscript, Figure 1 (a) were added the global location of the study area, and indicated for (d–g) in Figure 1 (c) (Page 3, Line 99). In addition, the Figure 2(a) were removed the repetitive text labelling with Figure 1 (c) and changed the gray tidal creek to light blue, making it more visually intuitive. In the partial enlarged view of Figure 2 (b–j), the width of the tidal creek as well as the boundary of the tidal basin are reduced to increase the clarity (Page 7, Line 219).

The LiDAR-derived DEM data used in this paper was collected and processed by the Jiangsu Provincial Bureau of Surveying, Mapping and Geo-information, China (JPBSMG, http://jschj.jiangsu.gov.cn/). They conducted an aerial Lidar survey of the tidal flat and radial sandbars in the central Jiangsu coast during the low tide period from April to May, 2006 (Page 3, Line 112–113). The data used in this study is a DEM product with a spatial resolution of 5- m after undergoing Lidar atmospheric correction processing. 

In addition, we have supplemented necessary references by I. Florinsky on curvature mapping, as suggested in the revised manuscript (Page 2, Line 68).

Many thanks again for your comments and constructive suggestions for improving the quality of this manuscript.

References

Florinsky, I. Quantitative topographic method of fault morphology recognition. Geomorphology. 1996, 16, 103–119.

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors, 

I indeed acknowledge how much effort and time you have invested in this manuscript. The manuscript is interesting and provides sufficient information on how to extract/characterize tidal creeks. However what I felt is lacking the proper presentation of the Idea, Story line and conclusions. You have provided considerable number of results however discussion part only describes the results without a story, no flow of story, does not feel you have connected the characteristics of tidal creeks etc. 

Moreover, I would suggest to highlight the importance of your research, I do not see what is insight of this research, what is new? what do you exactly offering to the scientific society? the method? are you characterizing the area for some further developmental purposes? ecological meaning? I have got lost. 

63 - 78 saying "more detailed information" does not sound convincing, please go straight to the point and explain what is more detailed that haven't been done before.  

203 - 212 - what does it mean " manually delineated the boundary" ? based on what information? division of zones is not clear as well. Description should be provided on what has been done with landsat image.

I would suggest to come up with interesting story line and rewrite the discussion accordingly. Put the manuscript either in methodological stream, providing new tools for analyzes, comparison with previous studies, highlighting /proving the reliability of your results  or some ecological  / environmental  meaning, mechanisms etc. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Editor and Authors, the manuscript  improved significantly after the review. All my recommendations were carefully followed and satisfied, therefore I suggest the paper for publication.

As final comment, I congrats the Authors for the effort and the commitment spent in the review work.