The Spatio-Temporal Changes of Small Lakes of the Qilian Mountains from 1987 to 2020 and Their Driving Mechanisms

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

The manuscript is generally well-composed but could benefit from improvements to enhance readability and comprehension. The authors are advised to address occasional grammatical and syntax errors and to define acronyms, abbreviations, and technical terms upon their first use. Some sentences are lengthy and complex and could be simplified to improve clarity. By ensuring precision in language, misinterpretations can be minimized. With these changes, the manuscript would appeal to a broader readership and improve its clarity and impact.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

I really enjoyed reading your paper! It covers an interesting topic of lake distribution (number and area) over an interesting region (Tibetan plateau - mountainous region with glaciers and permafrost) over a decent period of time.

I really enjoyed introduction, analysis part and conclusion - you really spend time on text, figure preparation and this is reflected in the quality of the submitted manuscript.

My main comments are following:

1) quite a lot of abbreviation was used, which makes it really hard to read - I highly recommend to get rid of all minor abbreviations like PRE, TEM, EVA, WS, WF, FVC, TWS, RO, SWV, SDE, HA, MK; you can provide them for figure interpretation, but in the text it's better to use full words like precipitation, temperature, evaporation, etc.;

2) small lake area is greater than 1 km^2 (e.g. in Figure 3 it's 25-125 km^2) - is it total area of all lakes that are 1 km^2 or less or something else, please explain it in the text;

3) references to "threshold >0%" and "threshold =100%" mean fully seasonal and permanent lakes respectively? if yes, please add explanation at the beginning of the analysis part and adjust text after accordingly;

4) some sections where you explain methodology should be explained in more details to help reader better understand what was done and why - sections "3.5.1. Detection factors", "3.5.3. The optimum range of factors", and "3.5.4. Factors interacting with each other" should be expanded with explanation like why all contributions are not summing up to 100% or less (taking into account some unknown factors that might contribute too) or some other contribution was meant here (section 3.5.1.), what each level/ grade mean/ represent (section 3.5.3.), and what dual factor and non-linear enhancements mean/ represent (section 3.5.4.);

5) figures have colour combinations that are quite hard to distinguish when they are next to each other - could you choose a different colour palette;

6) numbers have different precision, e.g. one and no digits after comma within one sentence - please check text and figures and make adjustments accordingly.

Minor comments are following:

1) in the introduction you you say "large lakes (>1 km^2)" - in reality medium lakes (1-100 km^2) and large (>100 km^2), please adjust accordingly;

2) I assume OC means organic carbon, please adjust accordingly;

3) Figure 1, Figure 2 - hard to read words, please emphasise them;

4) section 2.3.2. "unveil reveal" - probably just one is needed;

5) section 2.3.2. "strifation" - sorry, not familiar with this term;

6) section 3.1. "annual increase is 43.75 per year ... 21.19 per year ..." - do you mean increase in lake number per year? please adjust accordingly;

7) Figure 3(c) - "fit of line" refers to all data together or to a certain threshold?

8) Figure 3(d) - legend misspells "lake", X-axis have "0-0.1 ... 0.9-1" instead of "0.0-0.1 ... 0.9-1.0", please adjust accordingly;

9) section 3.1. "incleare of 2.70 km^2 a^-1 ... increase of 1.57 km^2 a^-1 ..." - do you mean km^2 per year? please adjust accordingly;

10) section 3.2. "The change rate ..." - please add details what you mean by change rate and shrinkage rate here, how you calculate it; "greater than 100%" - is it meant per year or on average over 34 years? please adjust accordingly;

11) section 3.2. two last paragraphs - text contains a lot of numbers maybe it could be transferred to the table?

12)  Figure 13 - looks very impressive, but really hard to interpret, especially lower right panel - please try to improve it.

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

The authors are recommeended to avoid listing previous studies in Introduction without any (even quick) mention to their contributions. For instance, in the last paragraph of page 2, the authors have mentioned some previous studies [5, 29] with no direct meniton to what exactly they've done. The authors may either remove these types of referrences or provide a few words on the significance and contribution of them.

The research area is QTP, which contains lake ice. The authors are recommended to briefley address the importance of frozen lakes in their models. The authors may cite https://doi.org/10.1007/s11442-019-1587-0 as a research on Tibetan lake ice, and also refer to https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12172721 as a modern technique of lake ice monitoring.

The authors are recommended to provide a reference for the map they used in Figure 2 in the caption.

Author Response

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