Deformation Monitoring and Trend Analysis of Reservoir Bank Landslides by Combining Time-Series InSAR and Hurst Index

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

1.The abstract needs to be broaden in respect of findings of this research.

2.Introduction section could be improved by incorporating more literature part. Generally, it may include four paragraphs, a brief overview, literature, the research gap and the objectives of the study. Currently, it is very concisely combined together.

3.Figure 1 legends are not clear.

4.Abbreviations used in the flow chart of figure 4 are not given as footnote.

5. Define the objectives as the major objectives of the study included (a)…; (b)…. In the last paragraph of the Introduction.

6.  Some of the abbreviations need to be specified as they arrived first in the manuscript. Check throughout the manuscript.

7.The cumulative displacement curves and the corresponding Hurst index of MP1, MP2 and MP6 are done in figure 10 then correct the caption.

8.The authors have shown that data set of 2018-22 is used but results have shown only dataset till 2021.Look into this.

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

The work "Deformation Monitoring and Trend Analysis of Reservoir Bank Landslides by Combining Time-Series InSAR and Hurst Index", submitted by Zhang et al., is well within the scope of the journal and the special issue. The work deals with the application of the InSAR technique for reservoir landslide monitoring. It combines Multi-Temporal InSAR with Hurst Index. The Study is indeed very interesting to read. The authors have tried to present the study in a good way.

The authors can make Literature review more comprehensive. Apart from famous case studies of The Three Gorges Reservoir, they can also refer the case studies across the world. when citing casualties and destruction due to the Reservoir landslide, authors should mention Vajont Landslide. You can also refer to the following for case studies other than China which have used InSAR for Reservoir Landslides.

Reyes-Carmona, C., Barra, A., Galve, J. P., Monserrat, O., Pérez-Peña, J. V., Mateos, R. M., ... & Azañón, J. M. (2020). Sentinel-1 DInSAR for monitoring active landslides in critical infrastructures: The case of the rules reservoir (Southern Spain). Remote Sensing, 12(5), 809.

Mishra, V., & Jain, K. (2022). Satellite-based assessment of artificial reservoir induced landslides in data scarce environment: A case study of Baglihar reservoir in India. Journal of Applied Geophysics, 205, 104754.

Which orbit was used for Sentinel-1A data? Ascending or descending or both? What was the density of scatterers obtained in the analysis?

The resolution of the figures (Fig no.  4, 5, 6, 7, 11, 12,13) needs to be improved. Figure 11, the box of legend is incomplete. In many figures, legends are not legible.

The limitations of the Research are well described.

In line 168-169, the authors say "The relationship between the deformation trend and influencing factors are analyzed in detail with the reservoir water level, rainfall and geological data". They have not much emphasised geological data. The authors should provide a geological map of the area and should delve into more depth if they want to analyse the results with respect to the geology of the area.

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

This is an interesting work which study the topic of deformation monitoring and trend analysis of reservoir bank landslides by combining time-series InSAR and Hurst Index. This study provides new ideas and solutions for disaster prevention and mitigation in reservoir areas. However, the manuscript should be improved to a large degree to make it more readable. My comments are as follows:

1) Line 148: "...5 GPS stations from 2016 to the present from Chongqing Geo- hazard Monitoring System. The GPS stations are shown in Figure 7." I can hardly find out where the GPS stations located in Figure 7. I suggest to label the GPS stations clearly in Fig.1.

2) Introduce the meanning of subscripts in Eq.(3).

3) Section 3.4 is very hard to be followed up by the readers. Consider to rewrite this part, especially, pay attention to the introduction of the equations and symbols.

4) The table in the end of Section 3 lacks title. Besides, how were the thresholds of v and H in this table set? Try to expain the reasonability of these settings.

5) Section 4.1: The deformation rate of most landslides estimated by the proposed method is not very (mostly, between -15mm to  0). However, in table 2, it shows that the derivations between the estimation results and validation results are above 10mm (relatively high with regard to the estimation results). Can we really say that the estimation results of deformation rate are reliable?

6) In all the figures, the authors used to the numbers to denote the locations of the landslides. But in the text, the authors used their names when mentioned them. I think this is not a readable way (although they have list them in Table 1). Maybe, consider to list the name of the landslides in the figures or take some other means.

Author Response

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Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript can be accepted in its present form.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your comments.

Reviewer 3 Report

Well done! I have no more problems.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your comments.