Water Quality Monitoring Using Landsat 8 OLI in Pleasant Bay, Massachusetts, USA
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for Authors
· It is suggested to improve Figure 1 to facilitate understanding of the study area's location. It would be advisable to include precise geographic coordinates and a more detailed map that clearly highlights the location, placing it within a broader geographic context. This would allow the reader to more accurately identify the analyzed site.
· Considering that not all readers are familiar with the software's functionality, or the methodology used to correct images and generate data on water quality, it would be advisable to include a more detailed explanation of the process. This will not only facilitate understanding but also ensure a better assessment of the approach employed.
· It is suggested to expand the explanation of the methodology used by the MATLAB function(s) to implement the Random Forest algorithm. Additionally, it would be advisable to include a flowchart to provide a graphical understanding of the methodological process employed by Random Forest.
· It would be beneficial to strengthen the discussion of the results by comparing those obtained with each method or algorithm used for each evaluated parameter. It would be helpful to contrast the performance using the coefficient of determination and the mean squared error with similar studies conducted in bays or other areas with similar characteristics. This would provide a more comprehensive approach to assessing the suitability of the methodology employed.
· It is recommended to support all arguments or counterarguments used to explain any phenomenon or behavior with citations from previous studies that validate their plausibility or validity. This would strengthen the credibility of the presented analysis.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for Authors1. Lines 51-54: The author mentioned that Landsat 8 and 9 have a spatial resolution of 15-30 m, but the usability of the 15m panchromatic band in the field of water environment remote sensing has not been evaluated. So the default spatial resolution of Landsat series that can be used in the field of water environment remote sensing is 30m. Therefore, this sentence is somewhat misleading here, and it is suggested that the author revise it.
2. The author did not clearly state the research objectives of this study in the introduction. It is suggested that the author refer to the writing style of other relevant articles in the field of water environment remote sensing and clearly list the research objectives of this study in the last paragraph of the introduction.
3. The author used Landsat 8 and 9 sensors for remote sensing research on water quality parameters, but the consistency between these two sensors was not evaluated. It is suggested to supplement the consistency test of Landsat 8 and 9, or cite relevant literature to explain the consistency between the two sensors.
4. The final parameters selected by the random forest were not clearly given.
5. 2.1 and 2.2 are redundant in content, especially 2.1 introduces some irrelevant content to this study. It is recommended to delete and condense them as appropriate.
6. 2.3, 2.4, and 2.5 introduce the content of imaging and preprocessing, and it is not recommended to divide this section into two subsections. Firstly, the Landsat series sensors have been in use for decades, and their basic information is already well-known to the public. It is recommended to briefly introduce the band information. Secondly, both 2.4 and 2.5 are about image preprocessing content, there is no need to divide them into two chapters for introduction.
7. Suggest dividing the discussion into 2-3 chapters for discussion.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe overall idea of the paper is clear and the logical structure is complete, but there are still the following problems:
1. Lines 54-55/63-64, “Considerable research has examined......”. in coastal waters. References cited
2. It is suggested to add latitude and longitude to the study area map
3. In Chapter 2.2, it is suggested to describe in detail how to obtain three parameters of phaeopigments, total pigments, and chlorophyll-a in the laboratory. In addition, what is the impact of the lost data on this study?
4. Chapter 2.3, this chapter focuses on the way to obtain images, the criteria for selecting images and how to deal with cloud coverage that does not meet the experimental conditions. The introduction of Landsat satellites is too many and redundant. It is recommended to simplify.
5. There is less content in sections 3.1 to 3.4 of the results, so it is suggested that results generated by different methods should be reasonably integrated. In addition, the content described in the results is only superficial and fails to be discussed in depth.
6. It is necessary to improve the clarity of Figure 6 and Figure 7. Figure 6a, 6c as well as Figure 7a and 7c need to be optimized. There are too many numbers in the figures, which seriously affects readability. Besides, the horizontal line below Figure 2a should be removed.
7. The field measured data are from July to September. Figure 6 (a) and (c) only show the data from July to September to better highlight the relationship between the data.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThank you for addressing my comments. After reviewing the revised version, I find that my observations have been satisfactorily addressed, improving the manuscript. I have no further comments and support its publication.
Author Response
Thank you for your help in improving the manuscript.
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsI have only one minor issue. The data precision in Table 3 is inconsistent. Please standardize the number of decimal places to be retained. For a scientific paper, it is crucial to have consistent precision. Once this modification is completed, I will be happy to recommend the acceptance of this manuscript.
Author Response
We thank the reviewer for this comment.
We have modified Table 3 so that the precision is more consistent among the different variables. We also modified precision of some numbers in the text to be similar to that in Table 3. In addition, in Table 3 we now express p values in scientific notation and show the values for significant correlations in bold.
