A Technological Approach to Support Extensive Livestock Management in the Portuguese Montado Ecosystem

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The research work is quite important in term of livestock production system based on soil and pasture management, but required some attention to improve the analysis performed in delineating management zones.

-Line 36-37: What is Agriculture-3.0 and Agri-4.0 concepts? Please explain in the text or rephrase the sentence.

-Line 94.96: Please recheck, NDVI index is very sensitive and undulating (ups & downs) index during full season/year, so how you can make important decisions based on these info., the high NDVI values maybe due to several reasons i.e early growing season, high water availability, higher vegetative growth and also depending on specific growth stage., and low NDVI might be due to several factors/reasons…at the end, multi-data sources are required to have concrete field status for the decision management.

-Line 185-201: please delete the extra info regarding what you did so far…because these info is already available in the literature, so give the reference of the protocol you followed and stay with to-the-point. I suggest you to follow this rule throughout the MS.

-Why only ECa and topographic data were used to delineate the management zones? Why you have given so much importance to ECa survey, what was the ECa level of the soil, by me your field exhibited low ECa, if low then it hardly effect the productivity? How you integrate the data layers and solve the weight of the one parameter over other? Please explain in the text, and perform the analysis. How you fixed the three number of groups based on what information, any method used?

-What was the logic to not use the soil properties, ECa and other parameters influencing field productivity, integrating them for management zones?

-Overall, please double check the analysis performed and possibly compile the important parameters for developing the potential management zones.

-Line 207-223: Again, required reference of the protocol you followed, except few other info…follow this strategy throughout the MS.

-2.7 section….How you processing the imagery, what software? Any upscaling/downscaling technique was used for imagery resolution (10m, 20m) in the study? Or performed interpolation?

-Table 2-delete SD because CV is covering this variation in data, even same from other tables…

-Legend, graph, figures, tables-normally first starting from high, intermediate and then low class, in your case opposite.

-I suggest you, use only one North arrow and scale for one figure, example figure 9-in fact you have same scale and same direction for N. Follow this rule throughout your MS.

-Overall, results and conclusions are well explained, but if some new analysis will be performed by the author then results could be more consolidated in term of HMZs.

Author Response

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The research work is quite important in term of livestock production system based on soil and pasture management but required some attention to improve the analysis performed in delineating management zones.

R- The authors are grateful for all reviewers' suggestions and comments, which contributed decisively to the improvement of the article.

-Line 36-37: What is Agriculture-3.0 and Agri-4.0 concepts? Please explain in the text or rephrase the sentence.

R-The suggestion was accepted: the sentence was rewritten.

-Line 94-96: Please recheck, NDVI index is very sensitive and undulating (ups & downs) index during full season/year, so how you can make important decisions based on these info., the high NDVI values maybe due to several reasons i.e early growing season, high water availability, higher vegetative growth and also depending on specific growth stage., and low NDVI might be due to several factors/reasons…at the end, multi-data sources are required to have concrete field status for the decision management.

R- Limitations associated with the use of the NDVI index were included in the text of the manuscript, as well as the reviewer's suggestion regarding the need for multi-data sources for decision management. Thank you very much.

-Line 185-201: please delete the extra info regarding what you did so far…because these info is already available in the literature, so give the reference of the protocol you followed and stay with to-the-point. I suggest you to follow this rule throughout the MS.

R-The suggestion was accepted: the text was rewritten accordingly.

-Why only ECa and topographic data were used to delineate the management zones? Why you have given so much importance to ECa survey, what was the ECa level of the soil, by me your field exhibited low ECa, if low then it hardly effect the productivity? How you integrate the data layers and solve the weight of the one parameter over other? Please explain in the text, and perform the analysis. How you fixed the three number of groups based on what information, any method used?

-What was the logic to not use the soil properties, ECa and other parameters influencing field productivity, integrating them for management zones?

-Overall, please double check the analysis performed and possibly compile the important parameters for developing the potential management zones.

R- Soil data were only used for validation of the HMZs and not in their definition because the intention was to demonstrate the value of using expedient and relatively inexpensive technologies (such as EC_a) for application in an extensive livestock production ecosystem with low profit margins. Laboratory soil analysis is a time-consuming and expensive process, therefore, unaffordable as a means of supporting the agricultural manager's decision making.

In these sandy fields, with a low EC_a as well as low levels of some important soil properties, such as P₂O₅, topographical variables are of utmost importance in explaining the soil fertility (Moral et al., 2019) [16], possibly due to the fact that they determine the other soil properties, such as the textural components and, particularly, the finer soil fraction which is related to higher amount of soil nutrients and moisture. In this sense, the spatial variability of EC_a is related to the clay spatial pattern.

 

Section 2.8 explains the technique used to integrate both layers. The number of groups was selected based on a practical perspective, as an excessive number of classes is not recommended.

-Line 207-223: Again, required reference of the protocol you followed, except few other info…follow this strategy throughout the MS.

R-The suggestion was accepted: the text was rewritten accordingly.

-2.7 section….How you processing the imagery, what software? Any upscaling/downscaling technique was used for imagery resolution (10m, 20m) in the study? Or performed interpolation?

R-The suggestion was accepted: images processing has been added.

-Table 2-delete SD because CV is covering this variation in data, even same from other tables…

R- The suggestion was accepted: SD has been deleted.

-Legend, graph, figures, tables-normally first starting from high, intermediate and then low class, in your case opposite.

R- The suggestion was accepted.

-I suggest you, use only one North arrow and scale for one figure, example figure 9-in fact you have same scale and same direction for N. Follow this rule throughout your MS.

R- The suggestion was accepted.

-Overall, results and conclusions are well explained, but if some new analysis will be performed by the author then results could be more consolidated in term of HMZs.

R- As mentioned above, this study used only EC_a and topographical variables in the definition of HMZ because the intention is to demonstrate the value of expedient and relatively inexpensive technologies, accessible to the farm manager at field scale. The reviewer's proposal may be interesting from a validation and consolidation perspective to develop in a future paper, but it would not be plausible at this stage as it would imply a drastic change in the content of the manuscript.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Title: Technological Approach to Support Extensive Livestock Management: Case Study Based on Soil and Pasture Monitoring

General comments:

The manuscript titled "Technological Approach to Support Extensive Livestock Management: Case Study Based on Soil and Pasture Monitoring" by Serrano et al. has been reviewed. The paper is well written and provides an exciting and timely subject on the state of the art of remote sensing applications for monitoring soil and pasture in the context of extensive livestock production systems in the study area (Portugal). Furthermore, I feel that a compelling aspect of their study presented in the manuscript fits well with the journal's scope and is of great interest to the readers, adding to the body of knowledge in the field. Therefore, I recommend its publication once a few minor issues that could potentially improve the paper's clarity have been revised.

• I think the manuscript title should be revised slightly. Therefore, I propose a rewording of the title to "A Technological Approach to Support Extensive Livestock Management in the Portuguese Montado Ecosystem."
• Concerning the abstract section, the abstract needs some revision and, therefore, could be strengthened with the addition of some numerical results before they give their conclusion and recommendation.
• The material and methods are well described. The authors aided the section with engaging figures elucidating their methodology approach. However, the map of the study area (Figure 2) is incomplete. It must be improved to depict better the landscape being studied.
• The results and discussion section were well done. The authors have presented the results using references and a thorough discussion that convincingly supports their arguments.
• The conclusions might benefit from including some additional updates from the results section.
• Overall, the paper reads well as is and must be checked for moderate English language changes. 
• I have provided a few comments to the attached manuscript (agronomy-1694858-peer-review-v1) for your perusal: 

Specific comments:

Please see my specific comments below: 

Line 36-37: Please provide a reference (s).

Line 38: replace attractive instead of interesting

Line 40: Please give the full description of the acronym "AP" in its first appearance. There are also other acronyms like this in the paper; please check and correct them accordingly.

Line 47: It is food not “the food”

Line 53: Remove “a”

Line 95: replace regarding instead of in regard to.

Line 118–122: The graphical abstract is well drawn but poorly explained. The authors must add more explanations to strengthen the section better.

Line 136-139: Please add a map demonstrating where the Montado area is found in southern Portugal. It is also important to insert the essential map components, including grid and graticule, into your map layout.

Line 263-265: Please rewrite the sentence for a better explanation: With only about a year's worth of data, it cannot represent historical NDVI and NDWI trends.

Line 322-330: Table 3 is very long. I suggest that the authors move the table into the appendix section or provide it as supplementary materials.

Line 468-470: The NDVI is undoubtedly a well-known vegetation index (VI). While valuable, NDVI suffers from scaling issues and saturation signals at higher densities, besides being susceptible to canopy background fluxes, with the most significant decrease occurring at dense canopy background brightness (Huete, 1998; doi:10.1016/0034-4257(88)90106-X). Can one use a single or multiple VIs extracted from optical and the backscattering coefficient derived from synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) data (e.g., C-band from Sentinel-1 satellite)? Please explain this case briefly. Also, it might be considered prospective future work if it is plausible.

Line 753–758: These lines were difficult to read and comprehend. I recommend that the authors rephrase it as "This work can be replicated in several other areas in order to obtain a better representation of the complexity and diversity of this ecosystem, thus integrating inter-annual climate variability and the adaptive response of the pasture, namely through the evaluation of the floristic composition as a bio-indicator, which also envisages, in this application, the potential of remote sensing technologies" or else remove the unnecessary word or split the sentence into two separate sentences. 

 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Title: Technological Approach to Support Extensive Livestock Management: Case Study Based on Soil and Pasture Monitoring

General comments:

The manuscript titled "Technological Approach to Support Extensive Livestock Management: Case Study Based on Soil and Pasture Monitoring" by Serrano et al. has been reviewed. The paper is well written and provides an exciting and timely subject on the state of the art of remote sensing applications for monitoring soil and pasture in the context of extensive livestock production systems in the study area (Portugal). Furthermore, I feel that a compelling aspect of their study presented in the manuscript fits well with the journal's scope and is of great interest to the readers, adding to the body of knowledge in the field. Therefore, I recommend its publication once a few minor issues that could potentially improve the paper's clarity have been revised.

R- Thank you very much. The authors are grateful for all the reviewers' suggestions and comments, which contributed decisively to the improvement of the article.

I think the manuscript title should be revised slightly. Therefore, I propose a rewording of the title to "A Technological Approach to Support Extensive Livestock Management in the Portuguese Montado Ecosystem." R- The suggestion was accepted: the title was reworded accordingly.

 

Concerning the abstract section, the abstract needs some revision and, therefore, could be strengthened with the addition of some numerical results before they give their conclusion and recommendation.

R- While we understand the reviewer's suggestion, this exploratory study uses soil, grazing and pasture data, and associates proximal and remote sensors, and it would be difficult to select results to include in this section, particularly when the word limit has already been reached (Agronomy journal manuscript preparation: “The abstract should be a total of about 200 words maximum”). 

 

The material and methods are well described. The authors aided the section with engaging figures elucidating their methodology approach. However, the map of the study area (Figure 2) is incomplete. It must be improved to depict better the landscape being studied. R- The suggestion was accepted: the map of the study area was improved accordingly. 

 

The results and discussion section were well done. The authors have presented the results using references and a thorough discussion that convincingly supports their arguments. R-Thank you very much.

 

The conclusions might benefit from including some additional updates from the results section.

R- As mentioned above in relation to the "Abstract" section, this being an exploratory study of the demonstration of technological potential, after relatively exhaustive and complex sections of presentation and discussion of results, it seemed more appropriate not to repeat results in the final section (conclusions), but rather to leave perspectives for future studies.

 

Overall, the paper reads well as is and must be checked for moderate English language changes.  R-Thank you very much. The text was checked, and the changes incorporated in the new version of manuscript.

 

I have provided a few comments to the attached manuscript (agronomy-1694858-peer-review-v1) for your perusal: 

I think the abstract could be strengthened by numerical results, before giving the conclusions and recommendations. R- Please refer to answer above.

Line 125: Please use superscript for the symbol degrees. R- Corrected.

Figure 2- Please add a map showing where the Montado area is found in southern Portugal. It is also important to insert the grid and graticule to your map layout. R- Accepted: the new Figure 2 incorporates these suggestions from the reviewer.

Line 200- Is that the ArcGIS Desktop software? R- Accepted: the text has been rewritten accordingly.

Table 1 - Please add the Sentinel-2 data path and raw.  R- Accepted: the new Table 1 incorporates these suggestions from the reviewer.

Lines 263-265: Please rewrite the sentence for a better explanation: With only about a year worth of data, it cannot definitely represent historical NDVI and NDWI trends. R- Accepted. The text has been rewritten accordingly.

Lines 401-403: Could you kindly reword the statement to make it clearer? R- Accepted. The text has been rewritten accordingly.

Figure 9- The maps are nicely crafted. However, it is not clear why the authors inserted the background satellite imagery; it should be avoided. And name the figures first, then call them in the map caption.

- Accepted: the new Figure 9 incorporates these suggestions from the reviewer.

Line 452- There is no need to repeat this sentence here, as it has already been mentioned in subsection 2.7. “Vegetation multispectral measurements”

R- Accepted: this sentence was used only in “Results” section.

Lines 507-509: Please rephrase the statement as follows for a better explanation: “The significant spatial variability of soil (particularly K2O, CEC, P2O5, and OM) and pasture (DM, CP and NDF) parameters revealed in our study confirms the findings of previous studies in the same ecosystem in Portugal (4,26) and Spain (23,24). R- Accepted. The text has been rewritten accordingly.

Lines 685-687: Please reword the statement to provide a more proper understanding for the general readers. R- Accepted. The text has been rewritten accordingly.

Lines 747-751: The statement is very long. Please slit it into two sentences. - Accepted. The text has been rewritten accordingly.

 

Specific comments:

Please see my specific comments below: 

Line 36-37: Please provide a reference (s). R- This text was removed.

Line 38: replace attractive instead of interesting. R-Accepted. The text has been rewritten accordingly.

Line 40: Please give the full description of the acronym "AP" in its first appearance. There are also other acronyms like this in the paper; please check and correct them accordingly. R-Accepted. The text has been rewritten accordingly.

Line 47: It is food not “the food”. R-Accepted. The text has been rewritten accordingly.

Line 53: Remove “a”. R-Accepted. The text has been rewritten accordingly.

Line 95: replace regarding instead of in regard to. R-Accepted. The text has been rewritten accordingly.

Line 118–122: The graphical abstract is well drawn but poorly explained. The authors must add more explanations to strengthen the section better. R-Accepted. As suggested, text has been added to help explain the graphical abstract.

Line 136-139: Please add a map demonstrating where the Montado area is found in southern Portugal. It is also important to insert the essential map components, including grid and graticule, into your map layout. R-Accepted: the new Figure 2 incorporates these suggestions from the reviewer.

Line 263-265: Please rewrite the sentence for a better explanation: With only about a year's worth of data, it cannot represent historical NDVI and NDWI trends. R-Accepted. This question has already been answered above.

Line 322-330: Table 3 is very long. I suggest that the authors move the table into the appendix section or provide it as supplementary materials. R- We understand the reviewer's suggestion, however, we feel that the content of Table 3 (Descriptive statistical of pasture parameters) is essential for the presentation of results and should be part of the body of the article. If the editor deems it pertinent, Table 3 can be subdivided into two tables (table 3 and continuation), by dates. We leave this suggestion to the consideration of the editor of Agronomy journal.

Line 468-470: The NDVI is undoubtedly a well-known vegetation index (VI). While valuable, NDVI suffers from scaling issues and saturation signals at higher densities, besides being susceptible to canopy background fluxes, with the most significant decrease occurring at dense canopy background brightness (Huete, 1998; doi:10.1016/0034-4257(88)90106-X). Can one use a single or multiple VIs extracted from optical and the backscattering coefficient derived from synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) data (e.g., C-band from Sentinel-1 satellite)? Please explain this case briefly. Also, it might be considered prospective future work if it is plausible. R- Accepted. The article suggest by the reviewer (Huete, 1988) was included, as well as the possible use of SAR in future studies.

Line 753–758: These lines were difficult to read and comprehend. I recommend that the authors rephrase it as "This work can be replicated in several other areas in order to obtain a better representation of the complexity and diversity of this ecosystem, thus integrating inter-annual climate variability and the adaptive response of the pasture, namely through the evaluation of the floristic composition as a bio-indicator, which also envisages, in this application, the potential of remote sensing technologies" or else remove the unnecessary word or split the sentence into two separate sentences.  R-Accepted. The text has been rewritten accordingly.

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Manuscript has been improved by the authors.