Developing a Regional Network for the Assessment of Evapotranspiration

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper is very interesting and reports the results of a very long and extensive experimental research on prototype (CORDOBA-ET) able to calculate potential and crop evapotranspiration based on energy balance methods.

Anyway, the paper is too long and some parts must be moved on the additional materials. Another weak point is that some data are reported both on the graphics and on tables: I advise the authors to integrate into the graphics the main regression information reported in the tables.

In particular:

rows 287-289: the text refers to the instructions on how to write the paper. Please remove them

Paragraph 3.2 CORDOVA-ET system upgrades: this part is very long with too many details. It must be summarized or moved in the supplementary material

FIGURE 3: The same data are reported in Table 5. Please insert data of the table 5 in the figure 3

In addition,  the scale of X must be equal to Y. Please insert in the graf the regression equation and the regression coefficient reported in table 5

TABLE 5 could be deleted

Also in supplementary materials seems to have the same problem with data on graphs and tables.

Author Response

The paper is very interesting and reports the results of a very long and extensive experimental research on prototype (CORDOBA-ET) able to calculate potential and crop evapotranspiration based on energy balance methods.  
We would like to thank you for the very valuable feedback and comments on the manuscript. Your suggestions have identified some issues which we have not considered initially and will help to improve the quality of the final manuscript.  

Anyway, the paper is too long and some parts must be moved on the additional materials. Another weak point is that some data are reported both on the graphics and on tables: I advise the authors to integrate into the graphics the main regression information reported in the tables.  
Thank you for the suggestion. We have summarized some sections and some elements have been restructured, specifically paragraph 3.2. and 3.5. Also, as you suggest the graph and table have been merged.  

In particular: 

rows 287-289: the text refers to the instructions on how to write the paper. Please remove them.  
Certainly, this paragraph is not applicable to the document. It has been deleted.  

Paragraph 3.2 CORDOVA-ET system upgrades: this part is very long with too many details. It must be summarized or moved in the supplementary material.  
Paragraph 3.2. has been restructured and summarized to make it more readable and direct. 

FIG. 3: The same data are reported in Table 5. Please insert data of the table 5 in the figure 3.  
Data from Table 5 have been inserted in Graph 3. 

In addition,  the scale of X must be equal to Y. Please insert in the graf the regression equation and the regression coefficient reported in table 5.  
Graphs have been modified and improved considering the scale of the axes and other aspects 

TABLE 5 could be deleted.  
As data have been integrated in graph 3, the table has been deleted. 

Also in supplementary materials seems to have the same problem with data on graphs and tables.  
To avoid repetitive information, all graphs included the data from the tables, which have been deleted. 

Reviewer 2 Report

This manuscript describes an important project that will be of interest to the audience of this journal.  However, there are several serious flaws that must be corrected. 

First, the manuscript is too long and is presented more an a project report, rather than as a focused report of scientific findings.  The Jimenez-Berni et al. paper [7] is not published so it is impossible to verify, but it seems that much of the detail in the paper may be duplicative of that paper.  Also, it seems like 3 different topics are all combined, not successfully, into this one manuscript: a technical description of instrumentation and network details, performance evaluation of the instrumentation and network details, and human/institutional challenges to operating and managing a multi-national, multi-institutional network.  I think a series of 3 papers that focused on these 3 different aspect would be preferable.

For the technical, I suggest that the focus be on the final design, with minimal detail about early, unsuccessful designs.  In the discussion or a supplement, some "heads up" about lessons learned could be included. Also, since low cost method was key, some indication of the cost of the system compared to other technologies available would be important.  It is a major contribution to include the canopy temperature and ETa in a low-cost instrument design. 

For the performance evaluation, it would be good to focus only on the sites and site years that produced usable data for analysis.  As written, it starts off as if all nations and all sites had data collection in 5 years.  However, going through the paper, that is far from the case.  In addition to performance evaluation, analysis of ETa for different cropping systems in this regions would be very valuable.

The challenges of managing a complex network such as this merits it's own paper, along with lessons learned to guide other researchers and institutions who may try to do similar work.

Overall comments: there are some wording problems that I have highlighted in the attached file.  There is considerable redundancy where sections of the manuscript are repeated in some detail in multiple places. 

I hope the authors will consider this extensive re-visioning of their work and resubmit, but find the manuscript, as presented, to be not acceptable. 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

See attached file.

Author Response

This manuscript describes an important project that will be of interest to the audience of this journal.  However, there are several serious flaws that must be corrected.  
Thank you for your time reviewing the document. These comments and suggestions help us rewrite some unclear aspects of the manuscript, which will improve the final manuscript.  

First, the manuscript is too long and is presented more an a project report, rather than as a focused report of scientific findings.  The Jimenez-Berni et al. paper [7] is not published so it is impossible to verify, but it seems that much of the detail in the paper may be duplicative of that paper.  Also, it seems like 3 different topics are all combined, not successfully, into this one manuscript: a technical description of instrumentation and network details, performance evaluation of the instrumentation and network details, and human/institutional challenges to operating and managing a multi-national, multi-institutional network.  I think a series of 3 papers that focused on these 3 different aspect would be preferable.  
Paper [7] has already been published and now it is available. We have cited the published paper. That work describes the actual technical description and calculation methodologies. We agree that the manuscript is very extensive, so we have summarized it and moved some parts to supplementary materials. Thank you very much for your suggestion.  

For the technical, I suggest that the focus be on the final design, with minimal detail about early, unsuccessful designs.  In the discussion or a supplement, some "heads up" about lessons learned could be included. Also, since low cost method was key, some indication of the cost of the system compared to other technologies available would be important.  It is a major contribution to include the canopy temperature and ETa in a low-cost instrument design. 
The CORDOVA-ET device has the potential to measure ETa at a lower cost than other devices, so we have indicated the market value.  

For the performance evaluation, it would be good to focus only on the sites and site years that produced usable data for analysis.  As written, it starts off as if all nations and all sites had data collection in 5 years.  However, going through the paper, that is far from the case.  In addition to performance evaluation, analysis of ETa for different cropping systems in this regions would be very valuable.  
That is correct, not all the countries performed equality when generating data for the analysis. Since the paper focuses on the network details and experiences gathered throughout the years, we haven’t included a comprehensive analysis on ETa. This will be covered in a follow-up paper with data validation comparing ETs estimates from different methodologies.  

The challenges of managing a complex network such as this merits it's own paper, along with lessons learned to guide other researchers and institutions who may try to do similar work.  
This was the intention with this manuscript, as we haven’t performed a validation of the ETa estimated with the CORDOVA-ET and other methodologies. This is covered in paper [7] and will be followed up in another work that is in preparation. 

Overall comments: there are some wording problems that I have highlighted in the attached file.  There is considerable redundancy where sections of the manuscript are repeated in some detail in multiple places.  
The text has been improved following your instructions. In the manuscript, you will find responses to your comments 

I hope the authors will consider this extensive re-visioning of their work and resubmit, but find the manuscript, as presented, to be not acceptable.  
We have rewritten and reorganized the manuscripts following the indications, hoping the manuscripts could now be accepted and published. 

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The main corrections required were been made.

The paper could be published