Estimating Drought-Induced Crop Yield Losses at the Cadastral Area Level in the Czech Republic

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper is interesting; however, there are fundamental problems that authors should consider as follows:

1. The abstract should be rewritten and some important numerical findings should be provided.

2. The logical flow in the Introduction is not well-developed, and it is not clear for the readers what are the key knowledge gaps and objectives of the researchers to fill them.

3. In the introduction, the innovation of the manuscript is well discussed, but it is better to add the following references to enrich the work.

10.1080/2150704X.2018.1452058

10.1111/wej.12681

4. The quality of Fig.1 should be improved.

5. Please describe the Fig. 2 in details.

6. Authors should compare their results with the results of similar studies and present the strengths and weaknesses of this study.

7. What are the limitations of this study?

8. The conclusion is justified, but it could be extended, highlighting the advantages of the proposed method and specifying exactly what is new? 

Author Response

Dear reviewer, 

thank you very much for your review of our manuscript. First, I want to apologize to you for the broken numbering, that was due to only one compilation of latex template file instead of two after a minor edit during the submission. Below you can find our responses to each of your points. 

1. Accepted – the abstract has been modified.
2. The text has been once again reviewed and Introduction part in the aims also formulates the knowledge gaps.
3. We would like to thank the reviewer for the suggestions however the first and the last reference deals with only distantly related problems (i.e. forest biomass and floods). The second reference brings quite interesting methods but these approaches are yet to be used on larger scale and could not have been used for this particular study due to data nonavailability.
4. It is not clear which quality. So, the figure was exported into pdf format and y-axe of the upper graph was improved.
5. Figure 2 is only overview of the method to easier reading of the details in the text version on next pages. Exact description is in the text, which data are input, how were the data converted to deviations, how the ANN was set and how the outputs of ANNs were combined.
6. Thank you for this comment. Similar studies are cited. Unfortunately, there is no measure to compare our study with others due to the type of output of our method.
7. A limitation of our study is Central Europe range that is common to take into account. Next, that we can not use the Sentinel data due to the start of them. Powerful aspects are unique data and that drought damage models are season specific in the Czech Republic.
8. In the conclusion we present all what we can from our data.

All added changes are in yellow boxes (So, after removing color it will be ordinary spaced in the text.) Abstract was modified. Figures 1 and 8 have newer versions and table 3 has a new column.  

On behalf of the authors, yours sincerely, 

Jan Meitner 

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript presents interesting topic which has high practical importance. The manuscript is prepared quite well, but contains some drawbacks.

1) Lack of logo of the journal. Please use template of the manuscript.

2) Citation in the manuscript are not properly presented, probably because of the error of the citation manager (“[? ? ]”). The same problem is with numbers of the figures (“Figure ??)”)

3) Please use “cm” in soil depth layers presented in Table 3

4) What spatial resolution was for the data presented in Table 3? It was for pixels (what size) or for cadastral units?

5) Please provide more details how the maps of drought and vegetation conditions were created. Was percentage of different crops included into evaluation or not? Please notice that various crops can affect EVI2, because for example maize has intensive vegetation much later than winter crops. If different percentage of maize is in different regions it will affect EVI2 value.

6) Table A2 is too big and text is overlapped in neighbouring cells. Please correct.

7) It is not clear what is “growing area of the crop” which is presented in Fig. 8. Maybe it is because of generalization, but the growing areas of different crops are overlapping and it is not clear where what crop dominates. I suggest to apply greyscale which will present percentage of the crop in agricultural area or percentage of the crop in total area. It would allow to evaluate in which region what crop dominates.

8) What is “generally reported” yield loss in Fig. 8? Please explain how this map was generated. It was based on survey or predicted data? 

Author Response

Dear reviewer, 

thank you very much for your review of our manuscript. First, I want to apologize to you for the broken numbering, that was due to only one compilation of latex template file instead of two after a minor edit during the submission. Below you can find our responses to each of your points. 

1. I hoped that all these issues are done automatically, when we used the latex template with:

\documentclass[agronomy]{Definitions/mdpi} 

I tried a new version of pdf latex and no logo was depicted. Please, can you give me advice (e.g. row of the template) where it can be done. 

2. Fixed.
3. Fixed.
4. Thank you for the relevant input. After consideration, we added the spatial resolution, which leads to a better clarity of the table. We decided to add the column with spatial resolution information to Table 3.
5. It is supporting material to make a picture of the situation in the Czech Republic. Adding the text about it will be a side part in the manuscript than is crop yield loss, which we do not to follow. The methodology can be found at the webpage of www.intersucho.cz, which is cited as the main source of predictors. On ratio of different crops in pixels is not considered - there are also other things in the pixels like trees, forests, paths and roads. For example, maize differs from others in such a way that the ANN will automatically select weeks when other crops are harvested.
6. Fixed.
7. Thank you for an interesting idea. This information can be found in Land Parcel Identification System (LPIS). It means that we have to add one map to each year and each crop (due to orange and red colors). This leads to make the figure unclear from our point of view. Further, in the Czech Republic are not typical cadastral areas where one of crops significantly dominates, as can be seen in 2017. Therefore, a selection of crop with the highest percentage will be misleading from our point of view. On the contrary, results for 2018 in this figure present crops which are only in some regions and it is clear that these are not dominant in cadastral areas. Production regions can be also found in figure 3d.
8. Thank you for this comment. We added it into the text.

All added changes are in yellow boxes (So, after removing color it will be ordinary spaced in the text.) Abstract was modified. Figures 1 and 8 have newer versions and table 3 has a new column.  

On behalf of the authors, yours sincerely, 

Jan Meitner 

Reviewer 3 Report

Journal-Acess: Agronomy

Efficiently Estimating Drought-induced Crop Yield Losses at the Farm Level in the Czech Republic 

Paper Summary: 

This work proposes a novel technique for calculating agricultural production losses by combining ground surveys, remotely sensed data, and model data. The study demonstrates that they may be estimated at the cadastral area level in the Czech Republic and attributed to drought. This may be accomplished by combining remotely sensed vegetation, water stress, and moisture levels in the soil with modelled soil moisture anomalies, as well as near-real-time responses from responders and crop status assessments. The data is then merged using ANN models to create a technique that allows for the quick assessment of agricultural output losses as a result of actual droughts. 

Paper Comments:

The following statements are some comments about the paper:

1.      Paper writing method and Quality

·         The text have lots of setting problem like:” line 51 to 54 , ………..”and so many other place 

·         The motivation of the paper should be improved. And please write your research contribution with number order

·         Please check the whole manuscript for types and grammar errors. Language of the paper should be improved.

·         Some minor grammatical mistakes are there, read carefully and correct them.

·         Please clearly refer and write about your words data based and sample test

·         In the conclusion part please write the exact improvement number by using your proposed method.

2.      Figures:

·         Please refer to the figures inside the text. There are some problem like Figure ?? in the text that should sort

·         Also explain in details what the figures shows.

3.      Tables:

·         Refer to the tables inside the text.

·         Explain what the tables shows.

·         Table A2 is not correct, the text is mixed in column 1 and 2.

4.      References:

·         No references used inside the text, please use the references in order.

·         Please use the most recent research studies, i.e, from 2019 onwards till now.

5.      Authors are requested to make typesetting strictly according to the paper template ,also its adviced to use some recent paper like https://doi.org/10.4108/airo.v2i1.3056,

https://doi.org/10.3390/futuretransp3010012, in the introduction for the better refercening in application. 

 This study has merit for publication. However, I would recommend a major revision to improve the quality of the manuscript.

-

Author Response

Dear reviewer, 

thank you very much for your review of our manuscript. First, I want to apologize to you for the broken numbering, that was due to only one compilation of latex template file instead of two after a minor edit during the submission. Below you can find our responses to each of your points. 

1. a,b) A numbering was fixed.

1. c,d) We went thought the text and found some errors.

1. e) It is not clear what this comment means.

1. f) Unfortunately we do not have proper data for year 2017 from the ministry - for which cadastral areas were/were not allocated compensations. From the difference between spatial resolution of NUTS4 level (1000 km2) and cadastral area level (6 km2) follows that the outputs from NUTS4 level can not efficiently works on cadastral area level. For more only one number can not be produced since there are different crops and years. There is example of winter wheat in 2017 that can clarify the situation:

NUTS4 name -- Břeclav / Louny / Rakovník 

Nuber of cadastral areas -- 68 / 198 / 106 

Number of samples -- 12 / 10 / 9 

Number of samples with crop yield loss over 30% -- 7 / 4 / 0 

Number or cadastral areas with estimated crop yield loss over 30% -- 23 / 60 / 9 

We think that such a table is not important for the manuscript. 

2. a) Fixed.

2. b) Figures at the beginning of the manuscript depict conditions in the Czech Republic. We think that there is no need to extend text about them, because we do not want to go far away from the point of the manuscript. You are right that e.g. Figure 8 had to be more described and we did it.

3. a) Fixed.

3. b) Please, can you a little bit more specify what is missing (or in which table).

3. c) Fixed.

4. a) Fixed.

4. b) There are recent references. We use older references as well and there are no reasons why not to use them.

5. Recent papers are cited.

All added changes are in yellow boxes (So, after removing color it will be ordinary spaced in the text.) Abstract was modified. Figures 1 and 8 have newer versions and table 3 has a new column.  

On behalf of the authors, yours sincerely, 

Jan Meitner 

Reviewer 4 Report

Dear Authors,

I have read and checked your manuscript "Efficiently Estimating Drought-induced Crop Yield Losses at the Farm Level in the Czech Republic" which contains important and scientifically relevant information about crop-yield losses.

It was hard to understand and follow the information in both the introduction, method and discussion part due to the missing of reference numbers in the text, in the version uploaded for revision.

Apart from this, it is a well-structured manuscript wit coherent results and discussion part, showing new and original results about the above mentioned topic.

I suggest to revise the manuscript by a native English translator, and also to check the numbering.

As a lot of abbreviations appear in the manuscript I suggest to add a list of abbreviations at the end or at the beginning of the manuscript.

Kind regards 

English language is generally fine, some minor grammatical mistakes and typos are present, a final proofread will help to solve this problem.

Author Response

Dear reviewer, 

thank you very much for your review of our manuscript. First, I want to apologize to you for the broken numbering, that was due to only one compilation of latex template file instead of two after a minor edit during the submission. Below you can find our responses to each of your points. 

1. The numbering was fixed.
2. Text was revised again.
3. Some abbreviations were full worded, mainly in the discussion. So, we think that now an extra list of abbreviations is not needed.

All added changes are in yellow boxes (So, after removing color it will be ordinary spaced in the text.) Abstract was modified. Figures 1 and 8 have newer versions and table 3 has a new column.  

On behalf of the authors, yours sincerely, 

Jan Meitner 

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Authors have addressed some of my concerns, but It is better to add the following references to enrich the work. The first reference is about estimation methods, the second discussed Remote Sensing-Based Drought Indices.

10.1080/2150704X.2018.1452058
10.1109/JSTARS.2023.3237380

Author Response

Dear reviewer, 

one sentence into the discussion part was added (the bottom of page 16). Figures and tables were shifted to omit blank space on pages. MDPI helps me with adding the logo and they deleted row numbers. 

By mistake, we forgot to include one of the publications in the discussion section during the first round of review. However, we have added it in the second round. 

The publications you suggest for more in the second round refers to methodology of combining and comparing drought indices in subtropical to semi-arid conditions of Iran which again is only marginally relevant for the paper both in terms of regions and focus of the paper.  

Thank you for your assistance in enhancing the quality of our manuscript. 

Kind regards, 

Jan Meitner 

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript was corrected according all my comments. There is still minor issue with formatting of the manuscript. In the manuscipt there is no logo of the journal. Please follow the instructions for authors (see the template).

Author Response

Dear reviewer, 

one sentence into the discussion part was added (the bottom of page 16). Figures and tables were shifted to omit blank space on pages. MDPI helps me with adding the logo and they deleted row numbers. 

Thank you for your assistance in enhancing the quality of our manuscript. 

Kind regards, 

Jan Meitner