Increased Water Abstraction and Climate Change Have Substantial Effect on Morphometry, Salinity, and Biotic Communities in Lakes: Examples from the Semi-Arid Burdur Basin (Turkey)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments to authors

1. The introduction should be improved by included further details.
2. The novel and applications of this paper should be reported in the last paragraph of the introduction section.
3. The discussion of the data presented in this paper should extend a bit more.

Author Response

Thank you for your comments.

Please find the author's response in the attachment.

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Reviewer 2 Report

I have 2 minor concerns

1. Authors used satellite data to estimate water salinity. However references 33-34 are examples of using satellite data to estimate soil salinity. I wonder whether there are examples of such methodology to estimate water salinity? Also what was the resolution of satellite images used for the estimates? As the SI values were selected from the shallowest part of the lake shoreline the question is what type of salinity was estimated: salinity of water or salinity of the lake shore which is definitely will be much higher than water salinity? It looks that there is no correlation between salinity index and water level (fig. 11) which means that SI calculated for the lake shore probably reflects salinity of near shore soil. It seems that SI adds not much to the research and if not justified can be deleted from the MS.

2. It is mentioned in the introduction that recent paper was published on another closed basin in Turkey - Konya Closed Basin. I expect that in discussion some comparison of these two basins will be presented. Are there similarities of differences in water level and salinity trends for lakes in these basins and what are the reasons? I think such brief comparison will add value to the MS.

Author Response

Thank you for your comments.

Please find the author's response in the attachment.

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Reviewer 3 Report

Comments on “Increased water abstraction and climate change have substantial effect on morphometry, salinity, and biotic communities in 3 lakes: examples from the semi-arid Burdur catchment (Turkey)”

General comments:

This study presents a combined dataset of historical meteorological, remote sensing, and ground-truth data in the past 40-50 years to describe the water surface areas, land use, and other ecological changes of Burdur Closed Basin (BCB) in Turkey. With the combination of climate modeling, the results of the three case studies in the basin predict the potential changes in precipitation and temperature. The findings shed light on the great impacts of future human activities and climate change on the lake ecosystems and biodiversity in the basin. Generally, I think this paper fits the scope of this Journal, however, more should be added to clarify the importance and the novelty of this study. I have some minor comments to help improve the manuscript overall.

Specific comments:

Introduction section:  readers might expect more information about the background, aims, and goals of the study, and why you choose this study area.

L33: “…..in future temperature…….” , “future”  might be removed as you do not predict something…..

L58: Note the space here “in  the remaining……….”

L 367: The “Case studies” section should belong to the Results part. Because figures and data are displayed here.

Discussion section: Is it possible that you divide the whole section into 2 or 3 subsections?  It would be better to summarize the key points of some paragraphs. Besides, the findings in the Results section have not been clearly or specifically summarized and discussed here; the figures are not mentioned in this section.

Author Response

Thank you for your comments.

Please find the author's response in the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Comment 1: The abstract should state briefly the purpose of the research, the principal results and major conclusions. An abstract is often presented separately from the article, so it must be able to stand alone.

Comment 2: Explain the reason for choosing Burdur catchment area in the research method.

Comment 3: The selected area is very limited. How far can the results obtained for this area be generalized to the entire basin?

Comment 4: Methods section determines the results. Kindly focus on three basic elements of the methods section. How the study was designed?How the study was carried out?How the data were analyzed?

Comment 5: The major defect of this study is the debate or Argument is not clear stated in the introduction session. Hence, the contribution is weak in this manuscript. I would suggest the author to enhance your theoretical discussion and arrives your debate or argument.

Comment 6: It is suggested to add articles entitled “Krisnayanti et al. Curve Number Estimation for Ungauged Watershed in Semi-Arid Region; Sampson et al. Sensations of Air Temperature Variability and Mitigation Strategies in Urban Environments; Sertac Oruc, Non-stationary Investigation of Extreme Rainfall” to the literature review.

Comment 7: Especially, the introduction section needs to re-organize. The major debate or Argument is not clear stated in the introduction session. Hence, the contribution debates are weak in this manuscript. I would suggest the author to enhance your literature discussion and arrives your debate or argument.

Comment 8: Please explain your results into steps and links to your proposed method.

Comment 9: I would like to request the author to emphasis on the contributions on practically and academically in implication session.

Comment 10: The authors should add a flowchart of the methodology.

Comment 11: Page 6. The ratio between climate model results and observations was multiplied by the model’s raw values to get bias-ad- justed precipitation values for the historical, validation, and prediction periods.. What are the other feasible alternatives? What are the advantages of adopting these configurations over others in this case? How will this affect the results? More details should be furnished.

Comment 10: Please make sure your conclusions' section underscore the scientific value added of your paper, and/or the applicability of your findings/results, as indicated previously. Please revise your conclusion part into more details. Basically, you should enhance your contributions, limitations, underscore the scientific value added of your paper, and/or the applicability of your findings/results and future study in this session.

Author Response

Thank you for your comments.

Please find the author's response in the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 4 Report

The Revisions are satisfactory in my opinion, and I would certainly recommend the Editors to Publish the Paper in their esteemed Journal.