Assessment of the Impacts of Phyto-Remediation on Water Quality of the Litani River by Means of Two Wetland Plants (Sparganium erectum and Phragmites australis)
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The topic of the article is interesting and stimulating. Here you can find my comments:
OVERALL: - Please, enlarge and re-arrange font sizes to guide the reader properly in all sections. All figures must be composed of HD images. It is mandatory to improve the scientific quality of the whole manuscript.
- Please, pay attention to the JOURNAL TEMPLATE in all sections, including tables, references, captions, units, equations, and Figures.
- Please, insert all corrected axes and labels, in order to guide the reader properly in understanding the whole manuscript. In addition, please improve the contrast between colours.
INTRODUCTION and METHODS: Please, consider in the scientific background of your study the importance of vegetation species for the management of water resources broadly speaking (i.e.,
Lama, G.F.C., Errico, A., Pasquino, V., Mirzaei, S., Preti, F., Chirico, G.B. 2022. Velocity uncertainty quantification based on Riparian vegetation indices in open channels colonized by Phragmites australis. J. Ecohydraulics 7(1), 71–76. https://doi.org/10.1080/24705357.2021.1938255.
Box, W., Järvelä, J.,Västilä, K. 2021. Flow resistance of floodplain vegetation mixtures for modelling river flows. Journal of Hydrology, 601, 126593.
Khan, M.A., Sharma, N., Lama, G.F.C., Hasan, M., Garg, R., Busico, G., Alharbi, R.S. 2022. Three-Dimensional Hole Size (3DHS) Approach for Water Flow Turbulence Analysis over Emerging Sand Bars: Flume-Scale Experiments. Water 14, 1889. https://doi.org/10.3390/w14121889)
METHODS: Please, insert a Figure for each sub-section. This will improve the scientific quality of your study, as a great support to all the equations proposed here.
DISCUSSION and CONCLUSIONS: These two sections must be re-arranged according to the suggestions indicated by the reviewer.
Author Response
Dear Madam, Dear Sir. We thank you very much for your remarks and suggestions. All of them have been addressed in the new version of the paper. In particular, all figures have been redesigned and except for the Khan references, (which address a point which is really far from our work), the suggested references have been added.
The best
Jérôme Harmand
Reviewer 2 Report
The topic of this paper concerns the efficiency of wetlands built along the Litani River in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon, in removing pollutants and river water pollution by two types of aquatic plants.
I don't feel like an expert on this. I believe this work was carefully prepared and based on many other scientific reports.
1- There are no error bars in all the figures in the article, and error bars should be added to prove that the research conducted parallel experiments and make the article scientifically rigorous.
2- The conclusion section is missing some points related to future work.
3- The author should highlight the abstract about the novelty presentation.
Author Response
Dear Madam, Dear Sir,
We thank you very much for your remarks and suggestions. All of them have been addressed in the new version of the paper. In particular, error bars were added where it was possible to add (notably in Table 3). Conclusion and absract have been reviewed.
The best
Jérôme Harmand
Reviewer 3 Report
This manuscript evaluated the efficiency of two plants in wetlands restoration. Overall, the theme of this manuscript is of scientific. While, the paper is not an easy read, and a fair amount of attention is needed to improve the text. I recommend that this article be published after a revision.
Abstract:
The abstract is too long and requires concise language and summary of key results. The abstract should be written in one paragraph. The first sentence (lines 17-19) is too long, please shorten. Before this sentence, the author should add two sentences about the background of this study.
Introduction:
This part need to be improved, please rewrite it. The logic between the paragraphs is not strong. Each paragraph seems to be independent and has little connection to the others. Please add the application of the three models in global scale. The aims of this paper are unclear. Please clarify the research purpose.
Material and methods:
The quality of Figure 2 should be improved.
Results and discussion
This part should be separated as: Results, Discussion
Conclusion:
There are too many conclusions in this part. It should be shortened less than 250 words.
Author Response
Dear Madam, Dear Sir.
We thank you very much for your remarks and suggestions. All of them have been addressed in the new version of the paper. In particular, figures have been improved. The abstract and conclusion have been significantly shortened. Results and discussion section has been restructured.
The best
Jérôme Harmand
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The article has been certainly improved. Few issues must be fixed:
- Please, pay attention to the JOURNAL TEMPLATE, expecially in the references and equations.
INTRODUCTION and METHODS: Please, consider in the scientific background of your study the importance uncertainty quantification in the statistical analysis for the prediction of the monitoring of water resources boradly speaking (i.e.,
Lama, G.F.C., Errico, A., Francalanci, S., Solari, L., Preti, F., Chirico, G.B. 2020. Evaluation of Flow Resistance Models Based on Field Experiments in a Partly Vegetated Reclamation Channel. Geosciences 10, 47. https://doi.org/10.3390/geosciences10020047).
Brunetti, G.F.A., Fallico, C., De Bartolo, S., Severino, G. (2022). Well‐Type Steady Flow in Strongly Heterogeneous Porous Media: An Experimental Study. Water Resour. Res., 58(5), e2021WR030717. doi.org/10.1029/2021WR030717.
Lama, G.F.C., Sadeghifar, T., Azad, M.T., Sihag, P., Kisi, O. 2022. On the Indirect Estimation of Wind Wave Heights over the Southern Coasts of Caspian Sea: A Comparative Analysis. Water 4, 843. https://doi.org/10.3390/w1406084.
Wu, J. L., Xiao, H., Paterson, E. 2018. Physics-informed machine learning approach for augmenting turbulence models: A comprehensive framework. Physical Review Fluids, 3(7), 074602.
Lama, G.F.C., Errico, A., Francalanci, S., Solari, L., Chirico, G.B., Preti, F. 2020. Hydraulic Modeling of Field Experiments in a Drainage Channel Under Different Riparian Vegetation Scenarios. In Innovative Biosystems Engineering for Sustainable Agriculture, Forestry and Food Production; Coppola A., Di Renzo G., Altieri G., D’Antonio P., Eds.; Springer: Cham, Switzerland, 2020; 69–77; doi:10.1007/978-3-030-39299-4_8).
Author Response
Thank you very much for your advises. We have been through the papers proposed. However, it is quite clear the papers suggested are really far from our work and we absolutely do not see how including them in the paper. Our paper has already more than 50 papers in the reference section and it is not appropriate to add more. The best. Jérôme Harmand
