Comprehensive Methodology and Analysis to Determine the Environmental Flow Regime in the Temporary Stream “La Yerbabuena” in Aguascalientes, Mexico
, Martín Hernández-Marín 2,*, Anuard Isaac Pacheco-Guerrero 3 and John P. Gannon 4
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript describes the methodology of determination of environmental flow regime of temporary stream. The La Yerbabuena stream in Aguascalientes Valley in Mexico was taken as a case study. The main problem discussed in the manuscript is the comparison of two methods of determination of environmental flow regime: one is a hydrologic method IHA-RVA (Indicators of Hydrology Alteration – Regime of Variable Alteration) and second is a method recommended by Mexican normative regulation NMX-AA-159-SCFI-2012.
The manuscript in actual form contains many shortcomings and weaknesses regarding the justification of its significance from practical or scientific point of view, missing additional explanation, missing data, quality of presentation and its credibility. That is why I recommend manuscript to reject and resubmission after major revision. My major remarks are presented in attached pdf file.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear reviewer.
We Hope you are well and thank you for your feedback points. We consider they are very important to improve the quality of our paper. Next to your remarks you can see our responses as follow.
Point 1: The introduction section doesn’t contain the adequate justification of the significance and importance of the problem taken to presentation – why comparison of two methods is made? Why it is important? Does it mean that one of the compared methods is worse or better and why? what does it mean that each method gives different results? All these issues are not addressed at all.
Response 1:
The importance of the research is that it is a proposed methodology to determine environmental flow in rivers or temporary streams that is instead based on the IHA-RVA procedure to determine a variability threshold.
On the other hand, comparing the proposed methodology with what was done in Mexico in the NMX-159, is to have a comparative framework of results, because in terms of temporary rivers there is not much information and this is the contribution and importance of this analysis, an exploratory study providing information on the hydrological behavior of a river of this type.
The comparison of methods obeys to establish criteria of similarity, tendency, advantages and disadvantages about the analysis of environmental flow in temporary streams. Therefore, if a method offers a different result, this indicates , in the case of the IHA methodology that provides additional data such as analysis of periods of drought, environmental flow thresholds considering daily series, with respect to existing methodologies that have an analysis more general.
Point 2: The description of both methods which are compared is completely missing in the manuscript: we have comparison of some unknown for the reader methods. Both methods should be described in sufficient detail and differences between them should be explained, adequate references for application of each methods should be provided (eg. IHA-RVA – reference? Who is issued this application? Where it was applied for other similar case studies?).
Response 2: We appreciate this recommendation, and we are taking it into account to add it as a subsection of the introduction, which will be entitled “Application of the IHA methodology for the determination of environmental flows in temporary rivers”.
We do have that information, since a very thorough review of the state of the art was made of the different methodologies that are available at this date.
The IHA-RVA methodology (with its acronym in English), has been applied in various cases around the world, has different approaches, especially for recommendations of ecological flows. This methodology is supported by the IHA 7.1 software, including hydrological parameters to establish ranges of environmental variables 1,2. There are recent investigations of ecological flow using this methodology that favored the development of the experimental campaign that is presented below.
For example, there is a recent investigation on the Yuna River in the Dominican Republic, where environmental flows were estimated using this method of analysis, at three points in the basin; the series of daily flows were obtained by means of the generic combination of monthly flows and disaggregation of daily ones. This study concludes that the application of the IHA methodology is a recommended option to carry out calculations of ecological flows whose results can be used to develop a reservoir operation program 3.
In addition, another investigation was recently carried out by the IMTA for the Mezcalapa river, such investigation was complemented under hydrological and hydraulic methodologies, using a series of data of 19 and 35 years for the natural and altered regime respectively, identifying physical features and their relationship with the environmental processes, obtaining hydrological values through hydraulic modeling that are related to the development of the ecosystem 4
Applied to the operation of reservoirs, 5 used the IHA methodology to determine through the environmental flow threshold an experimental operation of the Jinghong reservoir in the upstream part of the Mekong basin, comparing five scenarios with different objective functions and constraints.
These are some examples of the application of both methodologies, however all they are for sections in perennial rivers; therefore an area of opportunity is to apply this methodology in temporary rivers, comparing with current regulations in the case of the study area. We propose an appendix adding the IHA parameters that evaluate the environmental flow thresholds.
References:
(1) The Nature Conservancy. Manual de Usuario de Indicadores de Alteración Hidrológica Versión 7.1 Nature., 2011.
(2) Palma Raymundo, M. L. Determinación del caudal ecológico : impacto económico en el usuario agrícola de la cuenca Río Yautepec, estado de Morelos., Colegio de Postgraduados (COLPOS), 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10521/2208.
(3) Bautista-de-los-Santos, Q. M. Determinación de caudales ambientales en la cuenca del río Yuna, República Dominicana. Tecnología y Ciencias del Agua 2014, 5 (3), 33–40.
(4) Domínguez-Sánchez, T. A.; Lomelí-Meza, J.; Ibáñez-Castillo, L. A.; Gómez-Balandra, M. A. Determinación de Caudal Ecológico Del Río Mezcalapa En Base a La Norma Mexicana NMX-AA-159- SCFI-2012 Con Consideraciones Hidrológicas e Hidráulicas; Querétaro, México, 2015.
(5) Li, D.; Wan, W.; Zhao, J. Optimizing Environmental Flow Operations Based on Explicit Quantification of IHA Parameters. Journal of Hydrology 2018, 563, 510–522. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2018.06.031.
Point 3: Why the comparison is made with some normative methodology? The methodology from normative act should be presented in adequate detail to explain its bases – eg. in Supplementary materials. All needed information should be contained in the manuscript but no referred to “appendix” or section in the normative act.
Response 3: The reason for which we compared with the current regulations in terminology of environmental flow, was to demonstrate that there is no field of application in temporary rivers, that is, the methodologies that are indicated there have a higher level of reliability in perennial currents, otherwise with the IHA-based methodology, which allows knowing even prolonged dry times for rivers or streams of this type.
We appreciate your recommendation, and we plan to add a couple of summarized appendices where it is explained what the IHA methodology is, its main parameters and what is the NMX-159 that is applied in Mexico as a standard to determine environmental flows.
Point 4: The major weakness of this manuscript is the fact, that the provided comparison of the two methodologies and obtained results regarding environmental flow are not sufficiently credible because there are missing any real data (measured in the field) of flow in the studied stream; so obtained modeled data of stream flow form monthly precipitation in different periods of time are not verified with real situation. The authors should explain the credibility of the obtained results and verification of modeled data.
Response 4: The reason why a synthetic series of flows was taken is simple, no temporary-type stream has hydrometric stations that provide flows or capacity measurements, since in this type of stream no water circulates most of the year, only in rainy seasons. For this reason, only those perennial streams and especially those that are close to some reservoirs, have this type of information. We consider that this is another important contribution of our study.
The methodology that was applied to determine the synthetic series of flows, was to take the precipitation in excess of the different climatological stations within the basin of the study area, to later carry out a weighting of the precipitation according to the area of influence of each meteorological measurement point.
The equation used for the synthetic series of expenses was:
Ve=CPeA
Ve= Volume of runoff (m3)
C= Runoff coefficient (adimensional)
Pe= Excess precipitation (mm)
A= Basin area (m2)
To determine Pe, a hydrological criterion was applied applying the following formula:
P= Precipitation record (mm)
N= Runoff curve number for the average moisture condition of the basin (adimensional)
Point 5: Numbering of the figures is mixed up and should be corrected.
Response 5: It is correct, those details in the numbering have already been corrected.
Point 6: Annual total sum of precipitation taken for modeling for each methodology should be provided in additional table as supplementary materials.
Response 6: Thank you for the suggestion. The next table will be added to the manuscript.
Synthetic series of monthly flows (m3/s)
|
Year\Month |
JAN |
FEB |
MAR |
APR |
MAY |
JUN |
JUL |
AUG |
SEP |
OCT |
NOV |
DEC |
|
1979 |
0.091 |
0.005 |
0.225 |
0.278 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
0.104 |
0.966 |
0.089 |
0.147 |
0.147 |
0.135 |
|
1980 |
0.000 |
0.158 |
0.278 |
0.170 |
0.007 |
0.043 |
0.018 |
0.026 |
1.211 |
0.096 |
0.127 |
0.125 |
|
1981 |
0.011 |
0.248 |
0.294 |
0.001 |
0.259 |
0.001 |
0.000 |
0.181 |
2.648 |
0.036 |
0.127 |
0.067 |
|
1982 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
0.294 |
0.051 |
0.009 |
0.046 |
0.000 |
0.278 |
0.010 |
0.003 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
|
1983 |
0.099 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
0.874 |
0.323 |
0.002 |
0.000 |
0.072 |
0.194 |
0.000 |
|
1984 |
0.099 |
0.242 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
0.002 |
0.002 |
0.493 |
0.001 |
0.002 |
0.189 |
0.278 |
0.248 |
|
1985 |
0.263 |
0.311 |
0.000 |
0.099 |
0.087 |
0.002 |
0.046 |
0.220 |
0.038 |
0.001 |
0.317 |
0.002 |
|
1986 |
0.000 |
0.117 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
0.147 |
0.085 |
0.645 |
0.009 |
0.013 |
0.037 |
0.091 |
0.000 |
|
1988 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
0.137 |
0.147 |
0.000 |
1.504 |
0.662 |
0.005 |
0.248 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
|
1989 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
0.010 |
0.134 |
0.006 |
0.015 |
0.225 |
0.005 |
0.028 |
0.002 |
|
1990 |
0.091 |
0.091 |
0.000 |
0.137 |
0.117 |
0.055 |
0.807 |
0.141 |
0.005 |
0.012 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
|
1991 |
0.000 |
0.147 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
0.056 |
1.040 |
0.001 |
0.000 |
0.003 |
0.000 |
0.033 |
|
1992 |
0.000 |
0.170 |
0.123 |
0.091 |
0.006 |
0.280 |
0.000 |
0.259 |
0.061 |
0.111 |
0.181 |
0.186 |
|
1993 |
0.001 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
0.207 |
0.220 |
0.014 |
0.049 |
0.037 |
0.009 |
0.091 |
0.170 |
0.000 |
|
1994 |
0.001 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
0.020 |
0.127 |
0.046 |
0.037 |
0.091 |
0.015 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
0.127 |
|
1995 |
0.248 |
0.170 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
0.091 |
0.546 |
0.183 |
0.201 |
0.037 |
0.000 |
0.009 |
0.000 |
|
1996 |
0.000 |
0.294 |
0.000 |
0.263 |
0.038 |
0.014 |
0.099 |
0.005 |
0.334 |
0.000 |
0.328 |
0.000 |
|
1997 |
0.248 |
0.000 |
0.207 |
0.014 |
0.075 |
0.055 |
0.061 |
0.004 |
0.038 |
0.020 |
0.127 |
0.000 |
|
1998 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
0.068 |
0.051 |
0.007 |
0.003 |
0.043 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
|
1999 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
0.294 |
0.000 |
0.311 |
0.024 |
0.000 |
0.081 |
0.397 |
0.207 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
|
2000 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
0.001 |
0.000 |
0.037 |
0.005 |
0.001 |
0.220 |
0.000 |
0.049 |
|
2001 |
0.000 |
0.194 |
0.003 |
0.083 |
0.248 |
0.001 |
0.006 |
0.014 |
0.021 |
0.049 |
0.294 |
0.335 |
|
2002 |
0.061 |
0.061 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
0.014 |
0.546 |
0.056 |
0.546 |
0.021 |
0.091 |
0.037 |
0.000 |
|
2003 |
0.248 |
0.311 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
0.028 |
0.442 |
1.668 |
0.003 |
0.009 |
0.091 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
|
2004 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
0.091 |
0.000 |
0.002 |
0.417 |
0.323 |
0.718 |
0.021 |
0.234 |
0.294 |
0.000 |
|
2005 |
0.000 |
0.003 |
0.127 |
0.000 |
0.091 |
0.779 |
0.119 |
0.417 |
0.020 |
0.220 |
0.000 |
0.248 |
|
2006 |
0.248 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
0.091 |
0.006 |
0.442 |
0.005 |
0.020 |
0.323 |
0.000 |
0.005 |
|
2007 |
0.061 |
0.061 |
0.000 |
0.028 |
0.002 |
0.261 |
0.183 |
0.033 |
0.000 |
0.108 |
0.311 |
0.311 |
|
2008 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
0.068 |
0.311 |
0.004 |
0.085 |
0.166 |
0.021 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
|
2009 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
0.248 |
0.055 |
0.041 |
0.078 |
0.003 |
0.004 |
0.038 |
0.117 |
|
2010 |
0.017 |
0.442 |
0.000 |
0.263 |
0.278 |
0.009 |
0.001 |
0.006 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
|
2011 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
0.311 |
0.000 |
0.005 |
0.127 |
0.099 |
0.005 |
0.075 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
|
2012 |
0.075 |
0.009 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
0.067 |
0.032 |
0.072 |
0.104 |
0.127 |
0.294 |
0.006 |
|
2013 |
0.147 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
0.000 |
0.091 |
0.826 |
0.002 |
0.012 |
0.028 |
0.002 |
0.000 |
Point 7: Fig. 3: legend is missing units; RH12 – should be explained?
Response 7: It was necessary to add what RH means, by its acronym in Spanish it is hydrological region, in addition to adding the units to the DEM meters above sea level
(Please see the attachment)
Point 8: Fig. 3: satellite images are bad quality and additional elements are nor clearly visible.
Response 8: We have now new images with better quality that will be added to the revised manuscript. Here’s the example.
(Please see the attachment)
Point 9: Fig.5: time scale needs correction.
Response 9: Done. Thank you for pointing out
(Please see the attachment)
Point 10: Fig. 7: Quality is bad.
Response 10: Regarding this figure, we have decided to eliminate it since only contributes in the sense of the methodological visualization of what was done with HEC RAS, which was to analyze the depth that reaches the environmental flow thresholds.
Point 11: HEC RAS – modeling application should be described in adequate detail to explain its basis and application; adequate references with application of the software should be provided.
Response 11: As mentioned in the previous point, the importance of using the HECRAS tool is that through the processing of the topography, it is possible to identify the levels that the environmental flow threshold reaches for each month with the IHA methodology with respect to those of the NMX-159. This allows us to understand the behavior of the environmental flow in temporary streams, which in the dry season present flows of up to 0 with periods of drought, and some retention zones due to topography. Contrary to the rainy season, which present levels that even correlate flooding with high values of environmental flow.
Point 12: Fig. 8: quality is bad;
Response 12: This figure’s quality has been improved.
(Please see the attachment)
Point 13: Description and presentation of flora and fauna in the studied area should be adequately justified - why it is important to environmental flow determination?
Response 13: The importance of carrying out a typification of flora and fauna in the vicinity of a temporary stream is to identify endemic species, which, if there were any, would have to carry out more in-depth experimental campaigns for analysis of an environmental flow.
In this case, no species in danger of extinction were found, in which the respect or adherence to these flows would have a greater impact, since affecting these levels would be detrimental to their subsistence.
Point 14: Conclusions should be rewritten in order to clearly show the evaluation of the both methods and the obtained results; recommendations should be also provided which method gives better results and why. Verification of modeled data should be explained
Response 14: We have presented an adapted methodology that permitted us to determine the hydraulic behavior of a temporary stream. Unidimensional modeling with the HEC RAS and Flow Health program software, confirmed that the hydrologic base of this work referenced to the IHA methodology generates reasonable results with a variation similar to the methodologies established in the NMX-AA-159-SCFI-2012 normative (Appendix C and D). An environmental flow threshold was determined using the hydrological basis of the IHA methodology, obtaining an average environmental flow of 0.042 m3/s and minimum values in the dry season of 0.010 m3/s and a maximum for the rainy season of 0.108 m3/s. In addition, the levels reached in the hydraulic modeling with the IHA base are higher and present retention zones in some points of the stream.
Based on the analysis presented, the IHA methodology gives better results due to the statistical analysis that involves the processing of daily flow series to later carry out intervals or monthly thresholds, contrary to the NMX-159 methods that are applied to rivers that require monthly data on gauged streams, and that it could not be applied to intermittent or temporary streams.
On the other hand, in the water health evaluation of the flow strategies with the software FlowHealth, it was observed that the hydrological analysis to determine the environmental flow regime that has the highest water health score is the IHA methodology with a score of 0.83, which is very close to the reference level of the minimum monthly flow proposed by the software.
The objective of this research is to provide general knowledge of the hydrological behavior of temporary streams, which, due to anthropic activities, some perennial streams are converting to this type.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Overall comment:
In this paper, the authors investigated water flows that were found by the researchers to be meaningful and within the scope of the Journal. Please carefully check all abbreviations before writing this paper. More data limitation sections are typically required before rechecking. I think the author should discuss this carefully. Below are my comments:
Specific comments:
1. Please elaborate on how geo-spatial, hydrologic, hydraulic, and environmental effects are calculated, especially for the processing of missing pixels (cloud coverage) of images. If the result is simply divided by the number of images for each year, that would be unreasonable. Please modify the structure of this section.
2. Keywords are generic, so please specify all of the used keywords. I think the title could be more striking. Please try modifying it for the better.
3. Abstract sections can be extended. Please do not give too much of your results, but add your recommendations at the end of the Abstract section.
4. I think the Introduction section is well written. Please also add the following information regarding water pollution sources and other environmental sources: This article has been updated in several places during the introduction, to support the latest references. Please include references to these sources.
5. Did you find any reference to the classification of the impact of NDVI on ecosystem quality and land vegetation in the paper? If there is a reference, please add the appropriate reference. If this article is presented, is there any basis for it?
6. On the whole, the article structure is overly scattered, mostly consisting of a picture and a paragraph, and many paragraphs contain only one sentence. This is the case with the first paragraph. Please, introduce in the scientific background of your study the importance of combining advanced geo-statistical and image processing models in the monitoring, management, and forecasting of water resources broadly speaking.
7. Please add a description of meteorological factor data, and how to scale data products (daily value, monthly value, annual value) to the meteorological factor data selected in the text. Adding data to the meteorological factor helps explain how variables are calculated.
8. Please enlarge and re-arrange all Figures and font sizes to properly guide the reader in all sections. All figures must be composed of an HD image. 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, and Figures. This will improve the scientific quality of your study, and will provide great support to all the equations proposed here.
Constructive feedback:
A spatial distribution assessment map was created in this study. The effects of meteorological factors and human factors on human health risks due to nitrate concentration were discussed. The subject matter of the article is interesting and stimulating. The observations are as follows:
As remote sensing images are observed from different angles and atmospheric conditions differ, data obtained by applying fixed threshold values may contain errors, but these errors can be highly accurate. These observations do not appear to be statistically significant in terms of accuracy. A large number of errors can lead to incorrect analysis results when data are later analyzed. We can determine whether this error affects the subsequent conclusions of our analysis. Due to the obvious spectral and textural characteristics, for example, of soil pits, the "ground truth" can usually be determined visually, and this "ground truth" is then used to test the fixed threshold extraction results. Validating as many data points as possible makes the result more reliable. Therefore, you must ensure you have enough data to validate. In addition, the verification data should include different viewing angles (center and edge of the image), different sun angles (different seasons), and different atmospheric conditions (clear, thick aerosols, thin clouds, etc.). In case of degradation by 1-2 pixels inside, the data should be reanalyzed.
Summary:
The paper is an interesting academic research study. However, all of the comments need to be implemented to improve the methods used.
Author Response
Dear reviewer.
We Hope you are well and thank you for your feedback points. We consider they are very important to improve the quality of our paper. Next to your remarks you can see our responses as follow.
Point 1: Please elaborate on how geo-spatial, hydrologic, hydraulic, and environmental effects are calculated, especially for the processing of missing pixels (cloud coverage) of images. If the result is simply divided by the number of images for each year, that would be unreasonable. Please modify the structure of this section.
Response 1: In the figures that could be applied above all in the geospatial analysis and the NDVI, the raster analysis tool for filling in missing data was applied, depending on the metric of the analyzed data.
However, it is not clear to us to which section it is suggested to add this clarification..
Point 2: . Keywords are generic, so please specify all of the used keywords. I think the title could be more striking. Please try modifying it for the better.
Response 2: We appreciate the recommendations on the title, but the authors consider that it is appropriate to name this research, we are open to reading your textual recommendations about a title that is more attractive.
Regarding the keywords, we only added a couple more and we corrected a technicality referring to hydraulic modeling, which you will be able to observe once a space is enabled to load the corrected manuscript.
Point 3: Abstract sections can be extended. Please do not give too much of your results, but add your recommendations at the end of the Abstract section.
Response 3: Okay, a paragraph will be added that includes the recommendations of this investigation.
Point 4: I think the Introduction section is well written. Please also add the following information regarding water pollution sources and other environmental sources: This article has been updated in several places during the introduction, to support the latest references. Please include references to these sources.
Response 4: Okay, we added an additional paragraph where it talks about pollution issues around temporary streams.
Regarding surface water contamination, 1, evaluated the spatiotemporal variation of the concentrations of organic matter, nutrients, organic toxins and coliform organisms and heavy metals in the San Pedro River, Aguascalientes, Mexico. , which together with the research of 2 used two toxicity tests (Daphnia Magna & Lecane Quadridentata) in the main treatment plants in the state of Aguascalientes, during the dry and rainy seasons. It was observed that the BOD5 and COD, dissolved oxygen, conductivity, and Ph values complied with the maximum permitted levels. However, the levels of Al, Fe, Zn, Mn, Pb and As were above the permitted levels, concluding that this type of study would be the subsequent step once the hydraulic behavior of the type of temporary currents was analyzed.
(1) Guzmán-Colis, G.; Thalasso, F.; Ramírez-López, E. M.; Rodríguez-Narciso, S.; Guerrero-Barrera, A. L.; Avelar-González, F. J. Evaluación Espacio-Temporal de La Calidad Del Agua Del Río San Pedro En El Estado de Aguascalientes, México. Revista internacional de contaminación ambiental 2011, 27 (2), 89–102.
(2) Rico-Martínez, R.; Arzate-Cárdenas, M. A.; Robles-Vargas, D.; Pérez-Legaspi, I. A.; Jesús, A.-F.; Santos-Medrano, G. E.; Rico-Martínez, R.; Arzate-Cárdenas, M. A.; Robles-Vargas, D.; Pérez-Legaspi, I. A.; Jesús, A.-F.; Santos-Medrano, G. E. Rotifers as Models in Toxicity Screening of Chemicals and Environmental Samples; IntechOpen, 2016. https://doi.org/10.5772/61771.
Point 5: Did you find any reference to the classification of the impact of NDVI on ecosystem quality and land vegetation in the paper? If there is a reference, please add the appropriate reference. If this article is presented, is there any basis for it?
Response 5: We are going to add the next paragraph as part of the NVDI references: The vegetation index generates values that range between -1.0 and 1, a negative value corresponds mainly to clouds, water and snow; on the other hand, values close to zero are associated with rocky or urban areas. Very low NDVI values below 0.1 correspond to areas of sand or snow. Moderate values of 0.2 to 0.3 represent shrubland and grasslands, while high values of 0.6 to 0.8 indicate temperate and tropical zone forests 3.
(3) Lillesand, T.; Kiefer, R. W.; Chipman, J. Remote Sensing and Image Interpretation; John Wiley & Sons, 2014.
Point 6: On the whole, the article structure is overly scattered, mostly consisting of a picture and a paragraph, and many paragraphs contain only one sentence. This is the case with the first paragraph. Please, introduce in the scientific background of your study the importance of combining advanced geo-statistical and image processing models in the monitoring, management, and forecasting of water resources broadly speaking.
Response 6: Thank you for your observation. We will revise the document to avoid disperse one-sentence paragraphs. Regarding the scientific background, we added in introduction a couple of investigations that apply statistical data management and geospatial analysis focused on water resources, which are mentioned below:
4 coupled hydrological and hydraulic models in a 2D numerical model to estimate hydraulic transmission losses due to infiltration in a river, placing control points along sections of the San Pedro River basin. in Sonora Mexico and Arizona USA, for this, two hydraulic models were installed, the first only considers the net runoff from the canal and the second was developed to take into account several hydrographs with transmission losses as limit conditions, considering the losses due to infiltration.At the same time, 5 worked on the isotopic characterization of rainwater and groundwater in order to obtain potential recharge sites in the Calera basin, Zacatecas, taking the fault zone as the main variables. and cracks in conjunction with the area's hydrographic network, as well as stable isotope water sampling.
(4) Pacheco-Guerrero, A.; Goodrich, D. C.; González-Trinidad, J.; Júnez-Ferreira, H. E.; Bautista- Capetillo, C. F. Flooding in Ephemeral Streams: Incorporating Transmission Losses. Journal of Maps 2017, 13 (2), 350–357. https://doi.org/10.1080/17445647.2017.1305303.
(5) González-Trinidad, J.; Pacheco-Guerrero, A.; Júnez-Ferreira, H.; Bautista-Capetillo, C.; Hernández-Antonio, A. Identifying Groundwater Recharge Sites through Environmental Stable Isotopes in an Alluvial Aquifer. Water 2017, 9 (8), 569. https://doi.org/10.3390/w9080569.
Point 7: . Please add a description of meteorological factor data, and how to scale data products (daily value, monthly value, annual value) to the meteorological factor data selected in the text. Adding data to the meteorological factor helps explain how variables are calculated.
Response 7:
IHA allows assigning a classification for each daily flow record, obtaining that the component with the highest frequency in the analyzed micro-basin is the extremely low flow that works as base flow in retention zones whose topography was affected by the presence of infrastructure. In addition to delivering a monthly analysis with the series of daily records, to establish a monthly variability threshold for environmental flow strategies.
On the other hand, to determine the synthetic flow series, the following formula was used:
Ve=CPeA
Ve= Volume of runoff (m3)
C= Runoff coefficient (adimensional)
Pe= Excess precipitation (mm)
A= Basin area (m2)
To determine Pe, a hydrological criterion was applied applying the following formula:
P= Precipitation record (mm)
N= Runoff curve number for the average moisture condition of the basin (adimensional)
Point 8: Please enlarge and re-arrange all Figures and font sizes to properly guide the reader in all sections. All figures must be composed of an HD image. 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, and Figures. This will improve the scientific quality of your study and will provide great support to all the equations proposed here.
Response 8: We agree and those details in numbering and image quality have already been adjusted in the new version.
Constructive feedback: A spatial distribution assessment map was created in this study. The effects of meteorological factors and human factors on human health risks due to nitrate concentration were discussed. The subject matter of the article is interesting and stimulating. The observations are as follows: As remote sensing images are observed from different angles and atmospheric conditions differ, data obtained by applying fixed threshold values may contain errors, but these errors can be highly accurate. These observations do not appear to be statistically significant in terms of accuracy. A large number of errors can lead to incorrect analysis results when data are later analyzed. We can determine whether this error affects the subsequent conclusions of our analysis. Due to the obvious spectral and textural characteristics, for example, of soil pits, the "ground truth" can usually be determined visually, and this "ground truth" is then used to test the fixed threshold extraction results. Validating as many data points as possible makes the result more reliable. Therefore, you must ensure you have enough data to validate. In addition, the verification data should include different viewing angles (center and edge of the image), different sun angles (different seasons), and different atmospheric conditions (clear, thick aerosols, thin clouds, etc.). In case of degradation by 1-2 pixels inside, the data should be reanalyzed. Summary: The paper is an interesting academic research study. However, all of the comments need to be implemented to improve the methods used 3
We appreciate this feedback and we will take it into account for the reformation of geospatial analysis, in addition to the fact that, like all investigations, it is an area of opportunity for future investigations.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear Editor,
The manuscript was improved according to reviewers comments. I am satisfied with provided improvements and do not have any other remarks.
I recommend manuscript to publication process.
Reviewer 2 Report
Thanks for the revised article. You have improved the whole article by a fairly substantial amount of added stuff.
