Governance Conditions for a Successful Restoration of Riverine Ecosystems, Lessons from the Rhine River Basin
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe article is very well written with good structure. It is quite interesting and fits very well with objectives of Water and particularly the section of Water Resources Management, Policy and Governance. In my opinion, the article is suitable for publication, following a moderate revision. A few comments and recommendations follow below.
L77: Do you mean coarse-filter and fine-filter ecosystem management?
L96: I think the word restoration is missing here? Should it be whether ecosystem restoration will be successful?
L98: In my opinion, for review studies it is useful to describe the terms of the search with detail so anyone can replicate the search. For instance, I would add the query string that was used in the scopus search engine with the exact operators and search terms. Furthermore, it is not clear to me how the selected papers were analyzed. I guess that these papers were the basis for developing a better understanding on what is happening on the Rhine river regarding the restoration processes.
L135: Same here, as mentioned in my previous comment. A search in the literature is mentioned, but a reader may get the impression that a few papers were handpicked, based on unknown criteria, and analyzed. I would expect that a literature search would result to a larger number of articles and that a first screening to filter those that are irrelevant would be necessary. I think It would be useful to add more specific details on how the search was conducted.
Table 4: The caption should describe what the colours mean.
Discussion: In my opinion, the discussion could also include a small paragraph more focused on the results of the interviews. How did the interviews helped to understand better the situation and what the governance conditions are? I think that the contribution of the interviews in this study is overlooked a bit.
Author Response
Comment 1.1: The article is very well written with good structure. It is quite interesting and fits very well with objectives of Water and particularly the section of Water Resources Management, Policy and Governance. In my opinion, the article is suitable for publication, following a moderate revision. A few comments and recommendations follow below.
Response 1.1: We thank the reviewer for the nice remarks made and the constructive feedback.
Comment 1.2: L77: Do you mean coarse-filter and fine-filter ecosystem management?
Response 1.2: We agree with the reviewer and have adjusted the text to clarify the distinction between coarse- and fine-filter ecosystem management. We have corrected the (flow of the) text accordingly.
Comment 1.3: L96: I think the word restoration is missing here? Should it be whether ecosystem restoration will be successful?
Response 1.3: We have found the error that the reviewer pointed out, although it was in L89 of the text. We have corrected this as suggested.
Comment 1.4: L98: In my opinion, for review studies it is useful to describe the terms of the search with detail so anyone can replicate the search. For instance, I would add the query string that was used in the scopus search engine with the exact operators and search terms. Furthermore, it is not clear to me how the selected papers were analyzed. I guess that these papers were the basis for developing a better understanding on what is happening on the Rhine river regarding the restoration processes.
Response 1.4: We have further clarified how the selected papers were analyzed in this section. We also expanded on the selection procedure of these papers. We have used combinations of the specified search terms, which resulted in sufficient papers to base the analytical framework on. A further, more complex usage of operators was not necessary for finding the relevant papers for this research.
Comment 1.5: L135: Same here, as mentioned in my previous comment. A search in the literature is mentioned, but a reader may get the impression that a few papers were handpicked, based on unknown criteria, and analyzed. I would expect that a literature search would result to a larger number of articles and that a first screening to filter those that are irrelevant would be necessary. I think It would be useful to add more specific details on how the search was conducted.
Response 1.5
We have expanded on the selection criteria for the articles and added details on how the search was conducted.
Comment 1.6: Table 4: The caption should describe what the colours mean.
Response 1.6: We have clarified the meaning of the different colours in the text above the table.
Comment 1.7: Discussion: In my opinion, the discussion could also include a small paragraph more focused on the results of the interviews. How did the interviews helped to understand better the situation and what the governance conditions are? I think that the contribution of the interviews in this study is overlooked a bit.
Response 1.7: We have added a section in the discussion to reflect on the used research methods and have better explicated the role of the interviews.
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsDear authors,
Although at first sight I was very enthusiastic about the paper when reading the abstract I must say that I felt somewhat empty-handed after finishing the entire paper.
There were 7 people interviewed but I wonder to what extent this is representative for such a large river with so many stakeholders. Was it not possible and better to have a large survey to check upon the governance of the Rhine? This would in my opinion be more useful than a detailed description of the answer of 7 reviewed people.
The results section is very long and does not read very fluent. For me it was a real struggle to get through this section which is mainly descriptive.
The discussion is relatively short in comparison to the result section. At some points it seems that recommendations are given but these are missing in the end and are somewhat summarized in the conclusion section.
I think that the paper would benefit from shortening the result section and increasing the discussion section, including also some real recommendations, which I felt are now only limitedly discussed even though it was mentioned in the abstract that recommendations are given. Moreover a large survey among stakeholders and proper statistics on this would highly be recommended to give the paper more “body”.
As the paper is written now it gives a nice description of the problems encountered in the river Rhine with regard to river restoration but it does not places the results within a wider context.
There is a focus on salmon as an example of why or why not the restoration is successful. Although this can be interesting as a case example I miss somewhat the added relevance of indicating this specific species.
Comments on the Quality of English LanguageEnglish spelling and grammar are ok. Only some very small errors.
Author Response
Comment 2.1: Although at first sight I was very enthusiastic about the paper when reading the abstract I must say that I felt somewhat empty-handed after finishing the entire paper.
Response 2.1: We thank the reviewer for the constructive remarks and believe that they have helped us to improve the paper.
Comment 2.2: There were 7 people interviewed but I wonder to what extent this is representative for such a large river with so many stakeholders. Was it not possible and better to have a large survey to check upon the governance of the Rhine? This would in my opinion be more useful than a detailed description of the answer of 7 reviewed people.
Response 2.2:
We have added a section in the discussion to reflect upon the used research methods and give recommendations for follow-up research. For this research, we chose to conduct interviews as an approach to gain more in-depth insights on the governance of the Rhine. The use of surveys as additional methods would be of use to reach a larger respondent group, although we would have preferred to do more interviews, as surveys leave limited space to gain in-depth insights on a complex issues such as governance.
Comment 2.3: The results section is very long and does not read very fluent. For me it was a real struggle to get through this section which is mainly descriptive.
Response 2.3: This remark contradicts with the remarks of reviewer 1, who argues that the paper is well written and well structured. Nevertheless, we have rewritten parts of the results section in order to improve the flow of the text.
Comment 2.4: The discussion is relatively short in comparison to the result section. At some points it seems that recommendations are given but these are missing in the end and are somewhat summarized in the conclusion section.
Response 2.4: Two sections are added to the discussion, one to reflect upon the used research methods and one to more clearly give recommendations based on the found challenges to current Rhine governance.
Comment 2.5: I think that the paper would benefit from shortening the result section and increasing the discussion section, including also some real recommendations, which I felt are now only limitedly discussed even though it was mentioned in the abstract that recommendations are given. Moreover a large survey among stakeholders and proper statistics on this would highly be recommended to give the paper more “body”.
Response 2.5: We have shortened the text and improved the flow of the results section and increased the body of the discussion section, as mentioned above. The remark about surveys is addressed in response 2.2.
Comment 2.6: As the paper is written now it gives a nice description of the problems encountered in the river Rhine with regard to river restoration but it does not places the results within a wider context.
Response 2.6: The aim of this research was to create an assessment framework for analyzing governance of successful ecosystem restoration through the conduction of a case study on the Rhine, being a good practice. Using this created framework, similar research could be done in other river basins, which would make comparative research possible. In this way, the relevance of potential context factors may become manifest.
Comment 2.7 There is a focus on salmon as an example of why or why not the restoration is successful. Although this can be interesting as a case example I miss somewhat the added relevance of indicating this specific species.
Response 2.7: As a focus of our research, we chose the governance of the Rhine as a good practice for analyzing factors for successful ecosystem restoration. The choice for the use of the salmon as an indicator species to reflect the status of the restoration of the Rhine was made by the ICPR, not by us as researchers. The salmon used to be abundant in the Rhine catchment and is therefore used as a symbol for a healthy ecosystem.
Comments 2.8 English spelling and gram English spelling and grammar are ok. Only some very small errors.
Response 2.8: We thank the reviewer for this remark and we have taken a close look at our text to correct some minor spelling and grammar mistakes.
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe issues addressed in a previous version have been adequately addressed by the authors in the response letter. I still believe that the paper could benefit from a wider survey and the authors have now indicated this in the recommendations. No further comments on this paper.
