Accuracy of ASCAT-DIREX Soil Moisture Mapping in a Small Alpine Catchment
, Michal Danko 1, Martin Jančo 1, Ladislav Holko 1, Isabella Greimeister-Pfeil 2, Mariette Vreugdenhil 3 and Juraj Parajka 4
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsAbstract
Line 27 – The soil moisture values should have units (for e.g., m3 m-3 or V V-1)
Keywords
Line 31 – Please change the keywords that are not mentioned in the title of the manuscript.
Introduction
There are many factual statements that the author has provided that needs a literature reference some of which are mention below
Line 34-35 – Need to clarify the statements “in the scale of soil profile or in the scale of river basin” – Do you mean green infrastructures (GIs) vs river channels. Also please add citation to it. For example, if you meant soil profile as a metaphor for GI - you can site this paper https://doi.org/10.3390/hydrology10100197 and similarly provide citation for the river basin as well.
Line 39 – 40 – need a justification on why traditional soil moisture measurements are complex
Line 40 – 42 and 102 – 104, line 356,385- The sentences need to be paraphrased and avoid using the word “we”
Line 49 – You mentioned “many hydrological studies” – need to provide few examples or literature reference to it.
Line 51 – “The fact is especially ….” Provide the literature reference to this
Line 59 – “……. High temporal resolution of few days or below (WHAT----Did you miss out the reference here)”
Line 71-73 need a reference for this statement
Line 77 and 84 - need to double check the format for citation, and imply to the entire document
Line 97-98 to connect last paragraph - Author needs to describe why accuracy of alpine environment is necessary and how this research has driven to answer that necessity.
Study area and data
I believe this section should be under the methodology part.
Line 110 – change the “km2” to “km2” and “816” to “816 m”
Figure 1 – label the pictures as “A”, “B”, and so on for all the figures and describe them below
Line 121 – please define the word “(Červenec)”.
Line 122 – provide full form of a.s.l
Line 124 – explain what does FDR meters do? In relation to soil moisture? Are they calibrated or not? If not, what is the soil type that the factory calibrated meters refer to.
Line 127 – 132 Not sure if mentioning these parameters are relevant to the manuscript’s objectives. Author should also mention how the discharge is measured at the outlet. Are you using any sensors to measure the flow depth?
Line 133 – 153 – This section should be in the results section. It would be good if the author mentioned the methodology of how seasonal dynamic of in situ soil moisture is measured. And present this description in the results
Figure 2 – The data is untrustworthy - between 2015 to 2017, the soil moisture for the forest seems to drop to almost 0 percent which is not ideal for a forest area. Please justify this visual representation.
Section 2.3 – please provide the technical description of how ASCAT observations and all the terminology related to it are measured.
Line 163 – Could you add a bracket to mention T is time (ideally T represents temperature and t represents time)
Methodology
The methodology needs more content to it. This should explain how all the data are collected, how satellite data are used during the research, how in situ soil moisture are measured, what timeline of data is presented for analysis, and if any sensors used--- what are its technical descriptions. Section 2 can be moved to this title.
The methodology section should also include the data quality assurance and quality check and talk about the quality of data used to present this analysis and mention why specific range of dates were used to analyze specific titles.
Results
The reference for open space and the forest area needs to be consistent. For example, either use cervenec vs forest area or CH1500 vs CH1420 throughout the manuscript. Also address the alpine meadows wherever necessary to fit the objective of the manuscript.
Line 198-199 – This should be moved to the new page.
Line 218 – 219 – Please correct the sentence “At the forest site is the seasonal pattern very similar” to “At the forest site, the seasonal pattern is very similar”
Line 222 – Would you justify why there is a drop in July data?
Line 229 – 232 The figure description should fit with the figures in same page.
Figure 5 – The y axis for both open area and forest area does not match.
Line 264 -265 – Why only the year 2014 was selected for the snow analysis. Since you have data until 2019, I suggest looking at the 2019 data for winter snow analysis before diving into the conclusion that line 266-267 makes
Line 285 - 287 - Paraphrase this sentence. The ‘F’ in the “Figure” needs to be lowercase. Also add soil moisture after the word “decrease”
Line 292 – 296 - The analysis is based on the small range of data (June 2016) compared to the large dataset (2013 – 2019) you have. Therefore, before jumping into the assumptions made in this line, you could conduct similar analysis of other sets of data range to see if they provide similar analysis.
Line 303-304 – For which year?
Line 385 – “not shown here” – please provide reference on where it is shown or cite the reference
Line 386 – is it between 9:30 am to 9:30 pm
Line 395 – remove see
Conclusion – The conclusion needs more work based on the comments presented here. The authors need to present their challenges while conducting research with future recommendations.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Some sentences use words like - we, our, etc., which need to be changed to sound more academic.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe study on soil moisture mapping using in situ observations and ASCAT-DIREX in alpine regions is quite important for several purposes. The work presents variability of soil moisture at different time length scales varied from 1 day to 10 days scale. The manuscript is well structured, but the authors need to address these queries. The specific comments are given below for improvement.
Major Comments:
1) In several sections of the ms, authors have used The Pearson correlation coefficient (rP) and correlation coefficient (R). I would suggest, use consistently the standard way of writing the Pearson correlation coefficient as r instead of rP or R.
2) From the last para of Introduction (L88-98) & Figure 1, it seems that authors have carried out the analysis at a spatial scale which is not. I suggest rewriting objectives indicating the analysis was done at two experimental sites (C1420 and C1500). Also specify at which soil depth, these objectives are performed (5 cm and 10 cm)
3) In Study area: provide geographical coordinates of two experimental sites.
4) In several sections of the ms, soil wetness index (SWI) and soil water index (SWI) are written. Use consistently one style. Also, introduce SWI in the beginning and then throughout the ms use SWI instead of full form. At present, randomly used.
5) Section 3.1: Only Pearson correlation coefficient for open and forested case are tested. What about RMSE?
6) Figure 5 needs revision: The square box can be made smaller. Why were only Ts1 and Ts10 selected?
7) L262: ERA 5 Land: Rewrite this word as ERA5-Land
8) Figure 8: Also add the legend used for elevation including its data source
9) In the Discussion section L347-387 seems very lengthy.
10) At the end of Discussion section, write the limitations of the study. Further, how this study can be helpful in supporting soil moisture at a spatial scale
Comments on the Quality of English LanguageEnglish is fine
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsLine 212 -215: The quality statement should be moved before Figure 2.
Figure 3 and lines 248-248: The values in the statement don't match the figure. The r estimates for forest area are mentioned between -0.2 and 0.76 but are identified as missing values in the figure. The author needs to clarify this discrepancy. Why the values are removed from the original data--- need to justify and change the statement accordingly.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe authors have improved the overall quality of the manuscript and addressed all queries.
Author Response
We would like to thank the reviewer for positive evaluation of the manuscript.
