Vulnerability of Subaerial and Submarine Landscapes: The Sand Falls in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

• Broad comments highlighting areas of strength and weakness. These comments should be specific enough for authors to be able to respond.

Congratulations to the authors for undertaking such comprehensive and complex analysis, with the aim of preserving/stop destroying one of the most beautiful and exciting places on the Earth. I was very interested in reading the paper and thus additionally explored the study area myself.

The paper describes two complex analysis:

1. classification of the coastal scenery, and
2. coastal vulnerability analysis.

An illustration for the each of the above analysis, showing main steps leading to the Evaluation index (D), and to the Coastal Vulnerability Index (CVI) would considerably improve the presentation of the work and clarity of the paper – thus connecting all the paragraphs.

Although both complex, there is no integration between the two analysis. Thus I suggest to the authors to discuss possibility that Evaluation index (D) become and Indicator of socio-economic type for the coastal vulnerability analysis. The rationale for this lays in the fact that tourism is the main economic driving force in the study area and it is based on the beautiful coastal landscape of Cabo San Lucas.

The integration of the two methods could be a significant contribution of the paper – assessing coastal vulnerability including the most valuable resource, beautiful coastal scenery, and evaluating it from the tourism point of view and not only nature protection status.

In the discussion and concluding remarks, I suggest more systematic approach – describing Table 3: what indicators contributed the most to the high scores of particular areas (maybe to add mean indicators scores for each indicator in the Table 3?).

One general question for all the scientists and thus to you (maybe bacause I live in the tourism area too, with the tourism as the main economic driving force): At what point the area would stop be attractive for tourism, that tourism will stop growing (the growth must reach certain peak)?

 

• Specific comments referring to line numbers, tables or figures. Reviewers need not comment on formatting issues that do not obscure the meaning of the paper, as these will be addressed by editors.

There are difficulties in reading the paper due to the use of many abbreviations. I suggest that toponyms are not abbreviated such as Cabo San Lucas.

The locations for assessing coastal scenery should be named immediately in lines 159-161, as they appear later (Figure 6, 7 and lines 337-357) under abbreviation CL1,…CL9.

On the begging, it should be clearly defined that the study area has name Cabo San Lucas but is divided into three zones: Pacific Ocean, San Lucas Bay and again Cape San Lucas as narrower part - the peninsula peak.

Author Response

Thank you for your comments and efforts, please see attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

I really like this paper. It's different to the typical academic papers I usually review in that it covers a very wide range of topics building towards the quantification of the region's coastal vulnerability. I would suggest talking a bit more about Climate Change as well. Even if it's only citing other work. The effects of coastal water levels also need to be addressed. E.g in most storms, storm surges are the causative factor for a lot of coastal infrastructure damage. The numerical models also need better explaining. E.g. which ones were used and implemented as part of this study and which ones were just used as output.    Section 3.1: talks about currents, which currents are these? Were these wave induced current used per singular events? Coastal erosion could be due to longshore transport and episodic erosion. These would represent totally different studies. So clarity around this would be appreciated. For longshore transport, longer than seasonal scale simulations are required with softwares like Unibest. It seems to me that here only episodic erosion was simulated, which could identify some hotspots, but it has to be made clear in the assumptions.    Please make sure the figures are referenced in a consistent manner. Some are not in bold.   Linking extreme events with ENSO is not a trivial task. Does the paper gain much by adding these data? Are any correlation statistics available between extreme events and ENSO?    Figure 2 the velocity magnitudes are not really visible. And are they wave orbital velocities or coastal currents? This relates to the required details on the numerical models.   

Figure 6: Where do you define CL1 through to CL9, I might have just missed it? I see it came later, in Figure 7. Please refer to this figure together with Figure 6. 

  Table 3's caption reads a bit strange. Maybe consider rewording it?   It's a bit more difficult that wave heights but sea level values are also very important. E.g. during a storm there might be a storm surge. Is it possible to add commentary on this aspect of the coastal vulnerability index? Another thing to consider is the shadows that tall buildings could cast on the beaches.  Some of the fonts in the figures are a bit small.    Maybe mention the possible effects of Climate Change in the future? And the sediment budget. E.g. if dams are built it could deprive the coastline of sediment?    I'm wondering about the title of the paper. Is the focus really on the sand falls? Or is it a broader commentary on the esthetic and abiotic coastal vulnerability of the region?   Line 339: don't use evident more than once in a sentence.    Line 422: The last sentence needs restructuring. 

Author Response

Thank you very much for your observations and efforts. Please see attached file. 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx