Clarification of the Boundaries of Lands of Historical and Cultural Heritage and Determination of Their Protection Zones by Remote Sensing Methods

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors describe in their submitted manuscript “Clarification of the boundaries of lands of historical and cultural heritage and determination of their protection zones by remote sensing methods” an interesting approach for data fusion of different remote sensing techniques. The principle and the concept are quite well described. However, more than only two different methods have to be combined to get a full overview on a historical site extent. Therefore, the authors should include also other remote sensing datasets like LIDAR, optical satellite images etc. in their automatic approach. In my understanding, this paper depicts a preliminary output of this research project and more data shall be included in future. However, the future tasks have to be formulated in more detail, to enable the reader the understanding that this is only the first and very raw result of the project.

Some further remarks regarding the paper and its content:

Missing content:

1.       In section 2, there should be a merit to previous work done in the same field of research by other working groups worldwide, especially regarding combining SAR and GPR data in archaeological prospection.

2.       At p. 5 (part on SAR data), the resolution of the applied data has to be mentioned.

3.       In l. 236-245, you describe the influencing factors for GPR. However, despite the mentioned conductivity, there is also the dielectric value/permittivity and the soil moisture that are strongly influencing the GPR data. Only considering all three factors for a specific site, leads to a statement regarding suitability for GPR.

4.       An introduction to the site and its historical background is completely missing.

5.       You should also provide a map showing the location of the test site in a wider context to locate the site on the Earth.

6.       In l. 286, you mention the “cloud cover” as a factor for SAR data. This is not correct, as clouds normally do not influence SAR imaging. It is only relevant for optical satellite images.

7.       Paragraph of l. 302-308: Please explain why former mass graves influence the zones with high vertical displacement. Is it due to material settling within these areas?

8.       Please mark your AOIs for GPR surveys in a map to correlate the results with the previous ones and understand your conclusions regarding adjusting the heritage site boundary.

9.       There are no results shown for AOI 2.

10.   Paragraph of l. 332-340: Please show all mentioned depth slices here and not only a single slice, as the reader cannot understand your conclusions noted otherwise.

11.   It would be, furthermore, nice, if you could give some interpretative statements or hints, what the described disturbances in the GPR data could be.

12.   Paragraph l. 437-444: Please define the parameters for the protective zone. E.g., is it always a buffer by a defined fixed distance?

13.   Please provide a comparison of the automatically generated boundary of Fig. 12 with the manual one in Fig. 9 and describe the differences and the corresponding reasons.

 

 References:

1.       In l. 83-84 the references [22-27] do not fit the content.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

1.       There are still some small typing errors that need to be corrected.

2.       The paragraph in l. 220-226 is not understandable at all.

Author Response

Thank you for your time and attention to our article. It is very important to us. We hope we have addressed all your constructive comments. We have provided a more detailed description of the following tasks and plans related to this research.

1. Added 4 literary sources reviewing similar works that use the combination of SAR and GPR methods.
2. In the SAR section, added the resolution of the materials used from the Sentinel-1 satellite radar imaging.
3. Addressed your valuable comment and added factors affecting the GPR.
4. Added a historical background of the research object and a schematic map of the object's location.
5. Regarding "cloudiness" as a factor for SAR data, thank you for noticing, it was a typo, and we have removed it.
6. Added an explanation of how mass graves affect vertical displacements.
7. Marked the AOI of the GPR survey as described on the object's map.
8. Added results for AOI2 and included depth slices for AOI1. Additional depth slices for AOI2 are not provided, as they do not contain anomalies.
9. Added information on possible radii of the protective zone, which is constructed automatically by the created software module.
10. Provided a comparison of the automatically created boundary in Fig. 12 with the manual boundary in Fig. 9.
11. Systematized and reorganized information by sections for easier comprehension.
12. References to literary sources have been rechecked and arranged throughout the text accordingly.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article deals with the problem of boundary determination using non-contact methods of data collection. The boundaries are related to historical and cultural areas, which can be very beneficial in the protection of these sites and also in the determination of municipal land use plans.

Comments:

It may be useful to add a section of the research results to the Abstract.

In Chapter 2, I would have liked to see a description of the study site with an indication of its location on a map

I would also recommend that Chapter 2 be reworked and rearranged in terms of content and, for example, divided into subchapters. The input data from Sentinel - 1 is described on line 85 as well as 179. It would be useful to consolidate this section. I am missing more detail on the input data - quality parameters in this section.

Some of the text in the Results chapter, for example from line 382 onwards, could be moved to the previous section - Methods.

Do you also consider data from the land registry in the research?

The proposed research procedure and results are interesting. Still, I recommend conceptually reworking the manuscript's text and adding subchapters for better readability and clarity of the research.

Author Response

Thank you for your time and attention to our article. It is very important to us. We hope we have addressed all your constructive comments.

1. Added research results to the abstract.
2. Added a historical background of the research object and a schematic map of its location.
3. Reformatted sections with subdivisions for better understanding and added information on the resolution of Sentinel-1.
4. Moved part of the text from the "Results" section to the "Methodology" section.
5. Added additional cadastral data about the research object.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear authors,

 Your revised version of the manuscript improved much in quality. Thanks for taking in account most of my remarks. Now, there are only a few minor issues left:

- L. 85-97: Please refine the language, as especially the beginning is quite casual language. Furthermore, in my opinion, it would be better to concentrate here on similar research project in archaeological/historical context and not from other disciplines.

- L. 211-212: Please define once the IW mode and the EW mode.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Only small typos detected.

Author Response

Comments 1: L. 85-97: Please refine the language, as especially the beginning is quite casual language. Furthermore, in my opinion, it would be better to concentrate here on similar research project in archaeological/historical context and not from other disciplines.

Response 1: The paragraph's text was somewhat reformatted, removing arbitrary phrases. We would still like to include examples of the combination of InSAR and GPR in various research fields, not just historical and archaeological. Since our work is interdisciplinary in nature, we believe it is important to briefly touch on examples from other fields for analysis.

Comments 2: L. 211-212: Please define once the IW mode and the EW mode.

Response 2: We attempted to provide the possible resolution for these images obtained in different modes. However, we used the IW mode and this is the one we kept in the text.

We hope we have adequately addressed your comments. Thank you for the constructive discussion of our work.