Drought Impacts, Coping Responses and Adaptation in the UK Outdoor Livestock Sector: Insights to Increase Drought Resilience

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This article does an excellent job of combining quantitative and qualitative data to address the same issues from contrasting data sources and perspectives. Coding of written sources enabled the authors to quantify information from text sources. Figures 3 and 5 and Table 1 did an excellent job of integrating the various factors that were measured.

Author Response

The reviewer makes no requests for modifications

Reviewer 2 Report

General assessment:

The paper provides interesting information about the consequences of a drought episode occurred in 2018, which impacted the UK outdoor livestock sector.

The subject falls within the general scope of the Land journal. The originality of the work’s contribution lies in showing the sensitivity of livestock systems in humid temperate regions to droughts, where this phenomenon is not very common. However, it is a scenario that can intensify due to climate change. The strategies detected to withstand the drought are mainly short-term and are primarily focused on the provision of food. It is surprising that no case of a change in livestock orientation is detected as a long-term strategy, for example, changing from cattle to goats or sheep. The work does not include any statistical analysis, so it is merely descriptive.

Listed below are several minor aspects that need to be changed in order to clarify the article. With attention to these points the paper should be acceptable.

Specific points:

- Lines 52-53. The period May-July 2018 period... delete one ‘period’

- Line 74. This should be Figure 5, not Figure 4.

- Authors should explain what the fire management strategy consists of

Author Response

To address the Specific points:

- Lines 52-53. The period May-July 2018 period... delete one ‘period’ - DONE

- Line 74. This should be Figure 5, not Figure 4 - CORRECTED

- Authors should explain what the fire management strategy consists of:- RESPONSE: We have added the following sentence to the explanation of the farmer responses in Section 3.2.1: "Examples of fire management responses reported included ensuring harvesting machinery was chaff-free; having a tractor ready to cut a fire break if necessary; keeping a full water tank nearby; having fire extinguishers; and removing hay and straw from fields as soon as possible."