Review Reports - European LIFE Projects Dedicated to Ecological Restoration in Mediterranean and Black Sea Coastal Lagoons

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The Manuscript “Ecological Restoration in Mediterranean and Black Sea coastal lagoons by European LIFE projects” by De Wit and Boutin, analyses how ecological restoration has been pursued by EC Life projects in Mediterranean and Black Sea coastal lagoon sites affiliated to the Nature 2000 network. In the study eighteen projects selected from LIFE public database, were analyzed and discussed respect five categories: (i) removing solid waste and alien invasive species, (ii) re-building lagoons, (iii) creating islets for bird colonies, (iv) restoring the hydrodynamics of the lagoons, and (v) restoring and protecting vegetation. In the discussion, the MS mentions the importance of the link between water management and nature conservation.

This is potentialy an interesting study reporting how ecological restoration has been pursued by European Commission LIFE projects. There are some weaknesses that should be improved as well as the way the information is stated in the manuscript. The manuscript does not scientifically sound, there is not a hypothesis and a appropriate experimental design. The manuscript appears more as a qualitative Report rather than a Scientific Article. Authors should improve in great deep the manuscript to avoid this formatting..

Please find below general concept comments and specific comment for each paragraph.

I hope it helps authors improve the manuscript

Introduction

In the “Introduction” please clarify the concept of “functional approach” mentioned in lines 39 and 61. It seems a crucial concept but it is not clear what the authors mean and how they use it functionally in the paper.

Please reduce the information about the Life Programme (they are easy to find on Life web Site). The “Introduction” should be implemented with topics related to coastal lagoon habitat (state, major pressure and threats, human uses and anthropogenic modifications of coastal lagoons (chapter 3), methods to evaluate the habitat conservation status, etc.) using bibliographic references too.

To define coastal lagoons (line 31-34) in the framework of Habitats Directive, it may be more appropriate the definition reported in "Interpretation Manual of European Union Habitats, version EUR 28 (2013)".

Line 37: [2] no in superscript

Method

Please rearrange the Method with a scientific approach. It no clear the methods used to categorize the Life Project. Why the five categories (i) removing solid waste and alien invasive species, (ii) re-building lagoons, (iii) creating islets for bird colonies, (iv) restoring the hydrodynamics of the lagoons, and (v) restoring and protecting vegetation? Is it in response to major pressure and threats? Is it in response to habitat conservation status? Please use some statistic method to elaborate Life projects.

Line 103-105: the sentences “Ecological restoration requires a historical reference site according the Society for Ecological Restoration [3] characterized by none or very low human impacts. Therefore, we include hereafter a section where we describe the human uses and anthropogenic modifications of coastal lagoons since the last centuries” is completely decontextualized.

Line 86: Table A1

Chapter 3 Human uses and anthropogenic modifications of coastal lagoons

Chapter 3 is a mix between an introduction and discussion. The style is Report and no Research Article. The details about Montepellier are too much (the figure too). Please rearrange the information of the chapter using a scientific method to categorize “Human uses and anthropogenic modifications of coastal lagoons”. The most part of the contents of the Chapter are decontextualized (for example line 184-185).

Results and discussion

Line 191-194: the sentece “In total, half of the 44 projects dealt with this subject, among which 18 were analyzed in more detail Table 1 list in chronological order since 2009 these 18 LIFE projects performed in Mediterranean and Black Sea coastal lagoons, which included a worksite with actions of ecological restoration” should be rearranged.

Line 252-261: it no clear the choice to use the Questions.

Line 274: about Life Lagoon Refresh is available an article more complete and recent. The Layman report is available too. Boscolo Brusà R, Feola A, Cacciatore F, Ponis E, Sfriso A, Franzoi P, Lizier M, Peretti P, Matticchio B, Baccetti N, Volpe V, Maniero L and Bonometto A (2022) Conservation actions for restoring the coastal lagoon habitats: Strategy and multidisciplinary approach of LIFE Lagoon Refresh. Front. Ecol. Evol. 10:979415. doi: 10.3389/fevo.2022.979415 . The Layman report is available too.

Please check the cited references and use the most recent publications.

Author Response

We thank the reviewer for his/her comments.

General comment:

We agree with the reviewer that this study is not hypothesis-driven, but rather adopts a descriptive approach. To our opinion there still should be a place for descriptive research. We highlight that a focused approach comparing LIFE projects for ecological restoration is really original. As a result, a first step should be a descriptive review, before any meaningful hypothesis could be formulated. We recognize that some confusion may have arisen from not correctly formulating the objectives of this study in the first submission. We apologize for that. These objectives have, therefore, now been reformulated as: “The aim is (i) to compile a list of LIFE projects that have been dedicated to coastal lagoons along the shores of the Mediterranean and Black Sea regions, (2) study when the concept of ecological restoration emerged among these LIFE projects dedicated to coastal lagoons, (3) provide a descriptive overview of the different actions undertaken as ecological restoration.”

Introduction :

The functional approach was based on landscape ecology, geomorphology and ecohydrology. Now added in the Introduction.

The definition of coastal lagoons in the Interpretation Manual uses a phytosociological approach and is, therefore, not appropriate for the functional approach. The definition by Kjerve is more suited for the functional approach. We thus describe in the first paragraph: “In contrast, the Implementation Manual of European Union Habitats of the European Commission [3] uses a definition of coastal lagoons as water bodies distinguished by their phytosociological features. Hence, this definition is not operational for the functional approach and, therefore, we privilege the use of the abovementioned definition by Kjerve [1], which accommodates for coastal lagoons as landscape entities.”

We politely disagree with the reviewer’s suggestion to skip the description of the Natura 2000 network and the LIFE programme as we consider this information essential for the reader.

Methods

Following the reviewer’s suggestion we have now fully documented the method for categorizing the entries, which was based on using a lexical and textual analysis supported by IRaMuTeQ (Open source software) and QSR ® N'Vivo software packages. Therefore, a paragraph was added in the Methods section. This analysis shows that the categorization was very useful to capture the variability among the eighteen projects and thus supports the more descriptive approach from 4.1 to 4.6. In addition, the textual analysis has provided additional statistical information that we have now added as Fig. 3 and presented in a new paragraph (second paragraph) in the Results and Discussion.

We politely disagree with the reviewer about his opinion that the last paragraph of the Methods is decontextualized. To our opinion this paragraph is most important to link the practice of ecological restoration to the subdiscipline of Restoration Ecology within the discipline of Ecology and provides the justification for and link to section 3. Hence we have maintained this paragraph.

Chapter 3

We politely disagree with the reviewer’s comments as we believe that this section is really important to link the practice of ecological restoration to the recommendations of restoration ecology for identifying the historical reference states of coastal lagoons. We can understand the comment that it resembles more the style used for the Introduction, but we strongly wish to maintain this section as such, as it addresses these questions specifically from the point of view of restoration ecology and believe that this compilation is quite original for coastal lagoon research. The information is supported by scientific references and it is unfair to claim that it is too much focused on lagoons around Montpellier. Nonetheless, indeed Figure 1 provides an illustration for the case of the lagoons close to Montpellier. We believe this choice is an appropriate case to illustrate, as for this case we had the most complete set of historic and recent maps available.

Results and Discussion

See also our reply to reviewer#2. We have now updated the extraction from the LIFE public database (last extraction 22 March 2023). Surprisingly, it resulted in a higher number of LIFE projects focused on coastal lagoons compared to our earlier extraction in December 2021. Nevertheless, it did not request to reconsider an enlargement of the core selection of 18 projects. The text and the Annex have been fully updated with this new information.

We updated the references and indeed found 3 recent publications (2022) that were directly linked to the selected LIFE projects, i.e., two for LIFE LAGOON REFRESH (including the one you mentioned) and one for LIFE SeResto. In addition three citations were added for enriching the discussion and one publication was skipped as it was considered as superfluous. Hence the total number of citations has increased from 30 to 35. It is now also more clearly indicated in Table 1 (footnote) for which of the selected LIFE projects the Layman report can be downloaded directly from the project website.

Reviewer 2 Report

^{The manuscript "Ecological restoration in Mediterranean and Black Sea lagoons by European LIFE projects" deals with very interesting topics and I think it is suitable for publication on Environments. However, there are some critical issues that must be solved before accepting it. Generally, all data and references must be updated. The paper was submitted at the beginning of 2023, but it seems it was written in 2021, with no proper revision of references. Moreover, the manuscript needs a proper revision of accuracy in data collection and reporting.}^{Material and methods are so clear (I really appreciate this) that I tried to replicate data export from the reported link and it resulted to me in 93 LIFE projects, instead of 70, which were however present on December 2021. I recommend to perform the extraction again and update the list at least until December 2022.}

Generally, there is also the need to present examples and arguments of wider interest, not only of regional interest.

^{Results section must also be improved with statistical analysis supporting discussion and again with more accuracy in the analysis, as some WBs were missed. I suggest a table or figure which can resume the classification made in Results-discussion section.}

^{Last but not least, The title must bechange. I suggest "}^{European LIFE Projects for the ecological restoration}in Mediterranean and Black Sea ^{coastal lagoons"}

^{Please, find attached the PDF file where I reported my point by point comments and revisions.}

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

We thank the reviewer for his/her comments and particularly for the annotations in the manuscript.

We thank you for highlighting that we have used some non-accepted synonyms for species names. We applied your corrections and added the authors to all species names according the rules in botanical and zoological taxonomy and checked the status with respect to the WORMS data base.

Following your suggestion, we have changed the title and chosen the following “European LIFE projects dedicated to Ecological Restoration in Mediterranean and Black Sea coastal lagoons”

See also our reply to reviewer#1. We have now updated the extraction from the LIFE public database (last extraction 22 March 2023). Surprisingly, it resulted indeed in a higher number of LIFE projects focused on coastal lagoons compared to our earlier extraction in December 2021. In total we extracted 94 entries. Nevertheless, it did not request to reconsider an enlargement of the core selection of 18 projects. After excluding the Atlanctic and Baltic lagoons (now 33), duplicates (5) and several non-relevant projects the number of extracted LIFE projects focused on Mediterranean coastal lagoons is now equal to 51. The text and the Annex have been fully updated with this new information.

We updated the references and indeed found 3 recent publications (2022) that were directly linked to the selected LIFE projects, i.e., two for LIFE LAGOON REFRESH and one for LIFE SeResto. In addition three citations were added for enriching the discussion and one publication was skipped as it was considered as superfluous. Hence the total number of citations has increased from 30 to 35. It is now also more clearly indicated in Table 1 (footnote) for which of the selected LIFE projects the Layman report can be downloaded directly from the project website.

Better supported by statistical data has been based using a lexical and textual analysis supported by IRaMuTeQ (Open source software) and QSR ® N'Vivo software packages. Therefore, a paragraph was added in the Methods section. This analysis shows that the categorization was very useful to capture the variability among the eighteen projects and thus supports the more descriptive approach from 4.1 to 4.6. The additional statistical information has been added as Fig. 3 and presented in a new paragraph (second paragraph) in the Results and Discussion.

For the Region Puglia (Apulian), both are used in English. The rule in English geography is to remain as close as possible to the name in its original language. Hence, we keep Puglia as the Italian name for this Italian region.

We agree with the need to achieve more generally valid knowledge from the LIFE projects. However, the comparative approach is original and for this first paper we remain quite descriptive. We discuss that despite some efforts for networking different LIFE projects the situation is not satisfactory and in the Conclusion we state that “Nevertheless, and despite that many LIFE projects associate academic partners, large scientific comparative assessment [34] remain scarce. There clearly is a need for scientific based assessments and comparative studies to increase the academic knowledge on this subject. This descriptive overview is a first step towards a more comprehensive scientific assessment of what can learned from comparing the LIFE ecological restoration projects and what are the generalities that emerge.”

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The revised Manuscript “European LIFE projects dedicated to Ecological Restoration in Mediterranean and Black Sea coastal lagoons” by De Wit and Boutin is an interesting study reporting how the ecological restoration of coastal lagoons has been pursued by European Commission LIFE projects. In this version, the aim of the Manuscript is clear and a scientific approach is applied. The authors clarify the concept of “functional approach” and consequently the link with the definition for coastal lagoon. The chapters “Introduction” and “Methods” are rearranged satisfactorily.

In my humble opinion, the sentence “Ecological restoration requires a historical reference site according the Society for Ecological Restoration [4] characterized by none or very low human impacts. Therefore, we include here after a section where we describe the human uses and anthropogenic modifications of coastal lagoons since the last centuries.” at the end of the “Methods” is not in the right position. I agree with the authors that historical reference is a key concept in the framework of ecological restoration, but introducing it in the “Methods” gives readers expectations that historical references are considered in the elaboration of data. I suggest moving the phrase to “Chapter 3” and changing the title to “Reference site, human uses and anthropogenic modifications of coastal lagoons”.

Author Response

We thank you for your comments.

We have reconsidered your point that the original final paragraph in the Methods about the historical reference was not appropriately placed. We have now solved this problem by undertaking three actions: 1) provide the definition of ecological restoration by the SER in the Introduction with the mention of the historic reference, 2) permutate sections 2 and 3, so that what was originally section 3 now follows (slightly rewritten) the Introduction and 3) add to the final paragraph of the Introduction after the aims a description of the structure of the paper.

Section 2 is now titled: “Historic conditions, human uses and anthropogenic modifications of Mediterranean and Black Sea coastal lagoons”

Section 3 is now Methods (it does no longer contain this sentence).

End of reply.

Reviewer 2 Report

I am quite satisfied with the responses and the revised paper, however some new issues arised after the update of the dataset and brand new analyses performed.

First of all, I would like to suggest to modify the title as: “European LIFE projects aimed at the Ecological Restoration in Mediterranean and Black Sea coastal lagoons”.

I appreciated the effort to perform a qualitative analysis of data (avoid the term statistical, please), however more accuracy should be taken into account when performing. For example, Fig 3 depicts that LIFE SeResto is only aimed at vegetation restoring, whilst it was also aimed at improving the ecological status according to WFD, that means also water quality. Indeed, the authors mentioned it in the text. Even if they stated the objective was not met, they should consider it in the analysis, and eventually argumented as done. One of the objectives of LIFE Lagoon Refresh was to transplant reedbeds and seagrass, as the authors correctly reported in Table 1, but it does not result in Fig.3. Again, table 1 reports that Life LagNature restored dune habitat, but Fig.3 does not confirm this, as only blue, yellow and orange bars are present (no grey bar, that should be dune restoration). LIFE Mansalat should have a blue bar as it is supposed to focus on birds. And so on.

References must be updated also regarding the river flow divertions in Venice Lagoon, that is reported in D’Alpaos, L., and Carniello, L. (2010). “Sulla reintroduzione di acque dolci nella laguna di Venezia. Salvaguardia di Venezia e della sua Laguna,” in Proceedings of the convegni lincei giornata dell’ambiente, XXVI Giornata dell’Ambiente, in Ricordo di Enrico Marchi ACL, Vol. 255, (Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei), 113–146.

I agree with the use of Puglia, instead of Apulian, but "Venetto" is absolutely wrong! Correct it everywhere with Veneto (one t, please), as I reported in version 1.

Please consider also this point by point comments:

Fig.3, the label of the green square is "Vegeta7on". Correct the misspelling into "Vegetation". Blue square: Birds &alinas --> Birds and Salinas. Pink Square: Water &quality --> Water Quality. Generally, the quality of labels is very poor: improve it, please, to make it readable.

Author Response

We thank you for your comments.

The reviewer is surprised by discrepancies between the Results of the textual analysis shown in Fig. 3 and the points listed in Table 1 and described in the text sections 4.1- 4.6. As we explain in the methods the lexical and textual analyses were based on the text provided on the website of the LIFE data base. The standardized format is an advantage for such an analysis, but one has to realize that it completely depends on the words used. The project description for Life SeReSto did not mention water quality as such, and for LIFE Lagoon Refresh it did not mention the planting of reed beds! This, reinforces our point that for a correct project description of the LIFE projects it is essential to have additional material available, which justifies our focus on the eighteen selected projects.

The lexical and textual analyses have been added in response to comments of reviewer#1, who has informed that he appreciated this addition a lot. We also think that it represents added value to the paper. However it is only part of the Results and not a summary of the whole findings. Hence, we cannot accept the proposal of reviewer#2 to modify Fig. 3, which is just a traceable outcome of the textual analysis and provides some interesting information. The more complete information is provided in Table 1 and in the text from sections 4.1-4.6. This is combined by using the textual analysis together with a careful reading of websites, Layman reports and associated scientific publications.

Please note that the term “statistical lexical analysis” is standard terminology. We just remind the definition of statistical (e.g. Collins dictionary: science concerned with the collection, quantification, and interpretation of quantitative data…) which is appropriate here.

We think that it is not useful to cite the Italian reference as it is not easily available for the reader and appears as redundant with the other references.

Thank you for the correction of Veneto (wit one t): now corrected

The bad representation of Figure 1 appears to be related by conversion by software. We have provided both a Word and pdf file that did not present these problems (at least not on my MacBook Pro). We also provide the original material (Powerpoint files) directly to the editorial office for final editing.

We have improved the colours of the stacked bar, where there was indeed a confusion between the blue and grey tones.

End of reply.

Round 3

Reviewer 2 Report

I cannot check each one, but I suppose there is a bug or bias in the system that Authors should avoid. The LIFE WEB site reports, for example, for LIFE12 NAT/IT/000331 these details in the objectives of the project: "Contribute to the achievement of good ecological status for transitional water bodies and demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed actions to contributing to the objectives set in the Framework Water Directive;". Therefore, as among objectives there is also water quality it should result in their analysis.

I suggest to performe it again or to check one by one each project details in the LIFE Website to be assured the results of the analysis are correct.

Moreover, I suggest to change this approach if the analysis still results with bias due to LIFE website or anything else. Indeed, I think it is importan to show robust results that are probably already filled in table 1. So I request to analyse the table 1 directly, instead of LIFE WEB site descriptions.

I also suggest to move fig 3 at the beginning of results section to avoid misunderstanding, as the final result is table 1. Anyway, I require again to make a new figure at the end of the section which resume all results, as proposed in figure 3.

As authors correctly reported, a statistical analysis is a quantitative analysis, that is the reason why I suggest to avoid the term statistical.

The Italian reference is cited also in Boscolo et al. 2022 (you can add this) and it was just an opportunity to update and improve your references. But it is up to the authors.

Authors did not response about changes in title.

Author Response

Reply to reviewer#2

We thank the reviewer for his criticism, comments and suggestions. Please find hereby our reply to the different points:

Reviewer:

I suggest to performe it again or to check one by one each project details in the LIFE Website to be assured the results of the analysis are correct.

Reply:

While we politely disagree with using the term “a bug” as the textual analysis is based on words and their interpretations; the latter are by definition subjective, i.e. based on the person performing the analysis. Hence, everything can be discussed. In our original textual analysis we did not code for ‘category 6: Ecological restoration of water quality and quantity in coastal lagoons based on the aquatic continuum concept.’ whence the term ‘water quality’ was not explicitly mentioned in the text available on the Life Data Base. However, we are very happy to accept the suggestion by the reviewer that any mention to the objectives of the Water Framework Directive should be considered as implicitly addressing water quality and these entries have been coded accordingly. Therefore, we have re-analyzed as suggested all the data and adapted Fig. 3 accordingly. Now we find that 6 projects, rather than the 3 originally mentioned, address the issue of water quality according this new approach. We have also improved the graphic quality of this Figure 3, taking care of using the exactly the same colours for the top and bottom panels and more contrasting colours among the 6 categories. To prevent any ambiguities, in the methods we have now added the phrase (see lines 228-231): For coding the latter category we included all references to objectives of the Water Framework Directive [19], even when the term “water quality” was not explicitly used.

To our opinion the textual analysis is just a tool, but certainly not a final synthesis of the Results. Therefore we have now added in the Conclusion the following text (see lines 476-485):

“A textual analysis of the text-fields for each project description, comprising Background, Objectives and Results sections, on the LIFE public database gives a rather good impression of the diversity of ecological restoration projects that have been realized in Mediterranean and Black Sea coastal lagoons (cf. Fig. 3). Nevertheless, we found that this information should be enriched by the more practical, technical and scientific detail that we could find at the websites, Layman reports and scientific publications. Unfortunately, among the eighteen projects, five project websites were, regrettably, no longer available in 2023, while four of those have been abandoned only after 2020. Twelve Layman reports, although one only in Italian, are currently available and two have been announced as future publications (cf. Table 1).”

We don’t believe that such a textual analysis would be meaningful for all the documents that we have consulted. This would result in very strong differences among projects with corresponding bias. Hence we remain to a descriptive approach for Table 1 and accompanying text.

Reviewer:

Reply:

Done, Fig. 2 is now presented in the Methods section, then follows Fig. 3 at the beginning of the Results and Discussion section

Reviewer :

As authors correctly reported, a statistical analysis is a quantitative analysis, that is the reason why I suggest to avoid the term statistical.

The Italian reference is cited also in Boscolo et al. 2022 (you can add this) and it was just an opportunity to update and improve your references. But it is up to the authors.

Reply: Ok, thank you

Reviewer:

Authors did not response about changes in title.

Reply:

We thank you for your original suggestion. We have, however, preferred a slightly different version as follows “European LIFE projects dedicated to Ecological Restoration in Mediterranean and Black Sea coastal lagoons”

This reflects better to our opinion that some LIFE projects could be dedicated to ecological restoration, while other LIFE projects address other issues.

Other points: We have added the references to scientific publications in Table 1, using the sequential numbering according their citation in the text.

The reference of the WFD now appears as 19, and the numbering of the following citations has been adapted and checked.

End.

Round 4

Reviewer 2 Report