WaterSmart-GIS: A Web Application of a Data Assimilation Model to Support Irrigation Research and Decision Making
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This paper describes a GIS-based irrigation management information server, designed to assist irrigators in decision making on irrigation applications. Reliable and easy-to-use irrigation support tools are much needed, especially as freshwater resources become increasingly limited. Several app-based information delivery systems, such as IrriWatch, are already commercially available.
The paper outlines the system and gives a detailed description of functionality including its delivery of evapotranspiration (ET, consumptive water use) and soil moisture (SM). However, there is little verification of the ET and SM estimates generated, and what is provided is not very encouraging. Verification should be the first step in the development, and data delivery and exploration architecture a second step. It seems here that a massive architecture has been constructed before step 1 validation was conducted, calling into question the utility of the system for the intended purpose. In addition, the interface seems much more complex than what an irrigator will typically want to interact with. The growers I have worked with want direct, simple estimates of daily irrigation recommendations. This toolkit might be more useful for a consultant developing a tool to deliver those recommendations. However, the consultant would need to be convinced of the quality and utility of data being provided before making that investment.
The manuscript requires thorough editing for grammar and conciseness. Some sections are quite wordy, such as Sec 3.2. There is a lot of detail regarding specific functionalities that could be removed to improve readability.
Specific comments:
L23: “profiling” – is there a different word that can be used? Not clear what this means in this context.
L33: Two uses of “impact” – maybe “impacts will affect all of North and Central America, and pose a unique…
L39: Suggest “, disseminating this information to stakeholders in a timely manner, and…”
L44: “is the central pivot irrigation system (CPIS), which pumps water…”
L55 and following: This is changing, and not necessarily the case today. For example, see the OpenET project (openetdata.org) supplying API and graphical access to 30m ET imaging. Cite https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1752-1688.12956
IrriWatch founded by Wim Bastiaanssen and base on SEBAL is another major platform available now that should be cited https://www.irriwatch.com/en/ This system uses multiple sources of information, and thus addresses several of the challenges listed on this page, including visualized maps. What are the unique features of the new system proposed here?
L164: Maybe “Architectural Design”? What is meant by “It typically consists”? Are there different instances of the architectural design that don’t include these three layers? Maybe “The system consists of three layers…”
L167: “interacts with the other layers…”
L170: “to handle issues of big data download and storage and large throughput..”
L174: Suggest removing “Subsection” from section title
L175: What is meant by “assimilations”? Use a different word here.
L197: Clarify this statement that SMAP did not show clear and valid soil moisture statuses. This statement needs more explanation, as SMAP has undergone significant validation in other studies. More explanation is required regarding the USDA NASS soil moisture condition reports. Are these the weekly county level data based on NASS observer subjective analyses? Perhaps give a URL for data access.
L203: “The properties considered are categorized as physical properties and …”. The properties do not need to be capitalized.
L214: Technically, NDVI is not an indicator of water stress, although anomalies could reflect impacts of water stress (but potentially other kinds of stress as well).
L217: More information is needed here about the machine learning exercise. What are the (remote sensing?) predictors that were used in the training? Only MODIS LST is discussed in the first paragraph, but this can’t be the only input… How were the Ameriflux measurements of SM and ET processed? (e.g., closure corrections to the ET data, depths of SM data used and were they converted to a total soil profile average? Are Ameriflux data continually ingested and the ML model updated, or was this done and now only the ML model is run? Check grammar in this section 5. This ML model is not mentioned again later in the paper.
L232: “all five categories” - which categories does this statement refer to?
L244-245: Check wording of these two sentences.
L254: Maybe “control the granularity of individual files…”
L256: Unclear. Should this be “One solution is to isolate each variable into individual files…”
L262: Unclear – if who is not willing to convert?
L265: Why are the paragraphs describing the data analytics module and dissemination module bulleted? Suggest removing bullets.
L268: The phrase starting “deriving the pixel count..” is unclear. Does this mean “generating a histogram of SM moisture values over the AOI”?
L271: “soil profile” typically refers to changes in soil type or properties with depth. Can a different term be used? Here it looks like this terms refers also to a profile of a soil profile, so kind of confusing. Maybe timeseries is a more common term.
L284: Shouldn’t a data dissemination module be responsible for distributing (not retrieving) data?
Sec 3.3: Avoid use of “should be”, “could be”, and “should provide”, etc here and elsewhere in the paper. Is this a concept description or is the system already developed? If the latter, these properties are already determined. “Each product is associated with..” If it is a concept only (hasn’t yet been constructed), this must be clearly stated in the abstract and introduction.
L369: Suggest introducing this URL in the introduction so that the reader can access early in the manuscript if they want.
L4.2: Perhaps reduce the amount of detail reported regarding all buttons, toolbars, etc. This may be better reserved for a user manual?
Fig 3 caption: “Maps of Nebraska’s: (a) location…” For the precipitation map, perhaps round categories to integers.
L427 and paragraph: Early in the growing season, there is not much vegetation so there should not be much transpiration. The sentence starting “Therefore, there is a possibility…” is unclear. There is a lot of detail about functionality in this section that could be removed.
L505: How accurate is this information expected to be? This statement is quite expansive, and depends on very accurate modeling results, which may not be a reasonable expectation at field scale, especially an irrigated field. The rootzone accuracy in Fig 8 is not encouraging, nor is the ET estimation in Fig 9.
Fig 6: Why are values being reported with so many significant digits?
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
General Comments: The manuscript presents a study on the development of a web-based GIS named WaterSmart-GIS, which was designed to provide near-real-time information including Soil Moisture (SM), evapotranspiration (ET), and weather variables. The manuscript is clear and provides sufficiently detailed information on the system development logic, process, and results.
Specific comments:
- Please ensure that all initializations and/ or acronyms are sufficiently introduced for the novice reader e.g. VCI
- Details on the resolution (spatial and temporal) specifications of the various products that the system harnesses should be provided.
- Please elaborate on how the various satellite imagery products were integrated for information retrieval within the system given their varied spatial resolutions.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
In my opinion, the research addresses current issue. A new methods and new ways of aspects of a web based geographical information system and its functionality are useful, and what is more very needed in environmental sciences. The formal aspects of the paper are proper. The paper is well prepared and well-organized, it brings valuable results however, minor scientific revisions are needed.
The introduction is well structured, and it covers all the concepts investigated in the methodological part. However, the authors need to stress the novelty of this study in the introduction section. I suggest the authors adding more details about the state of the art approaches and methods for geovisualization of mapping, other project related to 2D-3D visualization of data related to geovisualization would improve the paper. Please indicate how your findings can be useful in other disciplines, you can find some related paper of ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information in geovisualization.
DOI: 10.3390/ijgi11020108
DOI: 10.3390/ijgi11010022
DOI: 10.3390/ijgi9110679
The results and conclusions are correctly interpreted. The manuscript brings interesting results and reflects on an important technical note. Additionally, the experimental results are reliable and explanations of the main result are sufficient. My evaluation is that the paper is publishable after minor scientific revisions.
My questions to the authors (not necessary built into manuscript):
Can you explain what are the limitations of this method of data collecting using this system?
What processing power do you need to do WebGIS based geovsualization?
Coming to other observations:
- Almost every figures need to be revised, because of multiple reasons, see below.
- Not clear and not readable. Please replace it with min. 300dpi figure, with larger text.
- Improve the quality and add legend. Please replace it with min. 300dpi figure, with larger text.
- Improve the quality and add legend if it possible. Please replace it with min. 300dpi figure, with larger text.
- Fig8 to Fig7. Also improve the quality. Please replace it with min. 300dpi figure, with larger text.
- Not clear and not readable. Please replace it with min. 300 dpi figure, with larger text.
- I suggest the authors add a new paragraph to introduces the highlights of geovisualization.
- In Methodology (e.g. software links) is missing references.
- The section of References formatting based on template.
My evaluation is that the paper is publishable after minor scientific revisions.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
(Remark to the Author):
The authors developed a web app to provide irrigation information based on the different data and machine learning-based data assimilation methods.
Overall, this research is very interesting and related to the aim of this journal. The language of this paper needs to be checked before publishing. I would like to recommend this paper for a major revision.
Here are my comments and suggestion for this paper:
- The title of this paper should be “Water-SmartGIS: A Web app of data assimilation model to Support Irrigation Research and Decision Making”
- The keyword of “high resolution land data 25 assimilation system; geospatial cyberinfrastructure” should be either divided into two keywords or paraphrased.
- Changed Section 3 “architect design” to “architecture design”
- In Section 4, could you add a table to explain how you implemented the server, database, and front end? And what database and server did you use in the research?
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The revisions have helped to better set the context for this platform, and to streamline the discussion. The ET and SM evaluation should be posed as very preliminary, and should move from Discussion to under the Nebraska use cases section. The capabilities of the An extensive, both in space and time, evaluation must be conducted as a next step, and should be detailed in the Future Work section.
The manuscript requires thorough editing before it can be published. More streamlining/condensation of the text will be beneficial to the reader.
L44: “pivot irrigation system”
L55: This statement that farmers lack the knowledge required to make data-driven irrigation decision comes off a bit condescending. Please rephrase. The new text added to this paragraph adds context, but requires editing.
L64: “virtually for free” – this implies there is some small cost to the end-user. Please rephrase.
L95: Suggest here and in Abstract something like “The system is prototyped here with an application in Nebraska, demonstrating its ability to collect and deliver information to end-users…”
L214: Suggest “Consistency has been demonstrated between SMAP soil moisture retrievals and qualitative soil moisture condition surveys conducted by USDA NASS at county scale [50]. We therefore use the NASS reported categorical soil moisture conditions to grade SMAP soil moisture products into four categories:”
L220: Suggest “The physical and chemical soil properties considered here include calcium carbonate [content?], …”
New text in bullet 5 needs editing for clarity. There is a 500m MODIS LAI product, so this statement is unclear. Give product names and resolutions (spatial and temporal). Make clear that Ameriflux data are “point” measurements (in contrast to the other gridded products used in the ML model). The tower flux correction statement is not clear. What type of correction is used, and corresponding to what satellite overpass time. The last sentences here (L249-252) are not clear in their intent.
L402: Suggest “In this prototype implementation, users can customize..in Nebraska”. I assume the intent is to expand to a larger area in the U.S., so clarifying that this is only a prototype will help remind the reader why the focus on Nebraska.
L502: Suggest changing “profile” to “timeseries” here and throughout manuscript.
Sec 6.1: These are results and would fit better under Sec. 5 than in discussion. Perhaps “5.3 Evaluation of HRLDAS SM and ET with ground observations”. Forecasting is not discussed, so should not be in section title. Given that this is a very limited evaluation (at only on cluster of sites and for one year), this would be better posed as a very preliminary evaluation. In the Future steps section of Discussion, plans for a more complete evaluation study should be outlined.
State the flux sites used (USNe1, USNe2, USNe3) and point out that two of these are irrigated and one rainfed. Presumably the known irrigation was included as input to the simulations shown in Fig. 8 and 9., and this should be explicitly stated. Without this in-situ information incorporated into the inputs, the peaks associated with irrigation would not be captured by HRLDAS, so being transparent on this is critical for interpreting the results. Better still, could plot results with and without in-situ irrigation incorporated to demonstrate model performance without detailed user-supplied information.
Fig 8 and 9: Change “in-suit” to “in-situ” here and elsewhere
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
