Sinkhole Flooding and Aquifer Recharge in Arid to Dry Sub-Humid Regions: A Systematic Review in the Perspective of Climate Change

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This review paper is of broad international interest. I have minor comments throughout the manuscript (see annotated pdf).

Two technical points for manuscript Clarity: 1) provide a clear definition of the term sinkhole (in what sense it is used in the manuscript); 2) it seems that some analysed papers deal with the same karst system: how do you deal with redundancy? is there any risk of bias in your analysis?

On the form, I recommend that English proofing is performed throughout the manuscript. Also, Figure 1 deserves improvement for a better readability.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

I thank the reviewer for his/her time, careful reading, and constructive suggestions for improving the manuscript. I tried to answer all the comments. Language editing was carried out as suggested, some parts were rewritten and integrated, Figure 1 improved and a new figure placed. The changes made are highlighted in the attached pdf file.

All the comments in your “annotated pdf” have been addressed and solved. A clear referenced definition of sinkhole has been done in the new first paragraph in Section 1. Introduction (lines 16-26, revised version). Also the question about the redundancy and related risk of bias has been addressed and solved (lines 140-143, revised version).

Please note that, as required by the Editor, a new Section has been added (2. Climate change effects on sinkhole flooding) and the title integrated.

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

REVIEW COMMENTS

Thank you for submitting this interesting manuscript to the Hydrology journal. Then, the paper contributes to the extant literature. I liked it so much!

Sinkhole flooding and aquifer recharge in arid to dry sub-humid regions: a systematic review

The manuscript of Marco Delle Rose is presents very interesting paper about the karst water management in regions actually or potentially affected by water scarcity.

This paper can help to practitioners involved in the management of karst water resources. I think that this review paper helps researchers who want to study the karst water management with climate change.

Good luck. 

Author Response

I thank the reviewer for his/her time, careful reading, and encouragement. Please note that, as required by the Editor, a new Section has been added (2. Climate change effects on sinkhole flooding) and the title integrated. All the changes made are highlighted in the attached pdf file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper “Sinkhole flooding and aquifer recharge in arid to dry sub-humid regions: a systematic review” deals with the analysed events in a highly generalized and substantially unrelated way, with the presented opinion also general. In my opinion, the specific remarks about particular sections of the paper and the potential revisions by the author would not manage to eliminate the basic remarks concerning the paper, which are presented below.

The paper is very heterogeneous, addressing a topic which was previously mostly in greater detail addressed by various other initial authors and can in no way be classified as “a systematic review” because it does not contribute to real improvement of the knowledge about the addressed topic. The paper specifies and superficially mentions a number of topics – from the conceptual model of karst aquifer recharge to the impact of climate change on the karst aquifers. However, these topics are not analysed in an appropriate way to enable appropriate discussion and reach relevant conclusions.

Reading the paper one cannot conclude what its real objective was – a connection is missing between the individual sections of the paper. The Introduction has almost no connection with the methodology since the methodology used refers only to the method of selecting the above-mentioned very heterogeneous sources of information in the papers published before, whereas the presented results to a large extent do not refer to what was obtained by using the mentioned methodology, and are actually a general discussion about the content of the papers published by the earlier researchers.

A paper designed in that way cannot produce any high-quality discussion and conclusions, presenting and comparing highly differing results. The author himself concludes in the final sentence: “The review of the pertinent literature has however shown that providing the tools necessary for reliable modeling is still challenging.” The reason for that is a superficial attitude towards the analysed topic expressed in the paper. It is therefore recommended that no revision is required and that the paper is not accepted for publication.

Author Response

I thank the reviewer for his time and his reading. As advised by the Editors, I took your comments into account to revise the manuscript. The changes made are highlighted in the attached pdf file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

No comment.