The Use of Unoccupied Aerial Systems (UASs) for Quantifying Shallow Coral Reef Restoration Success in Belize

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Important and useful work to monitor the health of coral reefs, as well as to track the growth of restored coral reefs to replace reefs damaged by human activities or unfavorable environmental

Author Response

Thank you for your review. We, the authors, agree that drone monitoring is an important and useful tool to monitor the health of coral reefs, as well as to track the growth of restored coral reefs.

Reviewer 2 Report

The use of unoccupied aerial system (UAS) for quantifying shallow coral reef restoration success in Belize.

The paper provides a detailed account of a case study by which UAS has been applied to detect the spatial and temporal changes of transplanted coral in Belize. The main objective to demonstrate the utility and applicability of UAS in coral monitoring. The paper provides detailed methods along with the specification of the UAS. Classification of the corals was verified by traditional ecological knowledge. The paper is scientifically sounds and the proposed technology is useful in coral restoration programs especially in shallow areas.

Considering the global application of such technology, it will be good to further highlight the following points:

1.       The monitoring approaches and technologies are complementing each other. Therefore, it is good to highlight potential limitations (beside the depth and sea conditions) as environmental context is different across regions. For instance, local expert, storage of data, flight duration, cost, etc.

2.       Minor typos:

-          Page 1: Line 12 correspondence author is not specified.

-          Page 1: Line 27 it will be good to remove the word ‘unique’.

-          Page 4: Line 139 ([   ])

-          Page 6: Line 176 (     ))

-          Page 11: Line 352  50m2

Author Response

Thank you for your review and letting us know about the typos that we corrected. We have included a conclusion section that supports the results as well as highlighted potential limitations by adding this sentence:

"Other limits to this approach include the availability of local expertise to provide in-situ insight, as well as the capacity to fund UAS missions and their associated costs."

Reviewer 3 Report

The structure of MS is well-designed and the flow is logical. However, I have some minor revisions that I have already highlighted in the attached file. 

Please add the following relevant reference to your MS.

Kabiri, K., Rezai, H., & Moradi, M. (2020). A drone-based method for mapping the coral reefs in the shallow coastal waters–case study: Kish Island, Persian Gulf. Earth Science Informatics, 13(4), 1265-1274.

Casella E, Collin A, Harris D, Ferse S, Bejarano S, Parravicini V, Hench
JL, Rovere A (2017) Mapping coral reefs using consumer-grade
drones and structure from motion photogrammetry techniques.
Coral Reefs 36(1):269–275

Joyce KE, Duce S, Leahy SM, Leon J, Maier SW (2019) Principles and
practice of acquiring drone-based image data in marine environments.
Mar Freshw Res 70(7):952–963 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you for your review. We have included your suggested references and appreciate providing them as they are an excellent addition to the manuscript.