The Nucleation and Degradation of Pothole Wetlands by Human-Driven Activities and Climate During the Quaternary in a Semi-Arid Region (Southern Iberian Peninsula)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors,

Wetlands are vulnerable environments, and special studies are urgent to understand their fragility. Your manuscript deals with highly-specific and poorly-known pothole wetlands of Southern Spain. You raise good research questions and answer them with several perfect methodological procedures. The manuscript is rich in different information, if even it is organized illogically to certain degree. I also value a comparison to the other regions offered in Discussion. Your manuscript is illustrated and referenced adequately. Generally, this work is suitable to “Geographies” and its international audience. However, something should be improved.

• General recommendation: the manuscript has to become more consistent, logical, and better reflecting the title. In the sections 3 and 4 (as well as in the abstract and Conclusions), you should follow this mode of storytelling: pothole identification – origin of potholes – ecosystems related to potholes – development of potholes in geological history – environmental changes related to potholes in the 20^th century – present trends. Alternatively, the storytelling is chaotic and even difficult-to-follow in some places.
• Title: S -> Southern
• Where are the key words?
• Introduction: as you deal with pothole wetlands, this term should be explained, and the previous international research aimed at this kind of wetlands should be indicated.
• Section 2: please, tell about soils, vegetation, and anthropogenic activities modifying environment and landscapes.
• Section 3: where are the potholes and how have you studied them?
• Section 4: again, why potholes and their origin are not explained?
• Figure 7: what is shown by yellow arrows?
• Line 411: Upper Miocene -> Late Miocene.
• Subsections 5.1 and 5.2 look like parts of Results and, if so, these are out of place. In my opinion, it would be better to compose Discussion of two subsections: your present 5.3 and a new subsection dealing with managerial implications of your study.
• Conclusions: add a paragraph with limitations of your research and perspectives for future investigations.
• References: why some sources are crossed by lines? And try to reduce self-citations – I understand that some of them are inevitable, but try to leave the only most important.

Author Response

Reviewer 1:

• General recommendation: the manuscript has to become more consistent, logical, and better reflecting the title. In the sections 3 and 4 (as well as in the abstract and Conclusions), you should follow this mode of storytelling: pothole identification – origin of potholes – ecosystems related to potholes – development of potholes in geological history – environmental changes related to potholes in the 20^thcentury – present trends. Alternatively, the storytelling is chaotic and even difficult-to-follow in some places.
• Answer and modifications: Thank you very much for this valuable comment. It is truth that it should be improved and we have added and removed some sentences. In the following comments we explain the changes made along the MS.

 

• Title: S -> Southern
• Answer and modifications: We agree with the reviewer, we changed the title.

 

• Where are the key words?
• Answer and modifications: Sorry, it was an oversight. We added them in the new MS: Keywords: wetland, climate change, water balance, human impact

 

• Introduction: as you deal with pothole wetlands, this term should be explained, and the previous international research aimed at this kind of wetlands should be indicated.
• Answer and modifications: Thank you very much, pothole wetlands must be explained and we added a new paragraph to explain these ecosystems. We added this:

“To the N of Europe, pothole wetlands develop as seasonal small, shallow water bodies hosted in small depressions, often originated after Pleistocene glaciation. These ecosystems, which have not been detected in the Iberian Peninsula, are also strongly affected by global climate change (Kalettka et al., 2016).”

 

• Section 2: please, tell about soils, vegetation, and anthropogenic activities modifying environment and landscapes.
• Answer and modifications: It is truth that this information may be important for this work. We have added:

“In the lower parts of the AD, vertisols develop in association with river deposits. These soils exhibit strong shrink-swell behavior due to seasonal moisture fluctuations, leading to deep cracks and a highly plastic texture when wet (Gómez-Miguel et al., 2015). Conversely, in the higher parts of the Alcores hills (Fig. 1C), regosols form over sandstone-derived parent material, marked by a weakly developed profile with limited horizon differentiation. The contrast between these soil types influences land use suitability, with vertisols favoring agricultural activities requiring high water retention, while regosols present challenges for cultivation due to their lower fertility and structural limitations. In addition, vertisols favours the formation of ponds and pools due to its low permeability and a flat topography.”

“Irrigated agriculture is the main human activity in this area, frequently supplied by groundwater. Moreover, cities with populations greater than 50,000 people such as Alcalá de Guadaíra are present in this area (Fig. 1). “

 

 

• Section 3: where are the potholes and how have you studied them?
• Answer and modifications: Sorry, it was not clear enough. We added in the new MS a paragraph to explain it:
• “In this section, we explain the methodology used to study the wetlands located in the AD. To do that, we collected climatic parameters, studied images and we made field work.”
• Section 4: again, why potholes and their origin are not explained?
• Answer and modifications: This is the first time that potholes are described in this area and in the Iberian Peninsula. The characterization of these wetlands as pothole is discussion. Never before have been these ecosystems described in this area. Consequently, we think that it may be discussed in the first section of the discussion. We thank for this comment because we realize that it was not clearer enough. To highlight this issue, we have added some information:
  • We changed the name of subsection 5.2 into:  Pothole wetlands Hydrological Functioning and Degradation
  • “This hydrological functioning is similar to pothole lakes described in other areas such as North America (Winter and Rosenberry, 1995; Liu and Schwartz, 2011) and Northern Europe (e.g. Wilpiszewska and Kloss, 2002; Van der Valk and Mushet, 2016). Consequently, these ecosystems located in the AD may be defined as pothole wetlands. Again, this is the first time that these small wetlands with a degree of groundwater-wetlands connections are characterized in the southern Iberian Peninsula.”

 

• Figure 7: what is shown by yellow arrows?
• Answer and modifications: Sorry, we have included what yellow arrows mean in the new MS: “Yellow arrows show the location of pothole wetlands.”

 

• Line 411: Upper Miocene -> Late Miocene.

Answer and modifications: Thanks. In order to be more specific, we changed this sentence into “The AD developed as a part of the Guadalquivir basin from the Tortonian to the Pliocene”

 

• Subsections 5.1 and 5.2 look like parts of Results and, if so, these are out of place. In my opinion, it would be better to compose Discussion of two subsections: your present 5.3 and a new subsection dealing with managerial implications of your study.

Answer and modifications: 5.1. deals with the inception of the AD. The AD has not been characterized until now, and how it evolved through time is discussion. We do not have the certainty of the timing and the evolution of this basin and its structural control by faults, which are active. We have made some changes in this section to make it clearer:

• “These terraces are probably currently uplifted”
• “The ages of the oldest terraces suggest that the Alcores area (i.e., AD and Alcores hills) uplift would have not started…”
• “might have been favored by the Alcores hills uplift”

As we mentioned before, 5.2. is about the characterization of these wetlands as pothole wetlands. Consequently, it must be discussed. To make it clearer, we changed the title of the subsection and we included some sentences (see comment above).

Finally, we think that the it is a brilliant idea to include managerial implications. The comparison with other pothole wetlands is quite short, then we merged the pothole comparisons and managerial implications into an only one subsection called as: “5.3. Comparisons with Other Pothole Wetlands and managerial implications”. Moreover, we included a new paragraph: “We actually observe in this work that livestock activities have favored the wetland preservation in some areas (Fig. 8). Because of that, some protection zones that include the hydrological watershed could be implemented to preserve these pothole wetlands, as it is made in other wetlands in the southern Iberian Peninsula (e.g. Rodríguez-Rodríguez et al., 2025).”

 

• Conclusions: add a paragraph with limitations of your research and perspectives for future investigations.
• Answer and modifications: It is quite interesting to include this, then we added: “The weak point of this work is the lack of accurate data series. For future investigations, climatic parameters should be collected daily, a water level monitoring must be implemented in some of these wetlands as well as the acquisition of other parameters such as water conductivity. This monitoring could help to delve into the evolution of these wetlands.”

 

• References: why some sources are crossed by lines? And try to reduce self-citations – I understand that some of them are inevitable, but try to leave the only most important.
• Answer and modifications: Some of the references are crossed because editorial request because of self-citation. During the revision, we removed other 3 citations: Rodríguez-Rodríguez et al., 2010; 2012 and Jiménez-Bonilla et al., 2015)

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This paper is an interesting contribution to the knowledge of evolution of pothole wetlands under the action of human activities.

I appreciated its real multidisciplinary approach, well combining different topics: geology, meteorology, land use.

The paper is well written and illustrated by figures and tables, and in my opinion is can be accepted after a minor revision round.

I have few general comments for its improvement:

1) There are sentences sometimes too long, with poor punctuation. I suggest to check for this issue the manuscript and rephrase, or use more appropriate punctuation, for a better clarity.

2) Sometimes there is text that seems not placed in the proper place (see the attached pdf for details)

Details about some suggested changes can be found in attached commented pdf

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

The paper is well written and illustrated by figures and tables, and in my opinion is can be accepted after a minor revision round.

I have few general comments for its improvement:

• There are sentences sometimes too long, with poor punctuation. I suggest to check for this issue the manuscript and rephrase, or use more appropriate punctuation, for a better clarity.

Answer and modifications: We have reviewed the MS and we shortened some of the sentences (see atachment).

 

• Sometimes there is text that seems not placed in the proper place (see the attached pdf for details)

Answer and modifications: Thank you very much. We corrected them according to the comments.

 

Details about some suggested changes can be found in attached commented pdf

Line 53: that.

Answer and modifications: We corrected it accordingly.

Line 87: This text is repeated in the next chapter. Maybe it's better to eliminate it in this position

Answer and modifications: We removed it.

Line 101: Not clear the meaning: please rephrase

Answer and modifications: It was not clearer enough, sorry. We changed it into: “T1 to T9 correspond to Guadalquivir terraces, being T1 the oldest and T9 the youngest one”

Line 113: Maybe text missing: this sentence has note verbs or subjects

Answer and modifications: Sorry it was a mistake. We removed the dot and Betics.

Line 141: I-I' are not reported uin the cross section. Lettering A-B is missing

Answer and modifications:We included it in the figure caption: “(B) cross-section of the studied area I-I’ oriented. Same location as Fig. 1C.”

Line 161: You are citing here a station that is different from the other one in 3.1 Why?

Answer and modifications: Sorry, it should be better explained. For historical data (from 1900 to 2025), we need to use the data from Sevilla. Alcalá de Guadaíra weather station registered climatic parameters since 1990, but it is the closest weather station to the AD. We explained in the new MS. “The AD is located in a semiarid region influenced by the Mediterranean climate, where potential evapotranspiration (>1500 mm) greatly exceeds average precipitation (490 mm/yr on average in Alcalá de Guadaíra from 1991 to 2021;”

Line 257: You should invert: is evapotranspiiration associated to temperature inccrrease, not vice versa

Answer and modifications: Thanks, we changed it into: “The increase in evaporation rates is directly associated with the increase in temperature.”

 

Line 261: Maybe a running average based on 1 year time window should highlight variations

Answer: We tried to make different analysis, even using 1 year time window, however, the observed tendencies do not reach R2 > 0.3.

 

Line 364: wider

Answer and modifications: Thank you, we changed it.

 

Line 365: What do you mean with "degradation"? please specify.

Answer and modifications: It was not clearer, we added: “by the construction of agriculture channels”

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors,

Thank you very much for your responses and revisions! I'm satisfied and do not have further queries.