Environmental Fragility Zoning Using GIS and AHP Modeling: Perspectives for the Conservation of Natural Ecosystems in Brazil

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This manuscript aims to apply the concept of environmental fragility to a hydrographic basin in southeastern Brazil. To this end, the analytic hierarchy process and weighted Linear combination were integrated into a Geographic Information System. The GIS-AHP integration can compose territorial intelligence models for complex decision-making related to the environment. Based on my review, this manuscript still needs to be improved and critical issues should be considered. The following comments may help enhancing the quality of this manuscript.

General comments:

• The technical writing of the manuscript needs to improve. The sentences are long and not effective. In section 2 and section 3: a few odd grammatical errors should be corrected.
• Based on the presented introduction, the key contributions of this study should be added. The key scientific problems that need to be solved should be clearly observed. Otherwise, what is the different between this work and current literature?
• Based on the observed analysis, Table 2 shows the fragility classes and their respective weights and descriptions, however, it is vague how the authors collected and categorized these data.
• Authors presented the steps related to this study's methodological procedures in Fig. 4. However, no any effective information related to the simulation procedures. The step-by-step procedure of the hybrid GIS-AHP model must be provided.
• It is vague, how did the authors collect the data and how the authors inserted data in the GIS-AHP model? What are the key inputs that added in the model? On the other hand, to verify the model performance, authors need to add more specific statistical indicators such as RMSE or R²
• How this work can benefit the engineers in the practical practices.
• One key issue when you use AHP to do risk assessment is to collect the experts’ reply on questionnaire. There are two approaches to do experts questionnaire: (1) one is the pairwise comparison, proposed by Saaty (1977), improved by Li et al (2013); (2) another method to do questionnaire is to use table comparison proposed by Lyu et al (2020). Thus, please discuss how you did experts questionnaire? Which type of the experienced experts you invited? Please compare the difference of the results from these two methods.

References:

Saaty, T.L. (1977). "A scaling method for priorities in hierarchical structures." Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 15, 234-281.

Li, F., et al (2013). "Improved AHP method and its application in risk identification." Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 139(3), 312-320. Doi: 10.1061/(ASCE)CO.1943-7862.0000605.

Lyu, H.M., et al (2020). Risk assessment using a new consulting process in fuzzy AHP. Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, ASCE, 146(3), 04019112. doi: 10.1061/(ASCE)CO.1943-7862.0001757.

• How do you determine the fuzzy number? If you use of Lyu et al's (2020) new questionnaire method, you can determine the fuzzy number directly based on experts' replies.

Specific comments

Lines 56-59: what are the main factors affecting the assessment of the potential environmental fragility?

Authors need to present the recent geohazrds and preventative countermeasures using AHP incorporated with GIS.

What is the reference of Fig. 1?

Why the Authors specifically used five free information plans from governmental agencies’ databases for PEF?

Why the authors specifically used the AHP approach?

Line 171: why the authors specifically used Jenks method?

It is vague, how the authors added the input data to the AHP model? How did the authors collect these data?

Line 326: The method evaluation: advances and challenges that presented in section 4.3 is poor and should improve, authors should focus on the main key contributions of this study, otherwise, literature should be limited.

Line 327-328: how did the authors integrate EF assessment with GIS methods and the AHP decision-making model to map the JRHB?

Line 360-370: the discussion of Table 5 is limited and needs to be highlighted.

Conclusions section has a limited information and need to improve.

All equations that presented from literature should be provided with the related references.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

This is a topical study that aims to highlight ecosystem fragility using statistical and multi-criteria methods.
However, I will have a few suggestions:
Enlarge, please, figure 3. Neither the map nor the caption is clearly visible.
Although you have mentioned what all the abbreviations refer to in the text, I think it is more advisable to make a legend in the form of tables that we can easily refer back to for clarification;
Try to put more substance in the conclusions and at the same time highlight what the next directions for this research should be.
The paper is a good one and I enjoyed reading it.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Altogether, this manuscript requires proof-reading / editing by a native English speaker. 
P1L21: Instead of 'For this prevention" it should read "To prevent this"
P1L27: What is "rainfall algebra map information"? I suspect it should just be rainfall and that 'map algebra' was used methodologically - which does not belong here.
P2L68: What is a "territorial intelligence model"?
P2L69-72: Please drop your initial conditional and start the sentence with "we based this paper..."
P2L73-75: Other than that it is applied to a hydrological basin in the neighboring state of Minas Gerais, how does this manuscript differ from reference Anjinho et al 2021?
P4L103: What is an information plan? It may make sense in Portuguese but not in English
P4L103-113: There are no references provided for the data sources mentioned.
P5L136: This sentence has no semantical meaning in English. This reviewer cannot parse it.
P5Table 2: This table requires explanation. In particular, how did the authors move from individual factors to these summary classes? I suspect, this is based on the analytical hierarchy process (and the result of its application) but then it should not be presented here but at the end of the methods discussion.
P6: I consider myself to be an expert in the application of the AHP method but I still cannot parse the description here. The authors used some snippets from abstract textbook descriptions but nothing that relates to the factors introduced in this manuscript so far.
P6L160: in light of this, the first sentence of section 2.4 is taunting: there is no elaboration whatsoever!
P7Figure 4: This is helpful: I now see that P5Table 2 refers to the input data and that the different dimensions of the input data are now standardized to form Table 2. This was not at all clear when that table was presented on page 5.
P8Table 3: This table should precede Table 2. Or better: Table 2 should be moved to after Table 3.
P11L240: "The AHP model in this study determined the criteria' importance for the JRHB" - which is why it deserves a wider exposition in this manuscript. How as the AHP conducted? Who where the experts consulted? Or what were the references used? Since everything else rests on the weights determined here, the value of the manuscript is determined by the soundness of the process - which has not been described at all.
P11Section 4.2: This is a very dry and hard to read enumeration that would better be represented in form of a table.
P12-13:Section 4.3: What is missing from this evaluation is how it advances current knowledge. More to the point: how is this different from the study presented in Anjinho et al 2021 and who (outside of Southern Brazil should care?

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

The article is devoted to the assessment and mapping of environmental fragility. This is an important topic. A large number of studies are devoted to this topic. Many publications are devoted to ecological fragility in Brazil. With these publications, this work is united by the basin approach and the list of input spatial data. The authors use GIS in this study as a raster calculator and cartographic visualization tool. These are simple methods for processing spatial data. But these methods are reliable. In general, the presented work is a useful addition to existing publications. It can be published in its current form after minor edits.

Figure 3 needs to be improved. There are many small details on the maps that are difficult to see. Recompose the figure - make 2 maps horizontally and 3 cards vertically. Enlarge the figure as much as the page size allows. Check the dpi of the drawing. Must be at least 300 dpi. If it's 300 dpi now, then try a higher dpi value. This will allow you to see the details when zooming in a browser or pdf viewer.

Correct the formatting of the references:

1. Remove capital letters from the titles of publications (reference 6, 10, 14, 15, 17, 49).
2. Remove the sign • between the author's surnames and initials (reference 27).
3. Prepare references in accordance with the template (https://www.mdpi.com/files/word-templates/conservation-template.dot).

Fix typos:

1) Line 144, line 158, line 188. Remove the bold font from the subsection names.

2) Table 4. Missing letter C. AUTOVETOR should be AUTOVECTOR. But check how the term is used in English. It might be more correct to write «eigenvector».

3) Line 362. It says "[27] e [7]". Should it be "[27] and [7]"?

4) Line 114. Replace the square bracket before the number 12 with a parenthesis.

5) A dot is missing at the end of sentences in lines 84, 176, 296, 313, 357.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx