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The authors addressed all the issues raised by the reviewers, and the paper can now be accepted for publication.
[# PeerJ Staff Note - this decision was reviewed and approved by Monika Mortimer, a PeerJ Section Editor covering this Section #]
The revised version of the manuscript has addressed all the issues raised during the first round of revision. I suggest accepting this work for publication.
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The authors have addressed all the points raised in the previous review. Therefore, I recommend that the manuscript be accepted for publication.
No comment.
No comment.
No comment.
Two of the reviewers suggested major changes, and one reviewer, only minor changes. The reviewers highlighted a number of crucial aspects that the authors must address.
[# PeerJ Staff Note: It is PeerJ policy that additional references suggested during the peer-review process should *only* be included if the authors are in agreement that they are relevant and useful #]
Summary of the work:
This study addresses the remote monitoring of biogeomorphological dynamics and environmental changes, providing a framework repeatable wherever access to landforms is prevented by logistic, socio-political or other circumstances. The datasets utilized have global coverage and satisfactory spatial and temporal resolution, ensuring the scalability of this solution. The study site hosts unique landforms called Azov-type spits. The remote monitoring highlighted the vulnerability of the vegetation in this area against flooding, climate change and rising sea level.
In my opinion, this work addresses two relevant topics: first, it focuses on a particular landform that is not commonly studied, the Azov-type spit; second, it stresses the importance of remote monitoring when field campaigns are not feasible, but, while generally field work is hindered because of its costs and time consumption or logistic impediments, here it is prevented by social dynamics, as it is currently happening also in other areas worldwide, potentially being a common issue in the near future.
However, despite the methodology being well described in the Supplemental (1-2-3 and annexes figures and tables), I suppose a crucial step was missing. See Comments on "Experimental design".
Thus, I recommend addressing this issue and other minor comments, listed below, before publication.
1. When using different sensors, the consistency of data should be checked, and eventually, some calibration or correction should be performed. Otherwise, the comparability of values is affected. Figures 6 and 7 clearly show this issue: Landsat 4-5TM produced NDVI values higher than 1-5MSS, but that could be almost overlapped (especially in the interval 1989-1993) with a proper scaling factor. I am not an expert on this since I generally work on data that have already been calibrated, but I found some works in the literature addressing data continuity for time series analysis, e.g., Chen et al. (2019).
2. You use meteorological data from local stations, not available in wartime. Have you considered integrating or substituting this data with global-coverage gridded datasets, like ERA5-Land? This would also ensure the repeatability and scalability of your work, but, of course, the accuracy and robustness of this data for your purpose should be checked.
3. since your NDVI value significantly changes depending on the considered satellite, which one do you consider for the time analysis of the 4 vegetation types?
4. row 341-347 as above but for NDWI
Supplemental 3 well describes your methodology, yet some details are missing:
5. you used NDWI to discriminate between water and land, but you did not specify which threshold value you considered for this, or if you adopted the the recent methodology to dynamically set the threshold based on local spectral features (Donchyts 2016, Latella et al. 2021).
6. you used automatic and manual filtering of images according to cloud coverage. Did you also check quality flags to avoid saturation, shadows, or invalid values? In some cases missing this filter can substantially alter the results.
7. why you did not filter MODIS images?
8. In Supplemental Table 2 you list the satellite images you considered for this work and the reference period. However, in the last paragraph of this supplemental, it seems that you used specific satellites depending on the month (for instance Landsat NDVI in June-August). I think, this is a typo and you considered the images from all the available satellites in a specific year, but maybe I am wrong. Please better explain this.
9. Also, it seems you considered different indices in different periods. I understood that NDWI was computed only in August to discriminate water-land boundaries. However, it is not clear to me why NDMI and NDVI are from April to September while Thermal is only from May to September. Is there some biological reason I am missing? Please better explain this choice because it might not be clear to other readers too.
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Mentioned references:
Chen, F., Lou, S., Fan, Q., Wang, C., Claverie, M., Wang, C., & Li, J. (2019). Normalized difference vegetation index continuity of the Landsat 4-5 MSS and TM: Investigations based on simulation. Remote Sensing, 11(14), 1681.
Donchyts, G., Schellekens, J., Winsemius, H., Eisemann, E., & Van de Giesen, N. (2016). A 30 m resolution surface water mask including estimation of positional and thematic differences using landsat 8, srtm and openstreetmap: a case study in the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia. Remote Sensing, 8(5), 386.
Latella, M., Luijendijk, A., Moreno-Rodenas, A. M., & Camporeale, C. (2021). Satellite image processing for the coarse-scale investigation of sandy coastal areas. Remote Sensing, 13(22), 4613.
**PeerJ Staff Note:** It is PeerJ policy that additional references suggested during the peer-review process should only be included if the authors are in agreement that they are relevant and useful.
no comment
Other minor comments:
1. I am not mother-tongue, but the overall readability and the English correctness seem very good to me. There are very few points I suggest to check:
- row 65: benefit or give benefit?
- row 72 "are subjected to" instead of "are subject to"
- row 259-260 "of each" instead of "of the each"
2. row 79-80: Instead of "along with our research in the 1990s", I suggest listing the reference works.
3. row 246-287: this part is more an introduction than a result. I suggest moving it to the introduction or to the Supplemental 4, while moving the results of Supplemental 4 in the main text.
4. I am not sure about the format of some references, for instance (Sea Level, 2003). However, this is a very minor point and you can discuss it with the editor or in the proofreading phase.
5. Figures are generally well done, nice and clear to understand. They are blurred, but I suppose it is the fault of the generated PDF for the review. Please check the figure quality during the next submission.
6. Figure 1: Please avoid acronyms in the caption. I suggest adding a north arrow and a scale bar. If you could add one or two photos of the spits it would be great!
Comments
This study commendably selects typical case sites for its research. The findings offer valuable insights for environmental management in landscapes akin to the study area. However, several issues need addressing before publication.
1 - Abstract. Line 40, could you clarify what "Thermal" represents? It appears distinct from NDVI, NDWI, and NDMI.
2 - Introduction. While summarizing previous research, the author exhibits a noticeable geographical bias, focusing heavily on the study area. It seems the emphasis on ATS lacks a broader perspective. Some sections might be more appropriate in the study area description. ATS landscapes are unique, but for an international audience, a wider overview of similar regions or comparable studies would enrich the paper and broaden its scope.
Additionally, when introducing abbreviations for the first time, it's standard practice to provide the full name followed by the abbreviation (e.g., The Azov-type spits (ATS)).
3 - Methods. This section emphasizes on software details while neglecting the significance of methods. As a reviewer, appreciate that numerous software packages offer immense capabilities, seamlessly integrating various methods to generate the desired outputs and presentations. It would be advantageous to incorporate an introductory overview of the methodologies employed, beyond just software descriptions, to aid readers' understanding of the methodological principles. However, if the methods and underlying principles are elaborated in the appendix, this suggestion can be disregarded.
Also, could you explain the rationale behind naming "ATSP"?
4 - Results. It should be noted that when presenting results, citations should either verify the findings or provide contextual explanations. I recommend the authors reorganize this Section, emphasizing the paper's key findings to distinguish them clearly from those of other studies.
Regarding structure, some paragraphs (e.g., lines 185-187, 198-201, 220-223) are brief and could be merged. Conversely, longer paragraphs (e.g., lines 259-287) might benefit from being split.
5 - I recommend referencing recent PeerJ publications for inspiration on enhancing the visual aesthetics of figures and tables to align with the magazine's publication standards. Specifically, Figure 1 could include a coordinate system, North arrow, and scale bar. Figures 2-4 would benefit from x-axis titles, and Figure 8 requires a legend.
6 - Lastly but not least, please carefully proofread your entire manuscript for spelling and grammar errors, as well as punctuation marks and formatting conventions before submitting it for editorial review.
No comment.
No comment.
This article have some fails in the introduction and several relevant papers not cited.
There is no review about spits morphodynamics in the introduction. I found several articles on this topic, look and add:
Krylenko, V., & Krylenko, M. (2022). Features of the morphology and dynamics of the shallow-island part of the Dolgaya Spit (the Sea of Azov). Forum geografic, XXI(2), 109-122. doi:10.5775/fg.2022.175.d
Divinsky et al Conditions of sand spits formation at the Northern Sea of Azov coast,
Regional Studies in Marine Science, Volume 52, 2022,https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rsma.2022.102373.
And several new articles about hydrometeorological conditions which will be useful in the results section:
Berdnikov et al Climatic conditions and hydrological regime of the Sea of Azov in the XX – early XXI centuries 2019
Yaitskaya, N. The Wave Climate of the Sea of Azov // Water 2022, 14, 555. https://doi.org/10.3390/w14040555.
Divinsky et al CLIMATIC FLUXES OF BOTTOM SEDIMENTS IN THE SEA OF AZOV 2022
Divinsky, B. V. ; Kosyan, R. D. ; Fomin, V. V. Climatic Fields of Sea Currents and Wind Waves in the Sea of Azov 2021
Dyakov, N.N.; Fomin, V.V.; Polozok, A.A. Climatic characteristics of waves in the Sea of Azov based on the observation data and reanalysis. Proc. State Oceanogr. Inst. 2015
**PeerJ Staff Note:** It is PeerJ policy that additional references suggested during the peer-review process should only be included if the authors are in agreement that they are relevant and useful.
no comment
some factors influencing the spits morphodynamics were overlooked.
I think in the section "Features of climate change in NA for the 121-year period (1900-2021)" it is necessary to consider in more detail, in addition to temperature and precipitation, also wind, waves, level and currents. Because the spits morphodynamics significantly depends on this factors. You can get some data and trends from the literature which I recomended above
in the abstract, it is necessary to concretize the results obtained, preferably in numbers
Fig1 - please add bathymetry isolines
line 264 "illustrate the morphogenetic division of its body from the landward to seaward (Figure 5)"
Please add several wind roses which include new data (after 2006). And may be you can get this roses for the different climate conditions? for example 2000-2010 and 2011-2020 ? I think it will be a good climatic analysis
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