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After reviewing this revised version of your manuscript, I see that the main comments suggested by the reviewers have been included. Therefore, I am satisfied with the current version and consider it ready for publication.
[# PeerJ Staff Note - this decision was reviewed and approved by Ann Hedrick, a PeerJ Section Editor covering this Section #]
I think the authors did a good job at addressing the reviews I provided and now feel comfortable with this being published.
I think the authors did a good job at addressing the reviews I provided and now feel comfortable with this being published.
I think the authors did a good job at addressing the reviews I provided and now feel comfortable with this being published.
I think the authors did a good job at addressing the reviews I provided and now feel comfortable with this being published, on the condition that an environmental economist familiar with the monetary valuation techniques applied also provided reviews (this was unclear to me based on comments provided by the other reviewer).
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Thank you very much for your manuscript titled “Effects of land use change on ecosystem services in freshwater wetlands in Bacalar, Mexico” that you sent to PeerJ.
This study presents very valuable and relevant information on the spatial and temporal variation of ecosystem services in a lagoon of tourist and ecological importance in Mexico, where losses are identified in the wetland area that impact the functioning and ecosystem services provided in the area.
As you will see below, comments from referee 1 suggest a major revision while reviewer 2 suggests a minor revision before your paper can be published. Given this, I would like to see a major revision dealing with the comments. Their comments should provide a clear idea for you to review, hopefully improving the clarity and rigor of the presentation of your work. I will be happy to review your manuscript including the reviewers' comments, which largely focus on improving the quality and clarity of the manuscript
Please note that we consider these revisions to be important and your revised manuscript will likely need to be reviewed again.
In general, I felt that this article read well and provided sufficient background. That said, please see my additional comments section for detailed comments about languge, editorial needs, etc.
This article clearly defined their objective (to assess freshwater land use change in Bacalar between 1999 and 2020 and quantify associated change in the monetary value of ES supported by fresh waters of the assessed region), and used appropriate methods to meet this objective.
See Additional comments with regards to my personal ability to assess the rigour of the investigation.
See Additional Comments section.
Effects of land use change on ecosystem services in freshwater wetlands in Bacalar, Mexico (#106573)
Peer J
November 2024
Revisions
General comments
This manuscript outlines research that compared land use in the Bacalar region in 1999 and 2021 to quantify the loss of wetlands between these years, and used a benefit/value transfer method to document the monetary value of ecosystem services supported by the land uses and land covers, as well as how they changed between each of the assessed time periods.
In general, I found that the authors presented interesting and locally-important results. Shocking to hear about the amount of wetlands lost in 2020 years, it is devastating. One thing I will note is that I am not familiar with the types of publications PeerJ typically accepts, but if they are comfortable with publications applying existing methods in a new context to produce information about the status of a particular location, I would be comfortable suggesting that this publication continues along in the revision process in PeerJ. If the journal’s intent is to focus on novel methods pushing the frontiers of a field, I don’t think this is an appropriate paper for this journal. That said, one major caveat about my recommendation is that although I have expertise in ecosystem services science I have absolutely zero expertise in the monetary valuation of ecosystem services, which is the primary focus of this paper! Had the abstract of that paper made that I clear I would have not accepted to the review the paper, and it is essential that at least one reviewer have excellent knowledge of the value transfer method to be able to access the quality and rigor of the work done in this paper from that perspective. My major comments relate more to ecosystem service sciences in general and how I think the paper can be improved with that regard.
A recurring theme across the paper is that there is little clarity with regards to types of values you are referring to (monetary or other). Now that I have read the entire publication I understand that this work is really just about monetary value assessed using the TEEB approach, but that wasn’t clear in the abstract and should have been. Also, throughout the publication you need to make this clear. In my detailed comments below I have pointed to examples of a few places I noticed this, and invite you to carefully review the entire manuscript while thinking of this during your next revision.
One thing you don’t explore in your results or discussion are the nuances among types of provisioning services included in your assessments and potential trade-offs and synergies among these. The results you present in figure 5 group all provisioning services together, but could it be that some provisioning services in mangroves (e.g. water extraction) went up at the same time as land use degraded, affecting the trends you document. This is something worth contemplating and exploring in your manuscript.
There were a number of mistakes related to grammar throughout the manuscript that I did not focus on as I wanted to pay most attention to commenting on the science. Does Peer J have an editorial/correcting service once a manuscript is accepted for publication? If not, this is something the author team should seek out prior to re-submission.
Line by line specific comments are below.
Specific comments
Abstract
You mention “during the study period” in the abstract, but I think it would be better to state the study period here so that this is clear to readers looking at the abstract to make a decision if they want to read the paper in detail. (I later learn this is 1999 and 2021.)
When you mention “reduction in the value of ES” in the abstract, one thing I was left wondering about is if this is equivalent to a “net” reduction. I am assuming that losses in some places (i.e. for certain ES like water purification) resulted in gains for others (like food production) and was not clear on if/how this statement reflected that. I also would have liked a quick summary of what methods were used for monetary valuation (e.g. “estimated at XXX$ using XX methods”).
Introduction
Line 47 – I know that you have taken this definition of ES directly from Costanza’s 2020 paper but I wanted to invite you think about the differences between this definition and the definition I am more familiar with (the Millenium Ecosystem Assessment one) which is more along the lines of “the diverse ways that nature contributes to human well-being”. This isn’t a comment you actually need to address, just an invitation to help further the team’s thinking in the space of ES.
Line 51-53: “The decline in the quality and number of ES and ecosystems correlates with the type and frequency of anthropogenic activities that influence it (Costanza et al., 2014).” I think this sentence is incomplete. Please clarify what you intend to say here.
Lines 59-60: Here, it would be useful to elaborate with regards to WHY it is essential to understand spatiotemporal variations. How would/does this understanding help address the problems you outline earlier in the paragraph? That isn’t currently clear.
Line 66: You use the word approximately twice in this sentence, you can definitely cut one of the two times it’s used (and I’d recommend cutting the second one). As noted in the general comments there are several issues like this thoughout the manuscript that I am not going to focus my commenting on, if PeerJ does not have a high quality editorial/correcting service this is something the authorship team should seek out prior to re-submission.
Line 91: replace “entails” by “resulted in”
Line 95: remove the word “remarkably” from the start of this sentence, I don’t think it adds appropriate meaning here.
Line 98: A period is missing after the reference at the start of this sentence. Also, Effects have implications not has implications because they are plural. An effect has implications, these effects have implications .
Line 100: You make the statement that a decrease in snail coloration has resulted in a decrease in tourism. Is this a fact? If so, can you provide the reference to support this statement? If not, make sure to adjust the writing to reflect that this is a hypothetical situation and not actual one.
Line 108: A period is missing here. I will stop making this comment as I suspect it will come up again but you definitely need to review punctuation throughout given that I”ve already round two missing periods. I think you should pay specific attention to punctuation after references as these are the two instances of problematic punctuation I’ve observed thus far.
Line 109: ES not SE. Also, are you talking about estimates of the monetary value of ES in this region? If so, I think you should emphasize that here.
Line 113: Have these actually made remote sensing an essential tool, or is it instead that it has become a useful approach to assist with the quantification of ES? I think the later.
Line 115: supply or and demand for
Line 118: I think what you mean here is “assign a monetary value to”, as opposed to “monetize”
Line 119: Do you mean that biodiversity has a higher monetary value? I think that you need more specificity about the types of values you are referring to throughout
Materials and Methods
I think that the study area section (and Figure 1) would benefit from information about the lagoon’s watershed (i.e. entire hydrologically connected upland area) as you bring up the concept of a watershed and the importance of upland land use and runoff in your abstract and introduction.
Line 166: I think that these tables should go into supporting information instead of the main publication.
Line 181: I think MUCH more information about these field visits is required for the readers to understand how these were used to inform your analysis. Please elaborate.
Line 186: You should probably specify the number of training sites used.
Line 237: Something this makes me think about is the difference between the capacity of a system to provide a service and the actual provision of a service. Have you read the ecosystem cascade (Haines-Young et al)? I am asking about this here because I am not familiar enough with monetary valuation to understand what you have actually quantified here, but I suspect it’s more of a measure of the likely capacity of a system to a provide a given service than the actual provision of a service for numerous services. This is something that needs attention in the manuscript.
Discussion
Line 263: I would argue that the analysis you did is not between 1999 and 2021, but rather comparing both, which are two different things (between, to me, would be an analysis that looked at all years within this time range, but you are really comparing land use in 1999 with land use in 2021 in your analysis.
Line 287: what is meant by environmental services? Is this different to ecosystem services? Please clarify.
Conclusion
Line 381: I think this shouldn’t be monetary cost, it should actually be something more like “the monetary value associated with maintaining or degrading wetlands”.
Line 382: You state “Benefit transfer is a tool that allows for coarse assessments of the monetary costs of wetland ES as a strategy that contributes to integrated decision-making; however, it is advisable to prioritise ES and conduct primary evaluations that allow for more accurate value estimates.”
To me, it is a little bit surprising to see this here as a caveat at the very end of the manuscript as opposed to integrated into the discussion as an important point that you address in detail and provide recommendations with regards to how future research could and should do this.
I think the writing is interesting and can be published if some problems are clarified in reference to some values that they publish (Check marks in the attached pdf), since they are not the same. I imagine they are errors only in the writing.
They are properly explained
The writing has foundation and justification in its preparation and contrast with the literature on the subject. Just as it is clearly written. The data is robust and statistically sound. Your conclusions are clear and linked to your objectives
The authors must review the points that we mark in the attached pdf, so that the work is published
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