Multispectral Image Super-Resolution Burned-Area Mapping Based on Space-Temperature Information

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Overview: The authors demonstrate the advantage of the space-temperature information (STI) method compared to three other super-resolution burned-area mapping approaches. Landsat-8 OLI imagery acquired over Denali National Park, Alaska in 2013 is used to demonstrate this.

General Comments:

Figure 1. The five burned areas appear as black-filled, opaque polygons in Figure 1(a). I cannot see the red from the false color image. Can the authors explain Figure 1(b) in more detail. It just see two colors: black and white, with the burned areas in white and everything else is black. The text in line 91 says this image is derived from Landsat-8 data by "classification technology." What does that even mean? Please explain.

Figure 2. The flow chart is poorly formatted. The final box of the flow chart contains no text! The steps after Spectral unmixing and Adaptive segmentation show a tiny image inside large black boxes -- why is the image not larger in the box?

Why do we need to use any of the four SRM methods when we can see the burned areas in the reference images? Figures 5-9 show five results each, with the reference image looking like the best quality result. So why apply these other SRM methods?

Figure 10. The vertical:horizontal ratio of Figure 10(a) and 10(b) is off. The vertical dimension should be extended more. It looks like both graphs have been smashed down.

Figures 11 and 12. Which dataset were the weight parameter (Figure 11) and segmentation scale parameter (Figure 12) studied on for the five areas? Figures 11 and 12 each have five graphs (a-e) representing the five areas, but the captions of each figure state "Burned-area (%) derived using the four methods tested for different values..." I thought four different values of burned area (%) were calculated depending on the methods (see Table I). 

Conclusion needs work. I am still left wondering why we need to use STI -- I understand it is better than the other methods shown in this paper -- but why use STI when I can use the reference image? If I can see burned areas as red in false-color Landsat 8 imagery, why do I even need to process space-time and temperature data? How does this improve anything (in fact, from what I gather in this paper, I do not even 'see' 100% of the burned area using STI when compared to the reference image). 

Line-by-Line Comments:

Lines 32-34: The authors use "wildland fires" as the term in line 32, then use "wild-land fires" in line 34. Please be consistent with the hyphen (or lack thereof).

Line 48: The authors should include commas in this list of AI methods.

Line 59: "Light Detection and Aanging" -- is this supposed to be LiDAR: Light Detection and Ranging?

Line 71: STI is not defined in the manuscript.

Lines 71-73: The sentence "In the space part... is instead of the subpixel space information" does not make sense. Please reword. 

Line 83: First sentence in this paragraph is awkwardly phrased. Please reword. 

Line 88: Change "are" to "is".

Line 188: Change "The" to "Then" (I think).

Line 332: Change "was re-run" to "were rerun".

Line 333: Delete the word "with".

Lines 337-338: Rephrase this last sentence of the paragraph, especially the final few words "is decline", which sound awkward.

Author Response

Dear reviewer

We greatly appreciate your time on our paper and clear instructions for revision.

We have carefully considered your comments and suggestion. We provided item-by-item response. The whole paper has been revised accordingly and the revised parts are marked in green. We hope the new manuscript will meet your standard. For illustrations of the revised places, we marked the number of each row in current version. Moreover, the manuscript has been carefully revised by a native English speaker with good technical knowledge of the field by MDPI English Editing Service.

In the end, we want to convey our earnest thanks to you. Your valuable comments have greatly improved this manuscript.

 

Best wishes

The authors

Reviewer 2 Report

This study proposed a method named STI to improve burned-area mapping by fully utilizing the space and temperature information from rough multispectral image. The proposed method performs better than other state-of-the-art SRM methods. But in this version of manuscript, some descriptions are more like a technical report. To make this manuscript more scientific, it needs a major improvement.

Detailed comments:

Lines 55-57: The format of references should be changed, such as [13,14]. Line 67 “In addition, temperature information is also not fully utilized in the existing SRBAM”: Add references. Introduction: The introduction seems to be short. The authors should not list the relevant work one by one, but need a better summary. Line 90 “in red”: There are no red in Figure 1(a). Figure 1 needs to modify adding scale, north arrow, coordinate systems. Line 106 “an adaptive segmentation method”: What does “adaptive” mean? I can’t get it according to your descriptions in Lines 106-128. I think the segmentation method you described is multiresolution segmentation (MRS) proposed by Baatz (2000) and implemented in eCognition software. Figure 2: What is the last rectangle box after RWA? Figure 2 and Figure 3 need improvement. They don't look good. Lines 255-262: Only used some general and superficial descriptions. You'd better give a detailed description. Line 256: How did you get the reference data? Figures 5-9: The images solely dose not provide any information. It's hard for readers to find the differences between images. Every image needs to be self-explanatory, so a better caption is needed. For example, authors should circle some areas to point out the strengths and weaknesses of their method's results. Moreover, I think these figures need to be rearranged because they take up too much space. For example, five areas can be included in one image like Figure 1. “Table I” should be “Table 1”. Line 333: delete “at”. Lines 334-335: This sentence needs to be rewritten. Lines 332-338: The authors should not only describe the trend reflected in the Figure, but also explain the reasons. Lines 339-343: The descriptions for Figure 12 are too simple. Figures 11 and 12 take up too much space. You can put them in one figure respectively. Conclusion Lines 378-379: Conclusion is not clear, reformulate it. You'd better provide the information of the experimental data and accuracy in a little detail.

Author Response

Dear reviewer

We greatly appreciate your time on our paper and clear instructions for revision.

We have carefully considered your comments and suggestion. We provided item-by-item response. Please see the attachment. The whole paper has been revised accordingly and the revised parts are marked in green. We hope the new manuscript will meet your standard. For illustrations of the revised places, we marked the number of each row in current version. Moreover, the manuscript has been carefully revised by a native English speaker with good technical knowledge of the field by MDPI English Editing Service.

In the end, we want to convey our earnest thanks to you. Your valuable comments have greatly improved this manuscript.

 

Best wishes

The authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have made considerable corrections to the manuscript. Figures have been updated and look much better. Large swaths of the paper have been revised and read well. 

I still would like a little more information in the Conclusion. Although STI performs the best in variables like OA (%), it typically only performs 1-2% better than the other techniques. Also, what are areas of future work? Are there any techniques that are on the horizon that push OA (%) closer to 100%?

Overall, this paper is much improved and well written.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

We greatly appreciate your time on our paper and clear instructions for revision.

 

We have carefully considered your suggestions and provided item-by-item response. The whole paper has been revised accordingly and the revised parts are marked in green. For illustrations of the revised places, we marked the number of each row in current version. Please see the attachment.

In the end, we want to convey our earnest thanks to you. Your valuable comments have greatly improved this manuscript.

Best wishes

The authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for having accepted and implemented my comments and suggestions. The paper is much improved from the first version. But several issues still need to be revised.

 

The order of references is wrong. For example, Line 84 [37,38] should be [38, 39], Line 90 [40] should be [41], Line 92 [39] should be [40], Line 128 [40] should be [41]. Please throughout check it again. In addition, [39] should appear before [40].

 

Figure 6 (d) has an obvious vertical line compared with Figure 4 (d).

 

The conclusion is still insufficient. Please add the information about what can be improved in this study or the future work.

 

You’d better discuss the disadvantages of this study.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

We greatly appreciate your time on our paper and clear instructions for revision.

 

We have carefully considered your suggestions and provided item-by-item response. The whole paper has been revised accordingly and the revised parts are marked in green. For illustrations of the revised places, we marked the number of each row in current version. Please see the attachment.

In the end, we want to convey our earnest thanks to you. Your valuable comments have greatly improved this manuscript.

Best wishes

The authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf