Automated Surface Runoff Estimation with the Spectral Unmixing of Remotely Sensed Multispectral Imagery

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear authors,

You can see my comments and suggestions directly in the text of the article.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors develop an *automated approach to combine land cover information derived through spectral unmixing of library spectra resampled to Sentinel-2 bandwidths; Sentinel-2 derived spectral vegetation and water indices; interpretated soil maps; terrain model derivative (slope); and  climate data to generate curve numbers for soil infiltration indexing and runoff estimation.  

The manuscript is logically organized. Care was taken in the preparation equations. And while the text and figures require some revision, the manuscript read as though the authors put great effort into the submitted draft (Thank you).

My primary concern relates to improved setting of reader expectations regarding performance assessment. Clearly state from the outset that performance assessment is based on comparison of ISA mapping accuracies achieved through this with other approaches and interpretation of runoff simulation results without comparison against measured streamflow. The discussion is very useful but as one reads everything preceding it, they wonder how you determined this method performs reasonably without direct comparison of the runoff simulation against either measured values or that of standard approaches (e.g., as is done for ISA mapping alone),

 

Next I provide some specific suggestions for changes to the text, followed by comments related to the figures.

Line 271 – If it is a popular method for complex urban areas please provide multiple citations to support this.

The paragraph beginning on line 274 regarding MESMA Python API adaptation is loaded with useful information and prescription. Are these use suggestions and observations based on investigator experience or literature that isn’t cited here? If the former, this should be explained. For example “We ran X trials in an effort to adapt (tune?) MESMA

Line 279 – Citation?

Line 291 Suggest changing heading to ‘Mixture Analysis Accuracy Assessment’ or something similar to distinguish it from the assessment of runoff model output. Use the same heading under results 3.1 (line 368) in place of ‘Validation’.

Line 313 Remove ‘and’  

Line 370 Remover ‘demonstrated satisfactory results’ and simply report the RMSE/MAE values. Otherwise the reader expects citations or other information (provided in the discussion) to support the result is satisfactory.

Line 375 Consider a heading of ‘ISA Evolution 2018-2022’

Line 435 This phrase needs improvement (it’s missing a verb).

Figures

Several figures fail to meet Journal requirements for coordinates and scale bars. The map/image components of figures (except for the study area outline shape) should also be larger. An added large figure 2 showing the ortho used for validation data collection, perhaps as a NIR false color composite, would really improve the utility of figures currently numbered 4 and 5.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The quality of the English is very good. Necessary grammatical corrections are minor.  

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf