Change Detection Applications in the Earth Sciences Using UAS-Based Sensing: A Review and Future Opportunities

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Please see the attachment.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

We expressed our gratitude to Reviewer 1 and acknowledge their helpful feedback and comments, which greatly improved the quality of this manuscript.

The reviewer's feedback appears to have had a positive impact on the manuscript. By addressing the reviewer's comments and suggestions, the authors were able to strengthen the paper and improve its clarity.

We addressed each of your comments in the attached pdf file (Please see pdf attachment).

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This is a good review of projects done resorting to UAS platforms for photogrammetry or LiDAR. It's very well written and organised and, as a review, interesting for the readers. I congratulate the authors for the thorough analyses. Nevertheless, I would like to ask the authors not to confuse platforms with methods. Photogrammetry is more than 180 years old and there is no UAS photogrammetry. There is photogrammetry applied to images captured by UAS or UAV, which is the same method applied to aerial photographs (from manned aircraft) or to terrestrial photographs. UAS is indeed a very good platform between terrestrial and aerial (manned a.) and has all the qualities (versatility, lower price, etc.) pointed out in the paper. Thus, there is also no UAS change detection. There are change detection methods applied to surveys from different epochs, the surveys being done by UAS. Not the change detection itself. The methods are also much older than UAS and UAS brought nothing new to it. Only the fact that there are more projects because UAS is more affordable. I suggest the title should be slightly changed according to this comment and also all the sentences that lead to the idea that UAS SfM is a change detection platform (nonsense), etc. The conclusions are a little vague, sometimes using common places. Please see the attached file with further comments. The paper is good, but it will be much better after 'polishment'. Please consider this suggestions.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

We would like to express our gratitude to Reviewer 2 for their valuable feedback and comments, which have greatly improved the quality of this manuscript. By addressing their suggestions, we were able to enhance the clarity and flow of the text.

In particular, we acknowledge the reviewer's comments regarding aerial and spaceborne photogrammetry, and agree with their point that the term "platform" should only be used to refer to UAS and not SFM. We have made the appropriate changes in the text, including the addition of "UAS-based" to clarify the method of change detection.

Furthermore, we have modified the title of the manuscript as suggested to "Change Detection Applications in the Earth Sciences using UAS-based Sensing: A Review and Future Opportunities".

Throughout the text, we have refined long sentences and improved the flow and clarity of the language. We have also addressed each of the reviewer's comments in the attached PDF file, which we hope will further enhance the manuscript.

Once again, we thank the reviewer for their valuable input and for helping us to improve this manuscript.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Although comments have been responded accordingly, the manuscript still lacks in-depth analysis and summarization of methodologies commonly used in different scenarios.

Author Response

Thanks for your feedback. Our manuscript is primarily centered on the recent advancements in high-resolution imaging techniques, both in terms of temporal and spatial resolution. While we do discuss some of the commonly used methods in our paper, we acknowledge that there are numerous existing manuscripts that provide more detailed information on these methods. Therefore, we make sure to direct interested readers to these resources for further exploration.

Line 97- "change detection algorithms highlighted in Table 1 and Figure 1 and discussed and compared in detail by others (i.e. [1,19,20])."