Geophysical Research on an Open Pit Mine for Geotechnical Planning and Future Land Reclamation: A Case Study from NW Macedonia, Greece

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I did not indicate grammar corrections, because English is not my first language. But I am able to say that the reading of the manuscript was easy and I did not have any problem for understanding the writing. However, the following comments should be addressed for the revision.

1、The title is suggested to be revised to "Geophysical research in open pit mine for geotechnical planning and future land reclamation-A case study from the NW Macedonia, Greece".

2、The introduction of this paper needs to be rewritten. The introduction should be concise and clear on previous research results.

3、The horizontal and vertical coordinates should be added in Figure 2.

4、In Figures 3, 4, 5, 7, and 9, the units of the coordinate axis should be directly labeled on the graph.

5、Suggest modifying Tables 2 and 4 as flowcharts.

6、There are many illustrations in this article, and it is recommended to reduce some unimportant ones, such as Figure 17.

7、The "3. Results" section has a lot of content and is not concise enough. It is recommended to modify it.

8、The "4. Discussion and Conclusions" section has too little content. It is recommended to split it into two chapters: "4. Discussion" and "5. Conclusions", and appropriately add the content of the "4. Discussion" section.

Author Response

Reviewer 1

 

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I did not indicate grammar corrections, because English is not my first language. But I am able to say that the reading of the manuscript was easy and I did not have any problem for understanding the writing. However, the following comments should be addressed for the revision.

1、The title is suggested to be revised to "Geophysical research in open pit mine for geotechnical planning and future land reclamation-A case study from the NW Macedonia, Greece".

Thank you for this suggestion. We changed the title.

2、The introduction of this paper needs to be rewritten. The introduction should be concise and clear on previous research results.

We substantially altered the introduction section.

3、The horizontal and vertical coordinates should be added in Figure 2.

It was done.

4、In Figures 3, 4, 5, 7, and 9, the units of the coordinate axis should be directly labeled on the graph.

It was done.

5、Suggest modifying Tables 2 and 4 as flowcharts.

It was done.

6、There are many illustrations in this article, and it is recommended to reduce some unimportant ones, such as Figure 17.

Figure 17 was removed.  We think that the figures’ number is adequate. Every figure was carefully chosen with the scope to have as limited number of figures possible.

7、The "3. Results" section has a lot of content and is not concise enough. It is recommended to modify it.

The section "3. Results" was substantially altered based on your comments and on the comments of the other reviewers.

8、The "4. Discussion and Conclusions" section has too little content. It is recommended to split it into two chapters: "4. Discussion" and "5. Conclusions", and appropriately add the content of the "4. Discussion" section.

We separated this section into 2 sections as suggested and appropriately altered their contents.

 

Thank you very much for your suggestions

Reviewer 2 Report

The author simulated the seismic wave propagation of the regional geological model using seismic reflection and resistivity (2D and 3D) methods, and obtained some beneficial results from the comprehensive seismic data. At the same time, the on-site measurement results further confirmed the reliability of using seismic reflection and resistivity (2D and 3D) methods. In my opinion there are still some issues need to be discussed.

1. Please carefully check the punctuation marks in the article, such as obvious errors in the punctuation marks of keywords in the manuscript.

2. The introduction only gives a simple description of this paper, which is not in-depth enough. What problems should be further clarified in this work? What is the engineering significance?

3. discussion section should compare your results to previous results obtained in similar work or attempts to solve similar problems.

4. The writing style of this article is somewhat like that of a work report, which does not conform to the writing style of the paper. It is recommended that the author carefully read the published articles in this journal and carefully refer to relevant writing formats.

Author Response

Reviewer 2

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The author simulated the seismic wave propagation of the regional geological model using seismic reflection and resistivity (2D and 3D) methods, and obtained some beneficial results from the comprehensive seismic data. At the same time, the on-site measurement results further confirmed the reliability of using seismic reflection and resistivity (2D and 3D) methods. In my opinion there are still some issues need to be discussed.

1. Please carefully check the punctuation marks in the article, such as obvious errors in the punctuation marks of keywords in the manuscript.

It was done.

2. The introduction only gives a simple description of this paper, which is not in-depth enough. What problems should be further clarified in this work? What is the engineering significance?

The intro section was enhanced.

3. discussion section should compare your results to previous results obtained in similar work or attempts to solve similar problems.

We substantially altered the discussions section by connecting both our comments and interpretation with the existing literature.

4. The writing style of this article is somewhat like that of a work report, which does not conform to the writing style of the paper. It is recommended that the author carefully read the published articles in this journal and carefully refer to relevant writing formats.

The paper was substantially altered based on your comments and on the comments of the other reviewers.

 

Thank you very much for your suggestions

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors,

The study was carried out as a successful engineering study. Sharing such studies in the form of case reports is a very important example for engineers who will do similar work or for investors who have similar problems. Successful application of geophysical methods and applications requires a certain knowledge and experience. There seems to be enough of this accumulation in the authors. However, there is a technical report format view during the presentation of the study. I think it will turn into a research article format after the following deficiencies are eliminated:

 1- The problem definition should be explained specifically.

 

2- It should be stated more clearly for what purpose the selected methods were chosen and what kind of contribution they made.

3- Explaining the criteria according to which the previous drillings were made will reinforce the fact that the geophysical studies carried out will reveal more important results.

4- All measurements and drilling locations should be on the same location map and the drawn sections should be shown.

5- A topographic map should be added

6- The display of geophysical results with seismic+ERT at the same cross-section and with drillings is more effective and necessary for the definition of harmony.

Author Response

Reviewer  3

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors,

The study was carried out as a successful engineering study. Sharing such studies in the form of case reports is a very important example for engineers who will do similar work or for investors who have similar problems. Successful application of geophysical methods and applications requires a certain knowledge and experience. There seems to be enough of this accumulation in the authors. However, there is a technical report format view during the presentation of the study. I think it will turn into a research article format after the following deficiencies are eliminated:

1- The problem definition should be explained specifically.

The problem is addressed within the last 3 paragraphs of the Study Area section.

2- It should be stated more clearly for what purpose the selected methods were chosen and what kind of contribution they made.

This is now mentioned in the Methods section.

3- Explaining the criteria according to which the previous drillings were made will reinforce the fact that the geophysical studies carried out will reveal more important results.

This has been inserted to the Study area section

4- All measurements and drilling locations should be on the same location map and the drawn sections should be shown.

This is done in the new geological map of Figure 1

5- A topographic map should be added

The authors decided not to add a topographic map for the following reasons:
1) The investigated area was under dramatic topographic alterations, due to the excavation processes, during the different chronological stages that the geophysical surveys took place.
2) Height contours were highlighted on the geological map of Figure 1.
3) The topography of the area was taken into account during the geophysical data processing.
4) Comments from other reviewers suggest to reduce the number of the figures.

6- The display of geophysical results with seismic+ERT at the same cross-section and with drillings is more effective and necessary for the definition of harmony.

Information from a nearby borehole was added  in figure 22

Thank you very much for your suggestions.

Reviewer 4 Report

Dear authors,

I have read your manuscript titled "Geophysical research in open pit mine for geotechnical planning and future land reclamation" and have some comments.

- The authors should check the manuscript before its submission for review since the document has marks related to control changes of the word processing software they use.

- The authors should rewrite the Abstract section to enhance the contribution of their manuscript and attract the reader's attention.

- The Introduction section should be expanded to include research issues and relevant literature.

- The authors should rewrite the Introduction section highlighting the relevance of this topic worldwide and the novelty of the submitted mannuscript.

- The Introduction section needs to be more extensive and sufficient to quickly identify the state-of-the-art, the relevance of the problem to attend and the support of the proposed solution. Although it is adequate to avoid large academic texts, it is necessary to document the theoretical background of this work.

- Some parts of the manuscript need to be rewritten or relocated to make its reading more fluent. For example, the text from lines 69-96 should be moved to the Introduction section since it does not provide information about the methods used in this study. Text in Lines 165-176 should be presented in the Methods section instead of the Results section.

- Although the authors provide a Methods section, they fail to describe the materials, methods, software, and experimental design, among others, they use to perform this study making its reproduction difficult for the readers of this journal.

- The authors should complete the Discussion section with recent/relevant articles published in international peer-reviewed journals on the same topic.

- The Discussion section should provide a deeper analysis of the reported results, highlighting its relationship with the aims of this journal.

 

Author Response

Reviewer 4

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear authors,

I have read your manuscript titled "Geophysical research in open pit mine for geotechnical planning and future land reclamation" and have some comments.

- The authors should check the manuscript before its submission for review since the document has marks related to control changes of the word processing software they use.

This was done.

- The authors should rewrite the Abstract section to enhance the contribution of their manuscript and attract the reader's attention.

The Abstract was rewritten and expanded.

- The Introduction section should be expanded to include research issues and relevant literature.

 

- The authors should rewrite the Introduction section highlighting the relevance of this topic worldwide and the novelty of the submitted manuscript.

 

- The Introduction section needs to be more extensive and sufficient to quickly identify the state-of-the-art, the relevance of the problem to attend and the support of the proposed solution. Although it is adequate to avoid large academic texts, it is necessary to document the theoretical background of this work.

The introduction was expanded by adding four paragraphs.-

Some parts of the manuscript need to be rewritten or relocated to make its reading more fluent. For example, the text from lines 69-96 should be moved to the Introduction section since it does not provide information about the methods used in this study. Text in Lines 165-176 should be presented in the Methods section instead of the Results section.

This was done.

- Although the authors provide a Methods section, they fail to describe the materials, methods, software, and experimental design, among others, they use to perform this study making its reproduction difficult for the readers of this journal.

The methods section introduces the methods applied leaving the details for the next section (Results).

- The authors should complete the Discussion section with recent/relevant articles published in international peer-reviewed journals on the same topic.

The Discussion section is separate from Conclusions section. Furthermore, an effort to address the main topic’s highlights based on the relevant literature was implemented.

- The Discussion section should provide a deeper analysis of the reported results, highlighting its relationship with the aims of this journal.

We enhanced this section by connecting our comments with the literature and indicating the relationship with the aims of the journal in the first and last paragraphs of this section.

Thank you very much for your suggestions.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The author has made revisions to the manuscript and I believe they have responded to the questions I raised earlier.

Reviewer 2 Report

I hope the author will take the comments of the reviewers seriously in future replies.

Reviewer 4 Report

The authors addressed my comments, so I do not have any questions for them.