A Low-Cost and Robust Landsat-Based Approach to Study Forest Degradation and Carbon Emissions from Selective Logging in the Venezuelan Amazon

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors, I hope you are safe and in good health.

The manuscript is very well written and the adopted method is robust. It will certainly be an important contribution to the field.
My recommendation is to accept in present form.

Cheers.

Author Response

Done

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper deals with the use of a 30-year Landsat time series (1985-2015) to analyse forest degradation and carbon emissions due to selective logging in a Forest Reserve, the Venezuelan Amazon.

The manuscript covers an interesting research topic and has a good scientific style and organisation. Moreover, also the English style is satisfactory.

The paper provides a comprehensive view of the materials analysed, of the implemented methodology and discussions, are well supported by the obtained results. It is a pleasure to read a manuscript with a quality such as this one. Having said that, I definitely agree with the acceptance of this manuscript to be published in the journal Remote Sensing after the minor revisions I reported in the following rows.

The issue of forest degradation should be better introduced, also referring to the FAO definition provided by the FAO itself in different documents (e.g., FAO, 2001. Global Forest Resources Assessment 2000. Main Report. FAO Forestry Paper 140, Rome, Italy; FAO. 2002. Proceedings: second expert meeting on harmonising forest-related definitions for use by various stakeholders. Rome.). The authors should also refer the proposals for a forest degradation index, as in the following scientific articles: doi http://dx.doi.org/10.5424/fs/2015243-07855 and doi https://doi.org/10.3390/f11090930. 

 

Technical comments

To help a potential reader, I would ask the authors to add also in figure 4 the localisation of the nine compartments (I understand that they have been localised in fig.1).

I ask the authors to move both equations from the current position in the Appendix to the main text. Otherwise, it is more difficult to follow the methodological approach.

Author Response

Done

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

I appreciated the paper very much, since it could help to improve responsibility in SFM for tropical forests.

a good improvement/perspective could concern the linkage of monitoring process to  indicators of sustainability such as Minimum Allowable Diameter and trying to go more inside the analysis of commercial/non commercial species.

The paragraph on Committed carbon emissions is the weak part and could be skipped out since the comparison at global level is too general and try to refer to situation that are too much different

Author Response

Done

Author Response File: Author Response.docx