Species Abundance Modelling of Arctic-Boreal Zone Ducks Informed by Satellite Remote Sensing

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

In the present work "Species Abundance Modelling of Arctic-Boreal Zone Ducks Informed by Satellite Remote Sensing", Authors describe potential complementarity and efficacy of dynamic wetland inundation information for improving estimation of duck abundance and distribution at high latitudes. 

The manuscript is well written and the topic very interesting. Anyway, some littles chenges have to be performed in order to go ongoing with the publication. 

Introduction. When you speak about the opportunities given by this approach, I suggest you to consider also the health point of view. In fact, some acquatic birds, such as anatids, represent a potential reservoir of Avian Flu, a very important disease all over the world. Thought migration, they could "trasport" pathogens from an endemic area to another. Avian Flu is not only important from birds, but potentially for other animals and also humans, with important consequences in term of Public Health. Please see here https://doi.org/10.3390/v14050883. 

Moreover, the use of new technologies such as GIS and Remote Sensing represent interesting tools for the comprehension of epidemiologic aspect and could help researchers to explore new multididciplinary approach for the study of different diseases. Please see  https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12213542.

M&M. Table 1 can be also included in  supplementary materials. 

Line 152-156. Why was used this approach? With what statistic base?

Figure 3. This is superfluous in the description of the work. 

Line 241. Why you use this key predictors? 

Table 3. This table is too rich, please simplify it or simply report in few lines the description given. 

Table 5. also this one can be included in supplementary materials.

Conclusions. They are quite generic, please give more details about future perspective given by the present approach for example reporting advantages as compared as previous researches. 

Conclusions

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

General Comments：Understanding changes in wetland hydrologic conditions and flood extent can inform predictions of duck population abundance and distribution, thereby advancing biodiversity conservation under rapid climate change.

In this study, high-resolution, time-varying wetland inundation data generated by satellite remote sensing methods in the Arctic-Boreal zone were used to improve species abundance models. Overall, in this study, the methodology was optimized in the species abundance model, which resulted in a better timeliness of the model. The study is innovative. The manuscript will need some minor revisions before publication.

-Line 49, What is PPR? should be given in line 43-44, the first time used.

-Figure 1, Is north arrow necessary? The latitude and longitude lines in subfigure (a) indicate the north. Or put the north arrow to the right of the subfigure (b). Most of the place-name labels on the map are small and vague. Additionally, no caption for this figure and figures 4 and 5, only sub-captions for a and b.

-The font size of the text on figures 2 and 6 is a bit small, especially figure 6.

-Figure 4b. Why the years of figure 4b is 2001-2004, not years 2017-2019? Line 205 and table 2, you said the data for the years 2017-2019 were used.

-Line 233-234, why calculating habitat characteristics at multiple spatial scales? Line 240-241. Explanations are also welcomed in this place.

-Table 3. Predictor Variables. Only land cover and inundation covariates, why are there no climate and topographic variables?  Climate and topography are important factors that affect Species Abundance.

-Figure 6. In the top dotted box, with regard to the spatial scale, it is recommended to give more textual explanations on the figure for readers.

-Figures 7 and 8. Some Pearson correlation coefficients are not clear enough.

- lines 325, 436 and 513 are all numbered 3, L 436 should be changed to 4 and L 513 should be changed to 5.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf