Assessing the Impact of Chemical Loads from Agriculture Holdings on the Puck Bay Environment with the High-Resolution Ecosystem Model of the Puck Bay, Southern Baltic Sea
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Thank you for your submission. Many watersheds share the problems of point and non point pollution that you have described here and your other articles which I looked up. The case study is valuable because of your rich data base and also for this pioneering attempt to link several models and many variables.Below are a few minor points that you should address.
- The rationale for using SWAT compared to other models such as APEX or SOURCE is missing. Same for Modflow. It is stated that they were selected for the pesticide distribution. Please provide more information. Both SWAT and Modflow are the leading models in the field so I imagine you have additional criteria supporting their use.
- Headwaters and mainstem of watersheds as concepts are not mentioned. Is the stream data from what order stream? Please give more information about these concepts and how they relate/don't relate to your study.
- Lines 189-196 Exactly how often were water quality samples taken? I was under the impression from reading other articles about Puck Bay that water samples were collected once per month? The methodology of sampling is not described. Are there continuous flow monitors?
- Plese include what might be possible future areas for improving or decreasing the uncertainty in your new model.
Here are a few more minor points that need corrected.
Line 25 “refrain from climate change”. Should be “resilience to climate change”.
Line 113 the Polish nutrients to the Baltic Sea have been reduced by how much over the last 30 years?
Line 249 uncertainty is 30% for nitrates. Why?
Line 275 Figure 5 are not really “daily averages”. They represent samples taken 1 time per month.
Line 354 phosphate section…. Are you only measuring total P or are you also looking at dissolved phosphorus?
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Revewer's Report
Article Title: Assessing the impact of chemical loads from agriculture holdings on the Puck Bay environment with the
High-Resolution Ecosystem Model of the Puck Bay, Southern Baltic Sea
Journal: Water
In this manuscript, the authors describe the ecosystem part of the WaterPUCK project, the EcoPuckBay model designed to assess the state of the Puck Bay coastal environment and its ecosystem. The EcoPuckBay model involves three classes of phytoplankton (small phytoplankton, large phytoplankton comprising essentially diatoms, and summer species, mostly cyanobacteria), chlorophyll-a, as a separate variable, zooplankton, pelagic detritus, dissolved oxygen, nutrients, and pesticides. The ecosystem model has been coupled with land water flow, and an additional module designed to evaluate the impact of agricultural activity on the waters of the Puck Bay. In operational mode, 48-h atmospheric forecasts are provided by the UM model of the Centre for Mathematical and Computational Modeling of Warsaw university. One of their key results is the finding that pesticides used in the agricultural sector in the Puck Commune are only in small concentrations, making them undetectable.
GENERAL APPRAISAL
1) The Puck Bay is subject to intensive anthropogenic impact due in part to intensive touristic activity characterizing the Puck commune. Therefore, informed management decision are required to protect its ecosystem. To this end, predictive models are crucially important and the WaterPUCK service as described here is highly relevant in this respect.
MAJOR POINTS
1) However, the manuscript is quite poorly written: It is not clear from the abstract and the introduction what the paper is about and what its contributes.
2) The paper is not easy to read. It the author contribution is not clear. I would suggest the use of active verbs. In this paper we did x, y, z. We found u, v, w...
The use of the passive voice e.g., the EcoPuckBay model has been coupled with the land water flow, …. [Did the authors establish this link, or are they reporting on methods designed by others? If so, who designed the method reported?]
3) Line 18: Include a footnote explaining what "Natura 2000" is.
4) Equation 1: What do x_i and K_xi represent?
5) Line 118-120: Can the authors describe the mathematical form of the relation between nutrient concentration and daily volume of freshwater introduced by rivers.
6) One of their key results is the finding that pesticides used in the agricultural sector in the Puck Commune are only in small concentrations, making them essentially undetectable. However, they note that among the studied farms some can possible have a huge impact. What is the basis of this statement? Can these farms be identified?
MINOR POINTS
Line 77: originates from ....
Page 9: Results such as RMSE are not easy to read from the Taylor diagrams. Provide more details on the interpretation of the diagrams
Line 287-288: The meaning of this sentence is not clear.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
I attach a file with comments and suggestions.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors have satisfactorily addressed my concerns with the previous version of the MS. I think that the MS is now suitable for publication.
