Dynamics of Erosion and Deposition in a Partially Restored Valley-Bottom Gully

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Very interesting work on small - scale soil erosion processes in a Mediterranean agropastoral area. The work is nicely presented, with sound methodological approach, well-supported results and conclusions.

My main comment is that the volume of the work is too large for a single paper. If the editor shares the same opinion, my suggestion would be to break current work in two separate works one keeping the main character of this work and a second one discussing the accuracy of the different approaches in specifying a high - resolution DEM. Indicatively for the 1st work, paragraphs 2.2 - 2.5 could be summarized, as well as the paragraph 3.4. The content of these paragraphs could be enhanced in a different - equally important work - and be used as reference in current work. 

Other minor comments

In Figure 1.f the approach used is not very clear (the wires are not very easily discernible - maybe some highlighting could help)

Although it can be assumed that the abbreviation of DSM refers to the digital surface model, however this is not clearly stated in the text

There is a reference about Table 1, but Table 1 does not exist in the manuscript

In Table 2 are the units of Point density correct (meaning m3, or should it be m2)?

In Table 3, in Maximum - minimum, please add "elevation"

In paragraph 3.2, Figure 3b, please check that the rainfall box of period P1 is correctly designed - I would expect a value of rainfall higher than 500mm. In the same Figure, I presenting PA1 may be misleading, since the temporal and spatial scale of analysis is different from P1/before and After

In Figure 6, I believe it would be useful to add the DEM resolution used to specify these CSs

In Table 5, instead of crops please write Annual crops, in order to avoid any confusion with perennial crops.

Talking about Figure 7, and since agricultural activity was significant in a certain period in the area, I would prefer to see also a "gully area" - "intensity of agricultural activity" graph (in the same or in a second graph)

Table 6 - center alignment of table values

What is mentioned in lines 414 - 417, becomes a bit confusing with what is depicted in Figure 9. If possible please provide some clarification, since it seems that GW-08 collects the largest mount of sediment (around 10m3)

Figure 11 - I would suggest a different coloration for Deeping indication in order to avoid any confusion with the indication of headcut retreat 10-30 class

L:675 please correct dynamics with dynamic

In the Discussion section are reported the short - term drawback of the restoration activities. It would be interesting also the discussion of the long - term drawbacks (i.e. consequences after potential collapse of fascines). Moreover in L. 740 - 742 is discussed the cost of electric wire. A short discussion about the cost of the electric wires as well as the cost of the construction and maintenance of fascines and gabion weirs for small and large scale implementation, would be interesting. In what scale are all these measures cost - effective?

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

kindly find my remarks below:

row 94: "acquire data"

264: "data sources"

section 2.2: I believe the GCPs have been registered by the first UAV survey and the same GCPs were used for all the other ones.

table 2: although processing times enable comparison in the present form it'd be good to know what computer configuration was used (as in row 558 I guess)

296: "latter"

table 4: "events" are only explained later, i.e. these are remarkable rainfall events

373: this is the first time abbreviation AU appears (with no explanation)

378: "of the gully" (?)

431-432, 435: figure reference is wrong, these should be Fig. 10.

table 7: shouldn't be AU considered as a variable, too?

520: "plane" (?)

577: ref [79] is dealing with UAV lidar (among others), it is worth to mention /emphasize UAV-based lidar survey (besides airborne lidar) in the text (here, around row 577).

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors, have completed the revision of the manuscript land-1062674-peer-review-v1: Dynamics of erosion and deposition in a partially restored valley bottom gully. This paper provide a very interesting study on the gully erosion processes in a valley-bottom gully in a Mediterranean rangeland with a savannah-like vegetation cover that was partially restored in 2017. The Authors  analyze the effectiveness of the restoration activities, study erosion and deposition dynamics before and after the restoration activities using high-resolution digital elevation models (DEMs), examine the role of micro-morphology on the observed topographic changes, and compare the current and recent channel dynamics with previous studies conducted in the same study area through different methods and spatio-temporal scales, quantifying medium-term changes. The paper is well written with the problem addressed, materials and results clearly presented. The technique that combines multi-source and multi-temporal data for reconstruction of morphological changes will prove useful in many study areas. The authors also discuss the details and error analysis extensively. There are minor changes suggested, I have attached a document with annotations.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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