Current Social and Rangeland Access Trends among Pastoralists in the Western Algerian Steppe
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This article takes on an interesting and prescient topic, state intervention in traditional pastoral activities and its social ecological consequences, but needs improvement in two areas: human system context and theory. In other words, what is this paper a case of?
The first issue this reviewer believes needs improvement is the description of traditional management institutions. Are the authors speaking of Agdal? Are the communities in question Berber or Arab? Are there perhaps tensions between both? The issue must be clarified for the reader and the traditional management institutions intervened by the state need to be more richly described. Degradation also needs to be defined. On what grounds did the state determine that the pastures required intervention? What technical or political criteria were employed to justify this intervention?
The second issue concerns the theoretical framing of the paper. What is the main research question the paper addresses? How is it related to the literature? Are the authors looking into Traditional Ecological Knowledge theoretical issues? Are they considering Common Pool Resource issues of social ecological sustainability? These theoretical questions need to be clarified so as to better frame the interesting methods and findings that the paper identifies.
Author Response
This article takes on an interesting and prescient topic, state intervention in traditional pastoral activities and its social ecological consequences, but needs improvement in two areas: human system context and theory. In other words, what is this paper a case of?
We thank the reviewer for appreciating our work and hope to have provided satisfactory answers to the queries posed.
In addition to the issues mentioned below and regarding English language and style, the reviewer mentioned that moderate English changes were required. We have therefore revised the MS thoroughly and applied language-related changes in the document.
The first issue this reviewer believes needs improvement is the description of traditional management institutions. Are the authors speaking of Agdal? Are the communities in question Berber or Arab? Are there perhaps tensions between both? The issue must be clarified for the reader and the traditional management institutions intervened by the state need to be more richly described. Degradation also needs to be defined. On what grounds did the state determine that the pastures required intervention? What technical or political criteria were employed to justify this intervention?
We have clarified such issues in the Introduction by:
- Moving a few lines up the text placed now in L 83-88
- A more in-depth explanation of the traditional governance scheme of the steppe rangelands (L 88-97)
- An explanation of the Arab character of the study area, and its specific contrast with Berber-dominated pastoralist areas where Agdal is the dominating Common Pool Resource governance system (L 111-113)
- An explanation of changes brought by the French occupation and by the introduction of mechanization and liberal-inspired agricultural reforms (L 119-123)
- A quantification of the increase in land under cultivation (L 132-134)
- A more detailed explanation on the consequences on vegetation (L 143-149)
The second issue concerns the theoretical framing of the paper. What is the main research question the paper addresses? How is it related to the literature? Are the authors looking into Traditional Ecological Knowledge theoretical issues? Are they considering Common Pool Resource issues of social ecological sustainability? These theoretical questions need to be clarified so as to better frame the interesting methods and findings that the paper identifies.
The theoretical framing of the paper corresponds to the Common Pool Resource issues of social ecological sustainability, and we have added such a contextualization both at the Introduction (L 72-82 & L 158-162) and at the Conclusions (L 531-536) sections. Inevitably, Common Pool Resource issues relate to Traditional Ecological Knowledge and we have made the link for it at L 105-110, but as we hope is evident in the current version of the paper TEK is not its main theoretical framing.
Reviewer 2 Report
Review of the manuscript: Current social and rangeland access trends among pastoralists in the Western Algerian Steppe by Slimane Bencherif and colleagues.
The manuscript is well written, and the methodology appears sound. I have just a few minor suggestions.
The first sentence of the abstract is somewhat confusing to me. It is currently written as follows:
“In the western Algerian steppe, public authorities have recently carried out actions aimed at developing and combating desertification (grazing reserves, agricultural and rural development programs) to counter the significant and rapid regression of pastures and the consequences on local livelihoods.”
My first question is: What does it mean to take actions aimed at developing desertification? Combatting desertification makes sense but I don’t understand the meaning of developing it.
My second question is more of a request to consider some alternative wording. What does the “rapid regression of pastures” mean? Is this the loss of pastures to another land use or type? If so, what is the vegetative composition or land type that is replacing the pastures? Or what pasture grasses are disappearing and being replaced? Does it become more wooded, with greater tree density? Or does it simply overgrazing with a landscape with a greater percentage of bare soil?
I also find the last two sentences of the abstract to be vague. These two sentences are summarizing the findings of the entire study but they do not leave the reader with much understanding or clarity about what the most important findings or conclusions are.
Line 55 – Here the references provided are: [9,10,1,11]. While these may be correct, the order raises a question in the reader’s mind about reference number 1. Why is it placed between 10 and 11? Typically the references are presented in numerical order. So, this point also applies to other places in the manuscript where there reference numbers that are not sequenced in order.
Line 116 – Here the authors present the species of halfah grasslands as “(Stipa tenacissima L.)” with the species authorship provided (Linnaeus). However, previously (line 86) the authors already provided the species name in a sentence as: “… halfah grass (Stipa tenacissima) and white wormwood (Artemisia herba-alba).” Typically the scientific name and authority of a species are presented at first mention only in the paper.
Did the authors consider presenting a summary of the correlation statistics in the figures along with the graphical presentations? Putting the correlation coefficient and p value on the scatter graph is customary and useful. I realize that these test statistics are provided in the text, but a figure should be able to stand alone and be completely understood even when independent of the text.
Finally, it appear that the references do not fully follow the formatting guidelines with the use of bold and italics fonts for journal articles.
Author Response
The manuscript is well written, and the methodology appears sound. I have just a few minor suggestions.
We thank the reviewer for appreciating our work.
The first sentence of the abstract is somewhat confusing to me. It is currently written as follows:
“In the western Algerian steppe, public authorities have recently carried out actions aimed at developing and combating desertification (grazing reserves, agricultural and rural development programs) to counter the significant and rapid regression of pastures and the consequences on local livelihoods.”
My first question is: What does it mean to take actions aimed at developing desertification? Combatting desertification makes sense but I don’t understand the meaning of developing it.
We have clarified (L 38-39) what we meant: actions from the government are aimed towards combatting desertification as well as at promoting rural development.
My second question is more of a request to consider some alternative wording. What does the “rapid regression of pastures” mean? Is this the loss of pastures to another land use or type? If so, what is the vegetative composition or land type that is replacing the pastures? Or what pasture grasses are disappearing and being replaced? Does it become more wooded, with greater tree density? Or does it simply overgrazing with a landscape with a greater percentage of bare soil?
We meant total loss of vegetation, i.e. bare soil, and we have specified so at L 40-41.
I also find the last two sentences of the abstract to be vague. These two sentences are summarizing the findings of the entire study but they do not leave the reader with much understanding or clarity about what the most important findings or conclusions are.
We admit that the formulation of the end of the abstract was too vague and thank the reviewer for the appreciation. We have reformulated the last part of the abstract to be more specific (L 51-58).
Line 55 – Here the references provided are: [9,10,1,11]. While these may be correct, the order raises a question in the reader’s mind about reference number 1. Why is it placed between 10 and 11? Typically the references are presented in numerical order. So, this point also applies to other places in the manuscript where there reference numbers that are not sequenced in order.
The reviewer is right, and this was a mistake at numbering the references that we oversaw when revising the manuscript. Changes applied.
Line 116 – Here the authors present the species of halfah grasslands as “(Stipa tenacissima L.)” with the species authorship provided (Linnaeus). However, previously (line 86) the authors already provided the species name in a sentence as: “… halfah grass (Stipa tenacissima) and white wormwood (Artemisia herba-alba).” Typically the scientific name and authority of a species are presented at first mention only in the paper.
The reviewer is right, and this was a mistake from our side. We have deleted the duplicated scientific name of halfah grass.
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Well done.
Author Response
Thank you
