Estimation of the Tapered Gutenberg-Richter Distribution Parameters for Catalogs with Variable Completeness: An Application to the Atlantic Ridge Seismicity
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript presents a work to develop a method to perform the parameters estimation for catalog with a variable magnitude of completeness and apply it to the Atlantic ridge seismicity. For the method part, although the authors provide the formulas to describe the process, however, the applicability of these estimated parameters is too rough. Although some important parameter uncertainty estimates are listed in the next chapter, the causal relationship between the parameters is not explained clearly, and it is difficult to assess the accuracy of the results. The superimposition process statistical tool should be described. It is not a common tool in seismicity studies. Therefore, on a technical level, I have reservations about some of the interpretation. The paper requires significant work to make it technically sound. The results are quite ambiguous, especially for some figures and the related captions. Authors must clearly define how to adopt these methods? What kind of results obtained, what kind of conclusion inferred from these results. I feel that this paper should not be published on the Applied Sciences with the present version, because there are also unclear and ambiguous errors in the descriptions and all the article structure must be re-organized. The manuscript also contains a number of poor or wrong English expressions. This does not prevent me from understanding the methods and results. Therefore, it is suggested that the manuscript cannot be accepted in this stage.
General comments:
- Fort the DATA part, why the authors not declustered the earthquake catalogue? Although the authors want to avoid the bias induced by declustering on the ? estimation, please provide the more detailed evidences to describe it. A description on how clusters are classified and the meaning of the input parameters is necessary.
- I suggest to add the Mc maps in new figure since the authors don't really make use of it but it is still a relevant information. This will help understand the detection capabilities of the earthquake monitoring network.
- You can also add the uncertainties on Mc for the corresponding maps as well in the same figure. I also think that maps of earthquake density for the calculation would be a great addition to the manuscript.
- The acquisition of focal mechanism solutions is full of uncertainties, so parameter estimates obtained by using different mechanism solutions need to be carefully estimated for their applicability. The completeness of the data still dominates the correctness of this paper.
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript entitled “Estimation of the tapered Gutenberg-Richter distribution parameters for catalogs with variable completeness: an application to the Atlantic ridge seismicity” investigated an improvement in estimation of the tapered Gutenberg-Richter distribution parameters by the proposed methodology and also estimated the uncertainties relative to the parameters.
After careful review, the manuscript has a reasonable effort and technical information. However, there is not a good way to present the novelty on the work, and there are some points that must be considered in the revision to be worth being accepted. Therefore, I strongly recommend the authors to follow the comments below:
1- As you have many abbreviations, therefore please provide an abbreviation table that on MDPI format must be at the end of the paper.
2- Abstract is too short and does not present important points. It should be between 250 to 300 words and concisely mention the problems of previous works and novelties in this paper. Also proofread it correctly as now it is confusing for readers. Similarly, the introduction has very poor structure and lack of literature review. Usually in the chapter of introduction the background and needs of this study and why it has to be highlighted and prepare readers to go further. Then your second chapter should be literature review where you present an overview on the previous works and the main problem statements of work and how it can be improved or overcome on it.
3- The work presents a poor literature review on the previous methods and their pros and cons
4- Figures: Please improve the quality and font size to be more visible and in a harmony with the main text size and font style. Also discribe them more in details.
5- Please provide a flowchart that shows the architecture of your proposed model and how it works/implemented.
6- Please make your tables and figures follow a same path and font size and colors
7- There are some typos that needs to be corrected e.g. a space after (.) or no space before and after parentheses ! please check again.
8- Please provide more information and description about each table and figure. Especially for important tables such as fig.2.
9- Provide more information about the case study or data you have been used. Which repository and where was your selected object.
10- It would be great if you can compare your proposed method with other available/common method for the selected data. It shows a good comparison and better understanding about the advantages and improvements by your method.
At the end as I have mentioned, there are not much significant novelty on this work but the efforts were good and it would be good if you revise it according to the points provided and other reviewers.
Author Response
See attached pdf
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Many thanks for your response.
Author Response
Thanks for your positive review!
