Dear Authors,
Thank you for your interesting submission and your replies to the two reviewers. Your manuscript is a great contribution to the Special Issue. Following your answers to the reviewer's comments and the addition of new text, I think that a few sentences may need some reworking. Below I list a series of minor comments. I invite you to take those comments into account when preparing the revised manuscript. Please note that the author reply and the track change document should be joined together as one document.
Thank you very much for your interest in the NHESS Special Issue,
Regards,
Oona Scotti

The following are my main comments:

L.90 A some role of volcanic activity on the occurrence of the low magnitude (M<3) shallow seismicity results from the inter-event times (IET) statistical analysis (Sicali et al., 2014), indicating the central area of the volcano, beneath the summit craters, as the most influenced, seismicity featuring mainly clustered.
--Please re-write

L. 147: we calculated intertimes of earthquakes occurring on the same fault (in all, six intertimes).
----In the section above you mention nine events (L 130)? Could you please add a Table xx providing the details of the nine events used to calculate IET? Or at least indicate the events on the map Figure 2?

L. 151. boostrap analysis
--you may want to add “bootstrap analysis by sampling with replacement xxx times the initial IET dataset (Table xx)

L. 154 Please add to text your answer to the reviewers comment “The 5 years period was chosen as representative of short-term earthquake rupture
forecast in a high seismic rate region like Etna”.

L. 286 We considered only the spatial variation of the b-value as a function of time since the number of earthquakes in the grid nodes is not generally sufficient to be split into different time windows
-- You mean : We considered only the spatial variation of the b-value as a function of time since the number of earthquakes in the grid nodes is not generally sufficient to be split into different time windows

L.281 Note that in the eastern sector including the SZ Timpe at depths ranging from 2 to 6 km bsl, the b-value pattern varies widely both in number (0.7-1.2) and in space
----It is not possible to situate the SZ Timpe , the crater or the eastern flank on Figure 8. You mention in your reply that you provide a new Figure 8 but maybe you forgot to add it ?? You may want to replace “number” with “value”. Please add new Figure 8

L. 290. Also the IET analysis (Sicali et al., 2014) exhibits some similarities in the spatial distribution, indicating that features of earthquake occurrence in the western flank-central sector are very different from PF sor SZ Timpe, the latter more related with regional tectonics
Please re-write this sentence, I do not understand it?

L. 297 “ In conclusion, we cannot rule out the possibility that transient properties of the state of stress may influence the b-value in some 295 cell of our grid but the above comparisons as well as the overall agreement of short term occurrences (red dots in Fig. 6) with the ones obtained by the historical catalogue (blue dots), induced us to accept the assumptions done on the representativeness of few years of instrumental seismicity during an interseismic period, and thus consider the distributed seismicity in the source model.”
Suggestion: In conclusion, even if we cannot rule out the possibility that transient properties of the state of stress may influence the b-value in some cells of our grid, we believe that the above comparisons as well as the overall good agreement between short term instrumental and historical catalogue seismicity rates (respectively red and blue dots in Fig. 6), are sufficient evidence that seismicity rates deduced from a few years of instrumental seismicity during an interseismic period are representative of the longer term seismicity rates and can thus be considered to represent the distributed seismicity in the source model.

L. 303 approach: it converts
----suggest to replace with “by converting”

L. 345 the comparison is fairly explanatory
--- what do you mean?

L. 373 slip-rate values and related uncertainties, from which are strongly dependent (see Fig. 9); Tmean obtained ...
---suggestion slip-rate values and related uncertainties, which are strongly dependent; resulting Tmean..

L. 374 However, these values cannot be merely compared with the one obtained from the historical earthquake dataset, which is referred to the SZ Timpe (see Tab Section 3.1)
---- suggestion “..compared with those resulting from the analysis of the historical earthquake dataset (Table xxx), which representative of the entire Timpe SZ.”

L 390 are combined to the areas 
--- replace “to" with “with”

L. 393 that are here modelled till a Mmax=4.5.
---Suggestion “where only earthquakes between M=Mmin and Mmax=4.5 are modelled”

Typos
L.47 degree of details - change to "detail"
L.217 the reader- change to "reader"
L. 225 - 235 Etna  - change to Mt Etna
L.257 we calculated alfa - change to a

FIGURES
Fig. 2 Major events considered for the analysis are marked in white -- suggestion : are outlined by a white circle. Please provide dates on the map if not in a Table.

Figure 6: Years indicate the time-window of the historical macroseismic catalogue 
--- Years indicate the actual time-window (Tlast- Tfirst) of the events in each sub-catalogue.

Figure 8…you mention a new Figure but the present Figure 8 is the same as the old one

Dear authors, thank you for your revised manuscript.

Guest editor

Oona Scotti

NB There is an unfinished sentence in the acknowledgments for R. Gee