Global assessment of rural–urban interface in Portugal related to land cover changes

Tonini, Marj; Parente, Joana; Pereira, Mário G.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-18-1647-2018

Articles | Volume 18, issue 6

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-18-1647-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

Spatial and temporal patterns of wildfires: models, theory,...

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-18-1647-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 18, issue 6

Research article

|

13 Jun 2018

Research article |

| 13 Jun 2018

Global assessment of rural–urban interface in Portugal related to land cover changes

Marj Tonini, Joana Parente, and Mário G. Pereira

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Final revised paper (published on 13 Jun 2018)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 07 Nov 2017)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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- Supplement

RC1: 'General comments for manuscript Nhess-2017-359', Anonymous Referee #1, 19 Dec 2017
- AC1: 'Responses to Reviewer 1', Marj Tonini, 09 Feb 2018
  - AC3: 'Manuscript New version', Marj Tonini, 20 Feb 2018
RC2: 'Comments for MS nhess-2017-359', Anonymous Referee #2, 20 Dec 2017
- AC2: 'Responses to Reviewer 2', Marj Tonini, 09 Feb 2018

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Publish as is (26 Feb 2018) by Nikos Koutsias

AR by Marj Tonini on behalf of the Authors (27 Feb 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (further review by editor and referees) (05 Mar 2018) by Nikos Koutsias

AR by Marj Tonini on behalf of the Authors (05 Mar 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (06 Mar 2018) by Nikos Koutsias

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (15 Mar 2018)

RR by Anonymous Referee #3 (20 Mar 2018)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Overview

The study investigates the evolution and main factors determining LULC changes in Portugal during the period 1990-2012, providing a description of how it has affected the RUI’s extension and evolution. An assessment of the burnt areas during the study period is also undertaken. The study presents useful information in order to interpret the landscape changes that have taken place in recent decades in Portugal, helping to put in context the observed fire activity. In my opinion the authors have satisfactorily addressed most of the concerns raised by the previous referees, leading to a substantially improved manuscript with a clearer structure and conclusions well sustained by the results presented. The topic of the study is well suited for the aims of the NHESS journal, and has a good fit within the topics covered by the targeted special issue With this regard, I recommend its acceptance. I give in the following a few suggestions to the authors for their consideration.

Minor comments/suggestions

The provision of RUI maps is an important outcome of the study, as highlighted by the authors. With this regard, I think that many interested readers would greatly benefit from these data to be open for public usage so others can directly benefit from your results and build new knowledge based on them. This would give much more visibility to the paper and would surely boost the number of references to the paper. Of course, I understand that concerns may exist with openly sharing all the data, so this is just a suggestion for the authors to consider the possibility of opening some of the data presented, and in particular the CORINE-based RUI maps, in view of their inherent value.

I have some minor concerns that I will next enumerate for your consideration. I am not myself a native English speaker (thus often making mistakes), but I find some minor typos, too long sentences or some awkward expressions (e.g. P2L7 “is far to be homogeneously distributed”) and a few grammatical inconsistencies that still occur within the text after the author's revision. This is nothing too serious, but that needs to be revised. I have just highlighted a few issues in the abstract in the paragraphs below. Therefore I would recommend a second text review before publication.

The analysis of burned area evolution is very interesting. As a mere suggestion, I think that it would also add value to the author’s findings to put the observed trends of burned area within a wider context (national/regional), taking into account the discussion the results presented in other studies (see e.g. the trends for Portugal and other Mediterranean countries described by Turco et al. 2016), highlighting the importance of the new data presented in this paper to interpret the observed fire trends. In my opinion the last paragraph of the Discussion (P16 L31-34) needs some reference supporting this claim regarding future climate projections. Here are a few suggestions relevant for the specific case of Portugal: Parente et al 2018; Sousa et. al 2015; Bedia et al 2014,

Suggestions regarding paper Figures

The number of figures is elevated. I don’t see any problem with it, as long as all figures display relevant information, that aids to understand the methodology and to interpret the results. As a suggestion, it would perhaps be possible to merge Figures 1 and 2 into a single double-panel figure, without loss of readability. It would also help to better compare side-by-side the population density and main land cover types.

Regarding Fig 8, I would have opted by a 2D barchart (either using side-by-side or stacked categories) rather than a 3D graph, that can lead in my humble opinion to somewhat difficult visualization. But of course I fully respect the author’s choice.

Abstract: possible typos and minor text suggestions (Page 1):

Note that I have not included other typos and grammatical errors detected in other sections of the text (see my comment above regarding a second English review).

L10 […] known as areas "were" [replace by where]
L11-12 crucial for wildfire management and impact [include word "assessment"?]
L19 important LULCC "which" [replace by "whose"?] spatial distribution

References

Bedia, J., Herrera, S., Camia, A., Moreno, J.M., Gutierrez, J.M., 2014. Forest Fire Danger Projections in the Mediterranean using ENSEMBLES Regional Climate Change Scenarios. Climatic Change 122, 185--199. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-013-1005-z

Parente, J., Pereira, M.G., Amraoui, M., Fischer, E.M., 2018. Heat waves in Portugal: Current regime, changes in future climate and impacts on extreme wildfires. Science of the Total Environment Science of The Total Environment 631-632:534-549. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.03.044

Sousa, P.M., Trigo, R.M., Pereira, M.G., Bedia, J., Gutierrez, J.M., 2015. Different approaches to model future burnt area in the Iberian Peninsula. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 202, 11--25. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agrformet.2014.11.018

Turco, M., Bedia, J., Liberto, F.D., Fiorucci, P., Hardenberg, J. von, Koutsias, N., Llasat, M.-C., Xystrakis, F., Provenzale, A., 2016. Decreasing Fires in Mediterranean Europe. PLOS ONE 11, e0150663. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0150663

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (29 Mar 2018) by Nikos Koutsias

AR by Marj Tonini on behalf of the Authors (23 Apr 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (07 May 2018) by Nikos Koutsias

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Short summary

We assessed the evolution of the rural–urban interface (RUI) in Portugal based on land cover changes. A significant increase in artificial surfaces was registered near the main metropolitan communities, whilst the abandonment of agricultural land near the inland urban areas led to an increase in uncultivated semi-natural areas. Consequently, RUI increased more than two-thirds and burnt areas within the RUI doubled, emphasizing the importance of RUI monitoring for land and fire managers.