Thanks to the two reviewers and the authors for a constructive discusion. Th

I agree with reviewer #2 on the concerns re fig 2. There are actually two points in his/her critic: 1) classification of something which already is classified, 2) value of this statistical analysis. In your response you focus on the latter, but the first would also deserve attention. Regarding the second point, I have to admit tha I also found this part of your manuscript difficult to understand, and I am looking forward to the revised version, which hopefully helps me to better understand this analaysis/results.

One important issue, which has been raised by reviewer #2, is the issue on maps versus (blind) statistics to evaluate the indices against ground truth. I can see both his/her point and the authors' point, that one wants to be able to provide some 'objective' evaluation. Improved statistical evaluation approaches, taking patterns, distances etc. into account, might be the way forward. Please see, for instance, the paper by Güntner et al., 2004, which you already cite, for a number of possible evaluation statistics. (Some of) these might be a useful way to quantify, what ones eye easily would see (but subjectively) from a map.

Thanks for your careful work with the revisions. You also convinced the reviewer re the statistical analysis.