Mapping soil hydraulic properties using random-forest-based pedotransfer functions and geostatistics

Szabó, Brigitta; Szatmári, Gábor; Takács, Katalin; Laborczi, Annamária; Makó, András; Rajkai, Kálmán; Pásztor, László

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-23-2615-2019

Articles | Volume 23, issue 6

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-23-2615-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-23-2615-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 23, issue 6

Research article

|

18 Jun 2019

Research article |

| 18 Jun 2019

Mapping soil hydraulic properties using random-forest-based pedotransfer functions and geostatistics

Brigitta Szabó, Gábor Szatmári, Katalin Takács, Annamária Laborczi, András Makó, Kálmán Rajkai, and László Pásztor

Download

Final revised paper (published on 18 Jun 2019)
Preprint (discussion started on 01 Nov 2018)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

- Printer-friendly version

- Supplement

RC1: 'Reviewer comments on „Mapping soil hydraulic properties using random forest based pedotransfer functions“ by Brigitta Tóth et al.', Anonymous Referee #1, 30 Nov 2018
- SC1: 'Response RC1', Brigitta Toth, 21 Dec 2018
- AC1: 'author comments', Gábor Szatmári, 11 Feb 2019
RC2: 'Revision', Anonymous Referee #2, 31 Jan 2019
- AC2: 'author comments', Gábor Szatmári, 11 Feb 2019

Peer-review completion

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

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (further review by editor and referees) (11 Feb 2019) by Uwe Ehret

AR by Gábor Szatmári on behalf of the Authors (19 Mar 2019) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (01 Apr 2019) by Uwe Ehret

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (29 Apr 2019)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Reviewer comments on the revised version of „Mapping soil hydraulic properties using random forest based pedotransfer functions and geostatistics“ by Brigitta Szabó et al.

General comment
The authors have thoroughly answered to all the comments I raised about the first version of the manuscript. In almost all cases, they have adopted the manuscript concerning my comments and questions. To my mind, they have substantially improved the quality of the manuscript. I recommend the work to be published in HESS after minor revision.

Specific comment
My only comment relates to the formulation of the objectives. In my opinion, it is the most important sentence of the manuscript. I still recommend using the same formulation in the Abstract, the Introduction and the beginning of the Conclusion.
In the Abstract it says: “Our aim was to analyse the performance and spatial distribution of soil hydraulic properties derived from (i) indirect (using PTFs) and (ii) direct (geostatistical) mapping methods”. Here the phrase “performance of soil hydraulic properties” is not clear. I guess that the performance of the methods to derive the soil hydraulic properties is meant, right?
In the last paragraph of the Introduction it says: “Our aim was to analyse how different mapping methods could be applied to derive maps of soil hydraulic properties, such as water content at saturation (THS), field capacity (FC) and wilting point (WP) on the Balaton catchment area in Hungary”. Here “different mapping methods” is too vague for an objective formulation when the specific method are of central importance.
Maybe you can find another more concise and unambiguous formulation of the objectives.

Further remark
I further recommend clarifying the copyright of the provided soil hydraulic maps of the Balaton catchment and the pedotransfer functions. You can define how your data may be used by others. This might also help them to adequately acknowledge your work. I recommend assigning a creative commons licence and indicating it with the cc label. You can find all required information at https://creativecommons.org/. This is just a recommendation and no reviewer claim.

Hide

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (30 Apr 2019) by Uwe Ehret

AR by Gábor Szatmári on behalf of the Authors (06 May 2019) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (07 May 2019) by Uwe Ehret

AR by Gábor Szatmári on behalf of the Authors (09 May 2019) Manuscript

Short summary

This paper analyzes differences in the performance of the indirect and direct mapping method to derive 3-D soil hydraulic maps. Maps of saturated water content, field capacity and wilting point are presented for a 5775 km² catchment at 100 m resolution. Advantages and disadvantages of the two methods are discussed. The absolute difference in soil water retention values is less than 0.025 cm³ cm⁻³ between maps derived with indirect and direct methods for 65–86 % of the catchment.