Inter-annual and seasonal trends of vegetation condition in the Upper Blue Nile (Abay) Basin: dual-scale time series analysis

Teferi, E.; Uhlenbrook, S.; Bewket, W.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-6-617-2015

Articles | Volume 6, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-6-617-2015

© Author(s) 2015. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-6-617-2015

© Author(s) 2015. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 6, issue 2

Research article

|

25 Sep 2015

Research article |

| 25 Sep 2015

Inter-annual and seasonal trends of vegetation condition in the Upper Blue Nile (Abay) Basin: dual-scale time series analysis

E. Teferi, S. Uhlenbrook, and W. Bewket

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Final revised paper (published on 25 Sep 2015)
Preprint (discussion started on 06 Feb 2015)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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RC C69: 'Comments to the Author', Anonymous Referee #1, 26 Feb 2015
- AC C263: 'Reply to the comments of referee #1', Ermias Teferi Demessie, 13 May 2015
RC C126: 'Comments on the manuscript by Teferi et al.', Anonymous Referee #2, 23 Mar 2015
- AC C282: 'Reply to the comments of referee #2', Ermias Teferi Demessie, 13 May 2015

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Ermias Teferi Demessie on behalf of the Authors (02 Jun 2015) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (22 Jun 2015) by Anja Rammig

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (23 Jun 2015)

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by Editor) (23 Jun 2015) by Anja Rammig

AR by Ermias Teferi Demessie on behalf of the Authors (25 Jul 2015) Manuscript

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by Editor) (14 Aug 2015) by Anja Rammig

Dear authors,

Thank you for sending the revised version of your article and for the detailed response to the reviewer's comments. Before we can proceed with the publication of your article, I have some further remarks that should be taken into account.

To my opinion, the manuscript would benefit immensely from language editing. I have marked some lines in the attached document which need language revisions.

Then I have two more issues:
One is about the attribution of drivers for changes: From your analyses it seems that you are not able to attribute drivers for changes in greenness/NDVI. Therefore I would suggest to omit formulations e.g. in P20L24:"Some anthropogenic factors could also be attributed to the observed recent browning trend in the basin." If this has not been done in your study then please change to something like "Other studies attributed anthropogenic factors to the observed recent browning trend..." or similar. Also in other places like P22L17-19.

The second issue is that I would suggest to considerably shorten the conclusions. They do not again need very detailed information on your findings but should summarize what you conclude from your findings. The statements in the final three bullet points are very weak. (1) How should vegetation activities be increased in the basin? (2) Why was it very useful to identify potentially masked changes in vegetation conditions and what do you conclude from these findings? (3) How did you link your trend analysis to human activities?

I am looking forward to receive a revised version of your article. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to contact me.

Best wishes,
Anja Rammig

Comments to the Author: PDF

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AR by Ermias Teferi Demessie on behalf of the Authors (24 Aug 2015) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (01 Sep 2015) by Anja Rammig

AR by Ermias Teferi Demessie on behalf of the Authors (08 Sep 2015)

Short summary

This study concludes that integrated analysis of course and fine-scale, inter-annual and intra-annual trends enables a more robust identification of changes in vegetation condition. Seasonal trend analysis was found to be very useful in identifying changes in vegetation condition that could be masked if only inter-annual vegetation trend analysis were performed. The finer-scale intra-annual trend analysis revealed trends that were more linked to human activities.