We welcome a revised paper that incorporates the point-by-point responses you have made to the reviewers' comments. These small changes will make the paper and its scientific aims much clearer to the diverse readership of Earth System Dynamics.

The response to the reviewers and the adjustments to the manuscript are very good - the intention of the paper is now much clearer; and the more careful definitions of terms and concepts, together with the small changes to notation, make the explanation and discussion of the analysis much more intuitively grasped. The paper is now of interest to the wider ESD readership, as well as to the various groups of social(-ecological) system dynamicists whose ideas it draws from and combines.