PONE-D-21-15661

Identifying agricultural disaster risk zones for future climate actions.

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Arreyndip,

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PLOS ONE

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[This research has received financial support from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation through the International ClimateProtection (ICP) Fellowship Program 2020.The author will also want to thank the Ministry of Higher Education of Cameroon for the financial support in the form ofresearch allowances for State University lecturers.The author will also want to thank the members of the Department of Complexity Sciences of the Potsdam Institute forClimate Impact research (PIK) in Potsdam, Germany for their immense material support during the time spent there. ]

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Reviewers' comments:

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Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Partly

Reviewer #2: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: This manuscript claims to detail the agricultural disaster risk zones based on the data from FAO and WITS. The subject matter discussed here is relevant to the journal and is important to study as well. Overall, the paper is well structured and the presentation is good. However, due to several issues at the current moment, I would recommend returning the manuscript for some major revisions in almost each section of the submitted draft. Please see the following comments and suggestions.

Abstract:

The problem statement is taking too much space in the abstract. Try to confine it in two sentences at max. and narrate the objective, which as of now is starting after 5 lines.

Please turn the sentences to remove “I” from all spaces in the abstract and check similar throughout the manuscript.

At the moment, the abstract does not contain any concrete/solid results. Please include significant results.

Introduction:

After the 2nd paragraph, there should be details on economic impacts from agricultural sector to show the severity of the issue discussed. This can make the case stronger to conduct such studies. In its present form, the case is not strong enough. Similarly, the author needs to go through the idea of agriculture losses in a telecoupled world (see for example: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/9781119413738.ch5) to strengthen the literature review in this field. The idea of highlighting agricultural losses and climate extremes as well as network dependence is not new (as also stated in the manuscript and can be seen at https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab154b and https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab4864 ). Therefore, it is crucial to signify the objectives and research question addressed in this manuscript, which is weak at the moment.

Data and Methods:

The data used from FAO is for 2018 and for WITS it is 2016. Wouldn't that old WITS data influence the results as the networks data might have been updated? Further, why the latest data from both of these is not used? you need to explain it in this section. The methods section is too concise and the readers are referred to links/resources to check themselves about the models used. There should be more details on these techniques and models included in the manuscript for reader’s sake. It should not be left to the readers to figure out the techniques used for the analysis as it might result in confusions.

Is extreme heat the only disaster considered here? What about floods, tropical cyclones/hurricanes etc., which are one of the most significant natural hazards in the context of agricultural losses in China and USA?

Results and Discussion:

This section is primarily focused on results only and no discussion is provided to show the usefulness of the findings from this study. The points highlighted in the introduction section should be revisited in the discussion section to show how the study would be significant in providing solutions to the issues raised (complete or partial solutions). Similarly, thoughts should also be given to the applicability of the results in terms of disaster risk reduction related policy—even though the disaster considered here is merely covers a smaller proportion of agricultural impacts as compared to other significant disasters such as floods and typhoons. This further highlighted the need of representing agricultural impacts due to different disasters in the introduction section as suggested above. It should be thoroughly discussed that what are the implication of these findings at national and sub-national especially local levels. Which results among the provided figures detail risk zones? You need to explicitly present the results of zones as it is reflected directly from the title of the manuscript. What are the key zones among those? How this zoning can effectively be utilized for adaptation and better decisions as well as resource allocation to reduce the possible impacts in the face of climate change? Furthermore, what are the current limitations and future prospects? How this study could pave ways for further research in this field? All these are missing from the results and discussion section.

Finally, the conclusions section seems like a replicate of abstract. Therefore, it should be revised carefully to represent significant conclusions based on a deep thinking of results and discussion. Not just repeat the already detailed things.

Lastly, the manuscript also needs a low to intermediate revision regarding grammatical and English language (i.e., 2nd sentence in introduction, 1st sentence in Section 2.1). “Data” is plural so you must use “are” and not “is”. Sometimes, the sentences are too long to follow (e.g., first two sentences of 1st paragraph on page 2).

Reviewer #2: This is an interesting article presenting methodology to identify agricultural disaster risk zones which is vital to combat possible climate change impacts in future. The article is well written, it can be considered for publication after addressing the following comments.

Abstract: Well written – no comments.

Introduction: The introduction is very good, the authors demonstrate a thorough knowledge of the published literature and highlight the importance and background to carry out this investigation

Methods: Methods are technically strong and well explained.

Results and Discussion: Results are well explained. However, the discussion concerning other published papers on the topic must be included.

Fig 2, The legend in the sub-figures do not make much sense. The author may try to elaborate on the regions in fig 2(a) and the abbreviations in figures 2b-d.

Conclusion: No Comment.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Identifying agricultural disaster risk zones for future climate actions.

PONE-D-21-15661R1

Dear Dr. Arreyndip,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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Kind regards,

Ghaffar Ali, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: All the comments raised in the previous round are addressed thoroughly, and the author has revised the manuscript intensively. I recommend acceptance of the manuscript after formal editorial procedures.

Reviewer #2: Authors have revised the manuscript according the comments raised. I am fine with the revised version.

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No