Daily actual evapotranspiration estimation of different land use types based on SEBAL model in the agro-pastoral ecotone of northwest China

Liangyan Yang; Jianfeng Li; Zenghui Sun; Jinbao Liu; Yuanyuan Yang; Tong Li

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0265138

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionAugust 20, 2021
29 Oct 2021 Decision Letter - Débora Regina Roberti, Editor PONE-D-21-26971Daily actual evapotranspiration estimation of different land use types based on SEBAL model in the agro-pastoral ecotone of northwest ChinaPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Yang, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. ACADEMIC EDITOR: We have received comments from two reviewers on your manuscript. The reviewers favor accepting your paper, although both propose quite a few technical corrections to your text. Please, include them in your paper. In your responses to the reviewers, please reply individually and address their remarks point by point. 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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 ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 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: No Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 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: No Reviewer #2: No ****** 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 paper was used SEBAL model to estimate ET by Landsat imagery. The topic is quite interesting and could be stimulating for the scientific community after the major revision. 1. As a general comment, I can say that the paper/work is still in an initial phase of implementation, and deeper analysis is needs. 2. The novelty, originality, and scientific contribution of this study in its respective field is not well presented. I think authors should clarify why the study is important, i.e., what is the contribution of this study inside of its branch? 3. Can Authors explain the verification section in more detail? - How many ground stations were used for validation? (Line 172 mentioned 4. But 8 station were mentioned between line 180-181) - What is temporal resolution of station data? - What is error of the data verification? How the author prevents the errors of data validation? 4. E-601 and 20cm-caliber have proven “meet the requirements” (line 185), why only 20cm-caliber data was selected as the validation data? 5. Please please clarify the fig 2 in more detail. Author mentioned 4 stations, investigated 6 days, why were 12 “point” used in the competition? 6. The results section is not clear and need to be improved. - The solid explanation should be given instead of rather generic explanations are provided (“Spatiotemporal distribution of daily ET” section). - There are many surface parameters affect to ET, such as wind speed, air humidity…. Why four factor, including NDVI, LST, land surface albedo, net radiation flux, were selected? - NDVI, LST, land surface albedo, net radiation flux are inputs the SEBAL model, so it's a problem of measuring similarities. Reviewer #2: The paper is a straightforward analysis for invert the regional ET based on Landsat8 images and compare with observed ET and explore the mechanisms of surface parameters on daily ET. I recommend publication after the following minor revisions. (1) The latent heat flux should be calculated by P-M equation (2) The author should clarify the distinction between daily ET and latent heat flux (3) It is interesting to explore the mechanism of how hydrothermal conditions effect the energy transmission. (4) Please explain why the results of albedo v.s. ET shows a larges bias ****** 6. 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. 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Revision 1
8 Dec 2021 Author Response Response to reviewers’ comments We would like to thank the academic editor and reviewers for their constructive and insightful comments and suggestions. We have revised the manuscript accordingly. To facilitate the reviewers to see the changes we made in response to their comments, the changes are marked in blue in the revised manuscript. Below we provide a point to point response to all the comments. Academic Editor Question 1: Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_ sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf Response: Thanks for the suggestion. We have revised the whole article according to PLOS ONE style templates. Question 2: Thank you for stating the following financial disclosure: This research was funded by Technology Innovation Center for Land Engineering and Human Settlements, Shaanxi Land Engineering Construction Group Co., Ltd and Xian Jiaotong University (2021WHZ0088, 2021WHZ0091) and Scientific Research Item of Shaanxi Provincial Land Engineering Built-up Group (DJNY2021-33). Please state what role the funders took in the study. If the funders had no role, please state: "The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript." If this statement is not correct you must amend it as needed. Please include this amended Role of Funder statement in your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. Response: Thanks for the suggestion. We have updated the Funding Statement and Competing Interests Statement in cover letter. Funding: This paper was supported by the Fund for Less Developed Regions of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 42167039), Technology Innovation Center for Land Engineering and Human Settlements, Shaanxi Land Engineering Construction Group Co., Ltd and Xian Jiaotong University (2021WHZ0088, 2021WHZ0091) and Scientific Research Item of Shaanxi Provincial Land Engineering Built-up Group (DJNY2021-33). The funder provided support in the form of salaries for authors [Yang LY, Li JF, Sun ZH, Liu JB], but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section. Competing interests: Institute of Land Engineering and Technology, Shaanxi Provincial Land Engineering Construction Group Co., Ltd and Shaanxi Provincial Land Engineering Construction Group Co., Ltd do not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials. The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. Question 3: Thank you for stating the following in the Acknowledgments / Funding Section of your manuscript: This research was funded by Technology Innovation Center for Land Engineering and Human Settlements, Shaanxi Land Engineering Construction Group Co., Ltd and Xian Jiaotong University (2021WHZ0088, 2021WHZ0091) and Scientific Research Item of Shaanxi Provincial Land Engineering Built-up Group (DJNY2021-33). Please note that funding information should not appear in the Acknowledgments section or other areas of your manuscript. We will only publish funding information present in the Funding Statement section of the online submission form. Please remove any funding-related text from the manuscript and let us know how you would like to update your Funding Statement. Currently, your Funding Statement reads as follows: This research was funded by Technology Innovation Center for Land Engineering and Human Settlements, Shaanxi Land Engineering Construction Group Co., Ltd and Xian Jiaotong University (2021WHZ0088, 2021WHZ0091) and Scientific Research Item of Shaanxi Provincial Land Engineering Built-up Group (DJNY2021-33). Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. Response: Thanks for the suggestion. We have updated the Funding Statement and Competing Interests Statement in cover letter. And remove any funding-related text from the manuscript. Funding: This paper was supported by the Fund for Less Developed Regions of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 42167039), Technology Innovation Center for Land Engineering and Human Settlements, Shaanxi Land Engineering Construction Group Co., Ltd and Xian Jiaotong University (2021WHZ0088, 2021WHZ0091) and Scientific Research Item of Shaanxi Provincial Land Engineering Built-up Group (DJNY2021-33). The funder provided support in the form of salaries for authors [Yang LY, Li JF, Sun ZH, Liu JB], but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section. Competing interests: Institute of Land Engineering and Technology, Shaanxi Provincial Land Engineering Construction Group Co., Ltd and Shaanxi Provincial Land Engineering Construction Group Co., Ltd do not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials. The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. Question 4: We note that Figure 1, 3, 4 and 6 in your submission contain [map/satellite] images which may be copyrighted. All PLOS content is published under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which means that the manuscript, images, and Supporting Information files will be freely available online, and any third party is permitted to access, download, copy, distribute, and use these materials in any way, even commercially, with proper attribution. For these reasons, we cannot publish previously copyrighted maps or satellite images created using proprietary data, such as Google software (Google Maps, Street View, and Earth). For more information, see our copyright guidelines: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/licenses-and-copyright. Response: Thanks for the suggestion. The remote sensing images used in this study are all freely available at the Geospatial Data Cloud (http://www.gscloud.cn). We have explained the acquisition of Data sources of the revised manuscript. Reviewer #1 This paper was used SEBAL model to estimate ET by Landsat imagery. The topic is quite interesting and could be stimulating for the scientific community after the major revision. Questions 1: As a general comment, I can say that the paper/work is still in an initial phase of implementation, and deeper analysis is needs. Response: We are extremely grateful to reviewer for pointing out this problem. To be more clearly and in accordance with the reviewer concerns, we have added a more detailed discussion of meteorological factors and hydrothermal conditions. In future research, we will deeply analyze the mechanism of remote sensing inversion of evapotranspiration and improve the accuracy of model inversion. It can provide data support for the rational use of water resources, restoration of the ecological environment, and protection of ecological water sources. Thank you again for your support and affirmation of our work. Questions 2: The novelty, originality, and scientific contribution of this study in its respective field is not well presented. I think authors should clarify why the study is important, i.e., what is the contribution of this study inside of its branch? Response: Evapotranspiration is an important part of the water cycle. Remote sensing technology provides a new method for the estimation of regional land surface water evapotranspiration. This study uses Landsat data and energy balance models to estimate the evapotranspiration in the agro-pastoral ecotone, which solves the problem of transient remote sensing to estimate all-day evapotranspiration. Through the simulation of the daily evapotranspiration in the study area, the distribution law of evapotranspiration in this area is analyzed, which has certain support and guiding significance for the study of land surface process. In the context of increasingly scarce global water resources, accurate estimation of evapotranspiration is not only of great significance for theoretical research on global climate evolution, environmental issues, and evaluation of water resources, but also for guiding agricultural drainage and irrigation, monitoring agricultural drought, and improving agricultural utilization rate of water resources is also very practical significance. Questions 3: Can Authors explain the verification section in more detail? - How many ground stations were used for validation? (Line 172 mentioned 4. But 8 station were mentioned between line 180-181) - What is temporal resolution of station data? - What is error of the data verification? How the author prevents the errors of data validation? Response: Our deepest gratitude goes to you for your careful work and thoughtful suggestions that have helped improve this paper substantially. There are four weather stations in the study area, plus 4 surrounding weather stations, a total of eight stations. Since the meteorological sites were small meteorological stations that were established by research teams in Wushenqi and Henan in China, they did not have evaporation dishes to obtain the data on water surface evaporation. Therefore, E-601 and 20cm-caliber meteorological stations, such as those at the Hengshan, Jingbian, Shenmu, Dingbian, Yanchi and Etuoke Banner Stations in China were used for validation in the study and surrounding areas. The water surface evaporator of the weather station has two types that include E-601 and 20cm-caliber. There are differences in the installation plan, structure and observational methods of the two instruments. The two monitoring results are quite different and cannot be directly used to verify the accuracy of the evapotranspiration inversion results. Therefore, to more accurately explore the inversion accuracy of the SEBAL model and maintain the continuity and consistency of the data at each station, it is necessary to explore the conversion coefficients of the two surface evaporators and unify the data. So as to avoid the limitations brought by the data itself. Questions 4: E-601 and 20cm-caliber have proven “meet the requirements” (line 185), why only 20cm-caliber data was selected as the validation data? Response: We are very sorry for the inconvenience and confusion caused by my presentation. At present, most weather stations in China have two types of evaporating pans, E-601 and 20cm-caliber, which leads to inconsistent evapotranspiration data. In order to meet the needs, I explored the conversion coefficients of the two by using the weather stations around the study area. Data unification. And because the E-601 evaporating pan monitoring data is closer to the water surface evapotranspiration, this study converted the 20cm-caliber data into E-601 data, and used E-601 data as the verification data. In order to avoid unnecessary mistakes, I have sought out English-speaking experts with professional backgrounds to polish the language. Questions 5: Please please clarify the fig 2 in more detail. Author mentioned 4 stations, investigated 6 days, why were 12 “point” used in the competition? Response: Since the meteorological sites were small meteorological stations that were established by research teams in Wushenqi and Henan in China, they did not have evaporation dishes to obtain the data on water surface evaporation. The data involved in the validation were the monitoring data from the meteorological stations with a total of 12 images in 6 scenes in Hengshan and Jingbian, China. We have added explanations of accuracy verification of daily ET in Section 3.1 of the revised manuscript. Questions 6: The results section is not clear and need to be improved. - The solid explanation should be given instead of rather generic explanations are provided (“Spatiotemporal distribution of daily ET” section). - There are many surface parameters affect to ET, such as wind speed, air humidity…. Why four factor, including NDVI, LST, land surface albedo, net radiation flux, were selected? - NDVI, LST, land surface albedo, net radiation flux are inputs the SEBAL model, so it's a problem of measuring similarities Response: The suggestion is taken. Our deepest gratitude goes to you for your careful work and thoughtful suggestions that have helped improve this paper substantially. We re-organized the content of the “Spatiotemporal distribution of daily ET” section, and explained the seasonal variation process and spatial distribution of daily evapotranspiration. In summary, hydrothermal conditions are the main factor that affect the changes in evapotranspiration during the year. From a local perspective, the daily ET of different land use types differs significantly. The characteristics of the underlying surface are important factors that affect the exchange of energy and material on the surface. NDVI, surface temperature, surface albedo and net surface radiation are several important parameters describing the nature of the underlying surface. They interact and jointly affect the spatial distribution pattern of evapotranspiration. Therefore, I chose NDVI, LST, land surface albedo and net radiation flux to explore the influencing factors of evapotranspiration. In order to better clarify the factors affecting evapotranspiration, we added Sensitivity analysis of model parameters, including hot spot surface temperature and water vapor. We have explained the details in Sections 4.2 and 4.3 of the revised manuscript. Reviewer #2: The paper is a straightforward analysis for invert the regional ET based on Landsat8 images and compare with observed ET and explore the mechanisms of surface parameters on daily ET. I recommend publication after the following minor revisions. Questions 1: The latent heat flux should be calculated by P-M equation Response: The P-M formula is a standard formula for calculating the reference crop water requirement. The P-M can be used to calculate the reference crop evapotranspiration at a single point, and sufficient meteorological parameters are required as support. The latent heat flux obtained in this study is regional, and the meteorological data is not abundant, so the SEBAL model calculation is more suitable. Questions 2: The author should clarify the distinction between daily ET and latent heat flux. Response: Latent Heat Flux is the heat exchange per unit area under the condition of constant temperature, in watts per square meter (W/m2); daily ET is the amount of water actually evaporated in a day (mm/d), which is the result of dividing the total latent heat flux of the whole day by the latent heat of vaporization (λ) of water. We have added explanations of the latent heat flux and daily ET in Section 2.3.4 and2.3.5 of the revised manuscript. Questions 3: It is interesting to explore the mechanism of how hydrothermal conditions effect the energy transmission. Response: Thanks for the suggestion. The suggestion is taken. This research has added Sensitivity analysis of model parameters in the discussion section. The influence of hotspot surface temperature and water vapor content on the model results is discussed, and the importance of hydrothermal conditions to SEBAL is further proved. The results show that the model output results on the LSTh are less sensitive compared with those of the wv. The main reason for this is that the LSTh is used to calculate the sensible heat flux, and the result of the sensible heat flux requires calculations that are continuously iterative. Multiple iterations weaken the influence of the LSTh. Thus, the change of a single parameter of the LSTh does not have a large influence on the daily ET. See the discussion section in the text for detailed analysis results. Questions 4: Please explain why the results of albedo v.s. ET shows a larges bias Response: The surface albedo determines the amount of solar energy received at the pixel scale. The higher the surface albedo, the smaller the effective radiation reaching the surface, the less energy used for evapotranspiration, and the smaller the evapotranspiration. Therefore, there is a negative correlation between surface albedo and evapotranspiration, which is consistent with the results reflected in Figure 4. However, ET is affected by both energy and moisture. In arid areas, moisture is the decisive factor limiting the amount of surface evapotranspiration. Water in the study area is not sufficient, which limits the amount of evapotranspiration, which results in a large deviation between the surface albedo and ET. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0265138.r002
9 Feb 2022 Decision Letter - Débora Regina Roberti, Editor PONE-D-21-26971R1Daily actual evapotranspiration estimation of different land use types based on SEBAL model in the agro-pastoral ecotone of northwest ChinaPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Yang, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. Please submit your revised manuscript by February 22, 2022 . If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Débora Regina Roberti, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] 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 ******** 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 ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: 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 ****** 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 ****** 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: Dear authors, I do appreciate your further efforts in producing an advanced version of your paper that takes into account my comments. The paper has improved. I suggest accepting it, after the authors make the following necessary revision: - Normalized Difference Latent Heat (NDLI) index was proposed and proved as a reference for the assessment and monitoring water availability. you are encouraged to use it for your validation. - Line 30 : “… coefficients of normalized vegetation indices…” Only NDVI was used for validation as spectral indices…so used as singular noun - Please, improve the quality of the figure (as grip, scale…) ****** 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: Yes:** Mai Son Le [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: PONE-D-21-26971R2.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0265138.r003
Revision 2
13 Feb 2022 Author Response Response to reviewers’ comments We would like to thank the academic editor and reviewers for their constructive and insightful comments and suggestions. We have revised the manuscript accordingly. To facilitate the reviewers to see the changes we made in response to their comments, the changes are marked in blue in the revised manuscript. Below we provide a point-to-point response to all the comments. Academic Editor Question 1: Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. Response: Our deepest gratitude goes to you for your careful work and thoughtful suggestions that have helped improve this paper substantially. We have revised the reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. The changes of the reference list are marked in blue in the Revised Manuscript with Track Changes. Reviewer：Dear authors, I do appreciate your further efforts in producing an advanced version of your paper that takes into account my comments. The paper has improved. I suggest accepting it, after the authors make the following necessary revision: Questions 1: Normalized Difference Latent Heat (NDLI) index was proposed and proved as a reference for the assessment and monitoring water availability. you are encouraged to use it for your validation. Response: Thank you again for your support and affirmation of our work. Thank you very much for your suggestion. Since we have not used the Normalized Difference Latent Heat (NDLI) index in past research, this study has not used it for verification. Thank you for pointing us in new directions. And in future research work, we will introduce the Normalized Difference Latent Heat (NDLI) index to improve our research results. Thank you again for your affirmation and support of this research. Questions 2: Line 30 : “… coefficients of normalized vegetation indices…” Only NDVI was used for valiation as spectral indices…so used as singular noun. Response: We are extremely grateful to reviewer for pointing out this problem. We have fixed this question. “… coefficients of normalized vegetation indices…” modified to “… coefficients of normalized vegetation index…”. Thank you again for your support and affirmation of our work. Questions 3: Please, improve the quality of the figure (as grip, scale…). Response: Thanks for the suggestion. We have improved the quality of Figures 1, 2, 4, and 6, where Figure 1 has modified the scale, and Figures 2 and 4 have increased the resolution of the figures. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers-R2.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0265138.r004
24 Feb 2022 Decision Letter - Débora Regina Roberti, Editor Daily actual evapotranspiration estimation of different land use types based on SEBAL model in the agro-pastoral ecotone of northwest China PONE-D-21-26971R2 Dear Dr. Yang, 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. An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, Débora Regina Roberti, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0265138.r005
Formally Accepted
4 Mar 2022 Acceptance Letter - Débora Regina Roberti, Editor PONE-D-21-26971R2 Daily actual evapotranspiration estimation of different land use types based on SEBAL model in the agro-pastoral ecotone of northwest China Dear Dr. Yang: I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Débora Regina Roberti Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0265138.r006

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