PONE-D-21-26813Tropical wetlands and land use changes: The case of oil palm in neotropical riverine floodplains.PLOS ONE

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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: Yes

Reviewer #2: Partly

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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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 article presents valuable new information on the growing extent of oil palm plantations in a region of Latin America that has high ecological value. Such information will assist land managers and decision-makers in assessing the impacts of oil palm plantations, and to balance the trade-offs between economic development and ecosystem conservation. This article is timely given that the majority of the research focused on the impacts of palm oil plantations has been conducted in Asia, and yet as you correctly point out, such plantations have become established in other parts of the world and such trends are predicted to continue. The data reported are illustrated by high quality maps. I have made some suggestions for improvements in my detailed comments (below).

Specific comments:

Lines 15-16: To improve the language, I recommend amending "due to the global food demand and biofuels" to "due to the global demand for food and biofuels".

Line 16: The word "expenses" should be amended to "expense".

Line 17: The word "a" can be deleted.

Line 18: Amend "nearby" to "near to".

Line 20: Add the word "the" before "current".

Line 21: Add the word "a" before the phrase "case-study".

Line 25: What are "intervened lands" in this context? Those previously impacted by people?

Line 26: It is not clear what the phrase "aquatic ecosystem cover" means in this context. Do you mean the spatial extent of aquatic ecosystems? It is clearly an important concept for your study, and so it would be helpful to the reader to define it.

Lines 26-27: "Although aquatic ecosystem cover decreased in surface during the study period". The abstract would be more informative if you would state by how large this decrease was. What % of the initial area was lost? The information from Table 3 could be used here.

Line 43: Does "production" here refer to annual production? Please clarify.

Line 43: Amend "increase" to "increased".

Line 50: Amend "has" to "have".

Line 134: I recommend that here you clarify that LULC refers to "land use land cover", as readers that look at the figures first may have missed this definition in the text.

Line 344: Amend "decrease" to "decreasing".

Line 350: Change "much" to "far".

Line 351: The word "a" should be changed to "the", and the word "are" should be amended to "is".

Lines 362-363: "The effects on sediment and water quality can extend over comparatively large distances". It would be useful to explain more detail what effects increased sediment inputs might have on water quality and aquatic ecosystems. In particular, the point should be made that high sediment inputs to aquatic ecosystems can increase turbidity, which negatively affects aquatic plants, which are often the key primary producers in aquatic ecosystems (O’Hare, M.T., et al. 2018. Plants in aquatic ecosystems: current trends and future directions. Hydrobiologia, 812, 1-11.). Sediment inputs can therefore have substantial impacts on the structure and functioning of aquatic ecosystems, which may ultimately affect their provision of ecosystem services to local communities (Mitsch, W.J., et al. 2015. Ecosystem services of wetlands. International Journal of Biodiversity Science, Ecosystem Services & Management, 11, 1-4.).

Line 378: This is an important point, because fish communities are known to be influenced by the forests within their catchment (Lo, M., et al. 2020. The influence of forests on freshwater fish in the tropics: A systematic review. BioScience, 70, 404-414.), and so the conversion of native rainforest to oil palm plantations will likely have impacts on the in-stream fish communities in this region.

Lines 762-766: There is an error with the formatting of the references here. There are currently two reference #37s and two reference #38s.

Reviewer #2: Major comments:

The expansion of oil palm plantations is a global issue. This study used Landsat 8 OLI images coupled with regular geostatistics to quantify the spatial distributions of oil palm area and the land-use changes of different landscapes (agricultural, oil palm crop, aquatic ecosystem, etc..) over 17-year plantation history (from 2001-2017). As a case study, the present work alerts the audiences to the serious problem in a biodiversity hotspot (Usumacinta River Basin), in face to the accelerated oil palm plantation processes. Several major comments are raised for your consideration:

(1) Although the present study has used several geostatistical tools to reveal the landscape patterns in the Usumacinta watershed, the effects of oil palm crops on floodplain ecosystems remained largely descriptive, without substantial data supporting them (e.g., lines of the evidence mostly derived from previous pieces of literature). Therefore, the objectives of this study should be better framed.

(2) To well address the above issue, I suggest further quantifying the fragmentation degree of landscape and/or landscape heterogeneity characteristics, as well as other commonly-used geographical indices before and after large-scale oil palm plantation, based on the currently obtained data points. For instance, how “environmental integrity” is impaired by oil palm plantation, since the authors stated in multiple places the plantation could affect habitat complexity, environmental integrity, and connectivity, and highlighted the importance of structurally complex ecosystems of naturally-occurring tropical forest. By doing this, the authors can provide robust evidence to support the arguments about the negative impacts of oil palm plantations.

(3) Some technical issues should be addressed before publication: a) lines 180-181, the cloud cover data for the images used should be provided; b) Landsat 8 satellite was only launched after 2013, how can obtain images using Landsat 8 for those in 2011-2012; c) line 182, more information about atmospheric and geometrical correction should be provided. For instance, what models have been adopted for atmospheric correction?

(4) There is a combined result and discussion in the Result section. Please make a clear separation between your results and discussion, and be sure the discussion answers what the introduction asked.

Minor comments:

1. Line 44, oil palm production in 2010 and 2011 has been reported. What about the current conditions (e.g., in 2020 or the recent five years)?

2. Lines 48-49, “8.9 billion tons in 2050”, it means globally or in Indonesia? Please specify.

3. Line Abstract & 21 & 110, add “a” before case-study site

4. Lines 114-118, the study aim should be framed more logically. For example, the vertical distribution of oil palm plantations, land-use conversion, as well as the spatial distribution of oil palm crops by freshwater ecoregion have been studied, but not been clearly stated here.

5. Line 128, remove the comma before [52].

6. Line 129, add a colon between “floodplains” and “a deltaic one”.

7. Lines 169-170, rephrase this sentence.

8. Line 203, “Table 2” should not be ahead of “Table 1”.

9. Lines 251-252, your data points cannot support your statements “we found that the greatest environmental impact comes from pollution and habitat fragmentation due to deforestation”. Besides, a citation of this sentence means that you cited previous reports to support your viewpoints.

10. Line 301, from Table 3, how can the increased oil palm areas be contributed to a net loss of 39% area of rainforest?

11. Lines 354-358, it was stated that not all lost aquatic areas can be attributed to the expansion of oil palm crops. Please place more explanation about this. Was it converted into other types of land?

12. Lines 401-403, perhaps the authors can give a simple calculation to account for this conclusion. What is the balance between the production of bioenergy in form of carbon and the loss of biomass carbon?

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Tropical wetlands and land use changes: The case of oil palm in neotropical riverine floodplains.

PONE-D-21-26813R1

Dear Dr. Camacho-Valdez,

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,

Bijeesh Kozhikkodan Veettil

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

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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: Thank you for undertaking these thorough and well-documented revisions to your study. The revised manuscript is a clear improvement, and in my view makes an important contribution to the literature on the responses of wetland ecosystems to land use changes.

Reviewer #2: I am glad to recommend acceptance for the publication of the manuscript based on the detailed and satisfactory modifications made. Before reaching final decisions, I sincerely hope the authors check the manuscript again for typos or any potential grammar mistakes involved. For instance, in the text, " table 4 " should be " Table 4 "; in the caption of Table 4, " 2001-201 " should be " 2001-2017 "; for the term " 2X2 km ", there is no space between numeric and multiple sign (i.e., X), but for " 24 X 24 ", it has. Multiple places should be re-visited again to meet the high-quality requirement of the Journal.

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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