PONE-D-21-01011

Assessing biomass and primary production of microphytobenthos in depositional coastal systems using spectral information

PLOS ONE

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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: 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: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

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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: It is a good paper and brings another solid data set to the calculation of estuarine productivity. Using satellite data adds another dimension to our ability to understand these systems. There are plausible explanations of why biomass (and productivity??) are low in the summer for tidal flats. My feeling is that this is due to grazing being higher than production through the summer.

Please see my comments on the paper marked on the pdf version attached. It requires some changes before acceptance, chiefly the PAR values from the met station are too high. Correction to these will also require correction of the daily primary production as they are used in modelling. I look forward to seeing a revised version, and eventual publication

Rodney Forster

Reviewer #2: The questions discussed in the paper are very interesting but complex. Several previous publications have already discussed these points and concluded about the difficulty to assess biomass and mainly production using spectral information.

The data set presented her is interesting and seems to be of quality.

I consider that the manuscript could deserve publication after addressing some iimportant points.

The authors highlighted important questions but did not really solve them.

First of all, they pointed out an important flaw, that is the fact that satellites measures allow an accurate estimation of Chl.a + Pheophytin-a but not of chl.a alone, that is a major problem to use these data to estimate productivity from chl.a estimates and light availability.

Another flaw is the way the authors measured productivity: they used a lab method, very precise but very far from the actual field productivity. 14C measurements are interesting for physiological considerations and produce potential production as a function of controlled variables but measurements are performed in very artificial conditions, very far from the real life. It can be one of the reaon of the poor correlation between satellite data and estimated productivity. It would be at least necessary to perform measurements on intact sediment samples or, better, to perform in situ measurements of benthic productivity: these two approaches are now quite common and certainly better estimations. The methods used here must be more critically discussed and justified.

Migne et al. (2007, J.Phycol.) tried to do the same kind of approach by using in situ fluorescence measurements to estimate microphytobenthic production. However, in a further paper, the same team (Davoult et al., 2009, Hydrobiologia) demonstrated that the relationship was strongly locality-dependent and should be used with caution despite they obtained a stronger explained variance than you. I believe you should discuss that point.

Some particular points:

p.6-L.128: salinity is now expressed withou unit, like a density

p.16, L. 390: values of the ratio between pheophytin-a and the sum of corrected chl.a and pheophytin-a seem to be wrong and connot be deduced from table 3, please check.

p24,L576: OK but data not from the same year, you should be more cautious because of the high spatial and temporal variability of such results

p25, L619-620: these "optimum" values are questionable (and very high!), it seems better to rely on Ek

p28, L 685-688: I agree with this remark, the same could be apply on the way you measure productivity!

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Rodney Forster

Reviewer #2: Yes: Dominique Davoult

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Attachment

Submitted filename: PONE-D-21-01011_reviewer_rmf.pdf

Assessing biomass and primary production of microphytobenthos in depositional coastal systems using spectral information

PONE-D-21-01011R1

Dear Dr. Jacobs,

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.

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Kind regards,

Vona Méléder, Ph.D.

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: (No Response)

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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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: (No Response)

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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: (No Response)

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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: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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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.

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Rodney Forster

Reviewer #2: Yes: Dominique Davoult