An Approach to Moho Topography Recovery Using the On-Orbit GOCE Gravity Gradients and Its Applications in Tibet

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Review of "Remote Sensing" manuscript entitled “approach to Moho topography recovery using the on-orbit GOCE gravity gradients and its applications  in the Tibet  (remotesensing-503860)”

Summary

This manuscript illustrates a novel approach based on GOCE satellite observations for moho terrain modeling. To the reviewer's viewpoint, it should be published in geophysical journal.

The reviewer recommends this manuscript getting published in "Remote Sensing" after the following details as well as "English editing" have been considered:

Minor Comments

(1) In line 23, " ..., which is corresponding with that of previous publications", may be changed to "where it corresponds well to that of......"

(2) In line 34, "..., and plays an important role....", should be changed to "..., playing an important role....".

(3) In line 36-37, can it be described by northward movement of Indian plate collision to stable Eurasian Plate? Think about it.

(4) In line 41, "Thus, determination of the Moho topography beneath the Tibet is a hot topic at present." should be changed to " Thus, determination of the Moho topography beneath the Tibet still remains a topic of interest.", because it is NOT a hot topic. Most related research studies have been conducted by Prof. Robert Tenzer's group in terms of gravity, as you stated.

(5) In line 44, "... such as seismic reflection, receiver function analysis and seismic tomography". Does seismic tomography include seismic reflection and receiver function analysis process already?

(6) In line 47, "which inhibits the spatial resolution of the inverted Moho terrain severely." perhaps should be changed to "which renders poor spatial resolution of....".

(7) In line 49, "Recently, gravity approach is a competitive method to invert Moho interface..." should be changed to "Recently, gravity approach has been a competitive....", because "recently" need a present perfect tense.

(8) In line 107, "...the least-square..." should be changed to "...the least-squares..."

(9) In line 111, "...after the integral equations been discretized..." may be changed to "...after discretization..."

(10) In line 134, "...is still a matter of debate." should be perhaps changed to "remains in debate".

(11) In 153-154, "EGG_TRF_2_", would that be a filename?

(12) In Figure 2 a,b,c, The name label is too blurred. Please enlarge or bold them.

(13) In line 179, "....will be inverted using these three gravity gradient disturbances in the following." should be changed to "...will then be inverted using these three gravity gradient disturbances."

(14) Is there any difference between "Moho topography" and "Moho terrain"? If not, you may need to choose one.

(15) In line 211, "As is illustrated in Figure 4,..." should be changed to "As illustrated in Figure 4,..."

(16) In line 223, "nearly north-south, whose reason may be..." should be changed to "nearly north-south. The reason may be..."

(17) In line 260, "The receiver functions is supposed to be..." should be changed to "The receiver functions is regarded as...."

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors of the manuscript “An approach to Moho topography recovery using the on-orbit GOCE gravity gradients and its applications in the Tibet” present a new estimate of the depth of the moho surface for the Tibet region. The authors have used the gravity gradients of the Earth gravity field provided by the satellite mission GOCE and they have extented the Vening Meinesz-Moritz (VMM) inversion method to all the gradients of gravity field.

The work is quite well described  and I think that It can accepted for publishing, but I have some remarks:

1. If I have well understood, the joint solution is obtained using the least-square estimation presented in formula (9). Is it correct? Could you describe it better in the text?

2. Could you report in the text the values of the mean density contrast, the reference density and the mean Moho depth used in formula (1).

3. In Figure 2 I think that it would be better to use the same vertical scale for all the four plots. The same problem in Figure 3. 

4. the boxes of the color scales is often too narrow to see the colors, so it’s difficult to read some pictures.

5. Line 198: “weft direction” —> WEST direction

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx