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Article
Peer-Review Record

Impacts of Agroclimatic Variability on Maize Production in the Setsoto Municipality in the Free State Province, South Africa

by Abubakar Hadisu Bello 1,*, Mary Scholes 1 and Solomon W. Newete 1,2
Reviewer 1:
Reviewer 2: Anonymous
Reviewer 3: Anonymous
Submission received: 20 October 2020 / Revised: 3 December 2020 / Accepted: 7 December 2020 / Published: 14 December 2020
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Climate Change and Food Insecurity)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript titled “Impacts of Agroclimatic Variability on Maize Production in the Setsotho municipality in the Free State Province, South Africa” is related to evaluation maize production for the period 1985-2016 in Setsoto Mun. using minimum, maximum temperatures and precipitation as climate variables. Selected topic is interesting as South Africa is a big corn producer (as Authors pointed). Furthermore, selected statistical tools are appropriate for such climate studies. However, in my opinion, usage of basic climatic variables (3 mentioned before) is not sufficient and additional climate variables should be included to provide further insight about relation between climate change and maize yield.

For inspiration, please find some recently published articles which are using additional climate variables to predict or explain the influence of climate change on maize yield:

Ramirez-Cabral, N.Y.Z., Kumar, L. & Shabani, F. Global alterations in areas of suitability for maize production from climate change and using a mechanistic species distribution model (CLIMEX). Scientific Reports 7, 5910 (2017). https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.1038/s41598-017-05804-0

Carolina Ureta, Edgar J.González, Alejandro Espinosa, Alejandro Trueba, Alma Piñeyro-Nelson, Elena R. Álvarez-Buylla. Maize yield in Mexico under climate change.  Agricultural Systems 177, 102697 (2020). https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.1016/j.agsy.2019.102697

Chao Chen, Yanmei Pang. Response of maize yield to climate change in Sichuan province, China. Global Ecology and Conservation 22, e00893 (2019). https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.1016/j.gecco.2019.e00893

Minor issues:

Page 1 – Please correct Setsotho to Setsoto in the title.

Page 1 – CV - please use the full term as it is mentioned only once in the abstract

Page 1 – “The relationship between temperature and rainfall is in most cases an inverse relationship; thus, the higher the temperature the lower the rainfall. Periods with higher temperatures, therefore, have lower rainfall across the world and vice versa (Tyson et al., 1975).” I would need to disagree with that statement because it seems that periods with higher temperatures will generally have lower rainfall. Tyson et al. clearly stated that “there is little conclusive evidence to support the view that South Africa has undergone progressive desiccation over the period 1880-1972”. Please rephrase the text.

Page 2 - (Collier et al., 2008) – not present in reference list, please check if all references mentioned in text are listed in reference list and vice versa.

Page 3 – “(Sneyers, 1991)” – not present in reference list

Table 1 – Please correct T&R to R&T for Marquard station

Table 2 –Please add info about the studied period (1985-2016) and area (Setsoto Mun) in table headline. Table headline needs to be self-explanatory.

Titles of 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3 should be in the same format because those chapters are dealing with mean, minimum, maximum SD and CV of min, max temperatures, rainfall and maize yield during growing season for the period 1985-2016 in Setsoto Municipality.

Author Response

The manuscript titled “Impacts of Agroclimatic Variability on Maize Production in the Setsotho municipality in the Free State Province, South Africa” is related to evaluation maize production for the period 1985-2016 in Setsoto Mun. using minimum, maximum temperatures and precipitation as climate variables. Selected topic is interesting as South Africa is a big corn producer (as Authors pointed). Furthermore, selected statistical tools are appropriate for such climate studies. However, in my opinion, usage of basic climatic variables (3 mentioned before) is not sufficient and additional climate variables should be included to provide further insight about relation between climate change and maize yield.

For inspiration, please find some recently published articles which are using additional climate variables to predict or explain the influence of climate change on maize yield:

Ramirez-Cabral, N.Y.Z., Kumar, L. & Shabani, F. Global alterations in areas of suitability for maize production from climate change and using a mechanistic species distribution model (CLIMEX). Scientific Reports 7, 5910 (2017). https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.1038/s41598-017-05804-0

Carolina Ureta, Edgar J.González, Alejandro Espinosa, Alejandro Trueba, Alma Piñeyro-Nelson, Elena R. Álvarez-Buylla. Maize yield in Mexico under climate change.  Agricultural Systems 177, 102697 (2020). https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.1016/j.agsy.2019.102697

Chao Chen, Yanmei Pang. Response of maize yield to climate change in Sichuan province, China. Global Ecology and Conservation 22, e00893 (2019). https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.1016/j.gecco.2019.e00893

Authors: Thank you so much for suggestion,due to lack of availability of radiation data in the study area, we cannot consider the suggestion but in our future research we will definitely consider it

Minor issues:

Page 1 – Please correct Setsotho to Setsoto in the title.

Authors: Setsoto has been corrected

 

Page 1 – CV - please use the full term as it is mentioned only once in the abstract

Authors: Full meaning the term was included

 

 

Page 1 – “The relationship between temperature and rainfall is in most cases an inverse relationship; thus, the higher the temperature the lower the rainfall. Periods with higher temperatures, therefore, have lower rainfall across the world and vice versa (Tyson et al., 1975).” I would need to disagree with that statement because it seems that periods with higher temperatures will generally have lower rainfall. Tyson et al. clearly stated that “there is little conclusive evidence to support the view that South Africa has undergone progressive desiccation over the period 1880-1972”. Please rephrase the text.

Authors: Authors: The relationship between temperature and rainfall in inconclusive across the globe, there is not enough evidence to  steady progression of aridity in South Africa  using long term tearm from 18880-

 

Page 2 - (Collier et al., 2008) – not present in reference list, please check if all references mentioned in text are listed in reference list and vice versa.

Authors:The refence has been included

 

Page 3 – “(Sneyers, 1991)” – not present in reference list

Authors:  The refence has been included

Table 1 – Please correct T&R to R&T for Marquard station

Authors: T& R has been corrected with R&T

 

Table 2 –Please add info about the studied period (1985-2016) and area (Setsoto Mun) in table headline. Table headline needs to be self-explanatory.

Authors: The vital information has been added

 

Titles of 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3 should be in the same format because those chapters are dealing with mean, minimum, maximum SD and CV of min, max temperatures, rainfall and maize yield during the growing season for the period 1985-2016 in Setsoto Municipality.

Authors: The format of the title is now uniform

Reviewer 2 Report

General evaluation.

This manuscript examines possible links between climate (climate variability and change) and yield in Setsoto Municipality, Southern Africa. In view of the fact that crop production need to be increased over the coming decades to face world’s population growth, and that local production is very important in African countries, the topic is certainly of interest for the readership of the journal.

Overall, the structure and quality of the paper are acceptable. However, several issues require improvement. The “Introductio”n does not state, in an explicit way, the specific objectives, nor does it motivate sufficiently the interest for, and the general characteristics of the study area (and of maize production in the study area). There is no description of the production conditions and the quality of the yield data in Section 2. Some of the results are discussed on the way, but I think it is worthwhile collecting the relevant paragraphs (mentioned in the comments below) into a “Discussion” section. The use of the English language is satisfactory but improvements are appropriate/recommended in places (although I have to say that I am not a native speaker).

I found an error in the calculation of the coefficients of variations in Tab. 3 (for annual precipitation). Yield data for 1999, 2001 and 2003 at Ficksburg and 2012 at Marquard are suspect (they stand out in a manner that is not easy to explain). I propose to check again these data and (if data are replaced or changed) redo the analyses, where necessary.

Based on these remarks, I recommend returning the manuscript for major revision.

 

Specific comments.

  1. Abstract: Inappropriate wording in “increasing/decreasing trend” and “The maximum temperature trend increased significantly across all the stations …”. Instead of “increasing/decreasing” trend use “positive/negative trend”. Instead of “The maximum temperature trend increased significantly across all the stations …” write “Maximum temperature increased significantly across all the stations …” Please check throughout the MS.
  2. Abstract, “The variation of the agroclimatic variables was investigated over the growing period (Apr-Oct)”. Replace “(Apr-Oct)” with “(Oct-Apr)” (see also section 2.2., p. 3: “This allows the presentation of the growing period from October to April of the following year as a continuous record”).
  3. Introduction, p. 2: “… and the warming rate has increased at a pace double the average global rate (Scholes et al., 2015; Moeletsi et al., 2011)”. I suggest writing “and the warming rate was twice as high as on the global average”.
  4. Introduction, p. 2, end of the section: “This study therefore investigated the impacts of agroclimatologic variability on maize production in the district of the Setsoto Municipality in the Free State province of South Africa.” Please specify already at this stage the time window (years) considered in this study. In addition, add what is the overarching goal of the work. In view of what written on p. 12, namely “Maize production is said to be economically viable if 3.6 tons ha-1 is produced …; the data from this study show[ed] that maize yield is below this limit. …. The contribution to GDP from farming in the Setsoto municipality is decreasing …” there is scope for a better characterization of the production conditions in the study area and a justification for why it is nevertheless (i.e. in spite of small yields) interesting/important to look at yield variations in this area.
  5. Introduction: As stated in this section, the focus seems to be on “production”. However, looking later on at the results it becomes clear that the analysis refer to “productivity (yield)”. I suggest being more precise when speaking of “production” and “productivity” (choosing the appropriate).
  6. Section 2, Material and methods. Please consider a more generic heading for 2.1, e.g. “Study area” instead of “Overview of the study sites”. Add information about how large is the area cultivated with maize, what is the total production, how much as the total production varied over the years.
  7. Section 2.2: Consider renaming the heading as “Data and data management”. When discussing the maize yield data, please discuss the quality of the data. Based on Fig. 2, it seems that some of the individual data entries (Ficksburg 1999, 2001 and 2003; Marquard 2012) are questionable. Please discuss issues of data quality and check again those yield values.
  8. Section 2.2, p. 3: You state that “missing [values] … were less than 10%”, but say just afterward “Only stations with complete data set and have duration at less 30 years were used for the missing data treatment (table 1)”. What do you mean here by “complete data set”? Without any missing value, or with < 10% of the data as missing? Than you say that stations should have records of > 30 years, but in Tab. 1 Rosendal is indicated as having only 20 years.
  9. Section 2.3, p. 4: Please add reference to the relevant webpage when introducing MAKESENS (I presume: https://en.ilmatieteenlaitos.fi/makesens).
  10. Section 2.3, p. 4: The formulation “The Sen’s slope estimator allows for the significance of the trend to be analyzed” is not completely satisfying. It is true that MAKESENS estimate the statistical significance of a possible trend based on the Mann-Kendall test (MAKESENS manual, ed. 2002). As the name says, the Sen’s slope is a robust estimate of the underlying trend.
  11. Section 2.4, p. 4: Detrending yield records before looking at correlations is a pertinent step. Did you, however, also considered detrending the time series of the agrometeorological indicators?
  12. Tables 2 to 4. Please consider using the same “format” in all tables, i.e. either with stations in the columns and statistics in the rows (Tabs. 2 and 4), or the reverse (Tab. 3). My preference is for a presentation as in Tab. 3 (easier to read). In all table also add N, the sample size of the record (no. of observations) (this can then be omitted from the text, as e.g. in the first line of p. 6, “The data set available for Ficksburg in this study was only for 20 years …, as opposed to …”).
  13. Table 3: the CV for annual precipitation are wrong. For Marquard, SD = 178.2 mm, MEAN = 613.4 mm, and so CV = 29%, not 34%. As growing season (Oct-Apr) precipitation accounts for about 90% of the annual total, the CV for annual precipitation should be close to the CV for growing season precipitation.
  14. 4.1, trends in minimum temperature. According to the results in Tab. 5, almost all significant trends were negative. How, then, do you justify the conclusionthat (p. 6, 6th line from the bottom) “Overall the minimum temperatures increased by 0.035 °C year-1, resulting in an increase of 1.22 °C over the study period of 32 years”?
  15. Discussion of the trends. The last paragraph of p. 6 and the second paragraph of p. 8 should be placed in a “Discussion” section.
  16. 5, Maize yield trends, p. 12. Please consider remark no. 7 on questionable yield values for Ficksburg and Marquard in Fig. 2, as they would affect the significance and magnitude of the trend (which could be, in particular, the case for Ficksburg).
  17. 5, p. 12: The second part of the last paragraph of this section would also better fit to a “Discussion” section. Please also check my remark concerning the need to include a discussion of the production conditions in this area in the “Introduction”.
  18. Sub-sections 3.6.1, "De-trended Maize Yield correlation with rainfall, Tmin and Tmax anomalies”. Again, part of the text would better fit to a section “Discussion”. Perhaps think of removing Fig. 3. As trends are small, the content of this figure is much redundant with the content of Fig. 2, despite of the fact that the former shows anomalies, whereas the latter shows absolute values.
  19. Sub-section 3.6.2, “Maize Yield Relationship with rainfall, minimum and maximum Temperature anomalies”. It is not clear, what the purpose of this piece of work is and how the analysis was carried out. You say at the beginning of this section (p. 16): “monthly minimum, and maximum temperatures as well as the rainfall that showed a significant correlation with maize yield (see table 9 above) were subjected to a regression analysis.” However, in the previous section you were trying to explain anomalies (and therefore use de-trended time series, at least for maize). Here, it seems that you examine whether trends in minimum and maximum temperature and precipitation can explain trends in yield. Yet, this would only make sense if you were considering the original, not the detrended time series. Which variant of the yield data did you use here? Moreover, one should keep in mind a further aspect (mentioned in the “Conclusions”, p. 17: “Yield is not just a product of climatic variables …”), namely the fact that trends in yield can reflect changes in production practices, introduction of new varieties etc. more than shifts in climate. This implies that one would have to filter out all of these effects to be able to assess the impact of trends in climate.
  20. Conclusions, p.17. The subject of the sentence ““The only significant trend observed was for January in Ficksburg, which showed a rainfall increase of 2.34 mm year -1 …”, i.e. “rainfall”, should be mentioned at the beginning: “Concerning rainfall, the only significant trend observed was for January in Ficksburg, namely 2.34 mm year -1. “
  21. Concerning the second part of this same paragraph, “Thus, this study indicates that the rainfall variability is increasing in the study areas, which could be attributed to several global and regional rainfall phenomena“. Could you please mention, which global and regional phenomena are you thinking of, and provide references that discuss how this phenomena affects rainfall in the study area?

 

Author Response

see attached

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Attached

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

This article proposes to investigate the impacts of rainfall, minimum and maximum temperatures on maize yield in the Setsoto municipality of the Free State province of South Africa from 1985 to 2016.  The authors use the Mann Kendall test to calculate trends in the time series of climatic variables and maize yield. Pearson correlations are used to determine the relationship between maize yield and climatic variables.

The manuscript is mostly well written, dealing with an important subject of practical interest. However, some crucial aspects should be reviewed, in my opinion. While there is a good discussion and the conclusions are well written, in my opinion, the results are not robust to warrant such findings. I think that in the present form this manuscript is not suitable for publication because of several relevant aspects, outlined in the following. However, I would like to emphasize that I do think the topic of the manuscript very interesting for the study region. Therefore, I suggest the authors to resubmit the manuscript, advising them to provide effective responses to the issues here evidenced.

The manuscript does not include line numbering, hindering the revision process.

Authors: Line numbering has been including

Major Comments

1)            As shown in table 1, the authors have 9 stations, although they only present the results for 4 of them and in a limited period between 1985-2016. Of the 9 stations, 8 have more than 30 years of data. Some of the weaknesses of this study include (a) the small number of stations and (b) the short time period of the data, especially if trends are calculated. I assume that the data period could not be extended given the scarcity of observations. If so, the authors should argue this issue. However, considering that they have more than 4 stations, why not use them? In addition, I believe that the entire time period of each series should be used in the trend calculations. Finally, the data period should be included in Table 1.

 Authors:  The study area included the weather stations in Clocolan, Marquard, Senekal and Ficksburg, which were selected as the target stations based on their spatial location. Ficksburg and Clocolan are found in the South East and South Western part of Setsoto municipality whereas Senekal is located in North Eastern part of Setsoto while Marquard is in the central part of the municipality. However, availability of weather stations and completeness of data play important roles in the selection of the target stations. If the target stations had missing data, it was necessary to select neighbouring stations. These neighbouring stations were selected based on their availability of data and proximity to the target stations. Table 3.1 shows the target weather stations and neighbouring stations used for the estimation of missing data and their characteristics

2)            The authors describe basic aspects of the Tmin, Tmax and Pr in sections 3.1 and 3.2. These sections can be improved by adding, for example, an area-averaged time series of each variable and/or an average annual cycle and discussing elementary questions of the variability of the variables (do they have preponderant interannual variability? How is the shape of each annual cycle? Seasonality? What are the main climate forcing factors related with climate variability? How the climate forcing factors affect the growing period?)

Our main focus is the growing period which is from october to April.   Annual cycle for rainfall and temperature might not be important for this paper.

 

 

 

3)            Section 3.4 shows weak trends and no homogeneous patterns of change for stations so close, especially for temperature. However, the authors establish significant findings that are not supported by what the tables show. For example, it is not clear to me where this statement comes from Overall the minimum temperatures increased by 0.035 °C year-1, resulting in an increase of 1.22 °C over the study period of 32 years. The authors show decreasing and increasing trends in the study region.

Authors:  The sentence “the minimum temperatures increased by 0.035 °C year-1, resulting in an increase of 1.22 °C over the study period of 32 years .’ has been deleted it was not supposed to be in this section

Then they discuss their results with previous studies (which seems very appropriate to me). My point is that the results are not clear enough to establish the discussion that (again, correctly) the authors propose. I suggest improving the treatment of the results, discussing coincidences and disagreements with previous studies and justifying the possible causes. Just as an example: Why in Clocolan the trends in Tmin are negative and in the rest of the stations mostly positive? Temperature is a variable with smooth spatiotemporal variability. Furthermore, Tmin presents homogeneous patterns of change. In my opinion, it is surprising that there are such different patterns of change at stations only 60 km away. If this were possible, what is the possible physical explanation for these inhomogeneous variations?

Authors:  It is interesting to note that, Tmin spatiotemporal variability distribution can be observed in are just outside the WMO 0km radius used for justification of infilling of data. There are local factor such as vegetation cover, topography, slope and aspect of the area affect the rainfall and temperature distribution of an area

4)            Finally, as stated by the paper objective, the authors propose to investigate the impacts of climate variability on maize yields. From my point of view, making a correlation between the variables and the maize yields is not enough argument to determine the impacts. I suggest expanding the discussion in this regard. What are the impacts of climate variability on maize yields? Perhaps, for example, periods of droughts could be related to declines in yields. I find, again, a very adequate and supported discussion in section 3.6, but weakness in the presentation and analysis of the results themselves.

Authors:  Based on our premilitary result on the yield on drought indices suh as the RDI and SPI there is no correlation  between them. The idea of using de-trending values of the agroclimatic variable allows us to correlate the yield with them  

Minor comments

Abstract

 Define CV

Authors:  The CV has been defined in the abstract

Introduction 

1st paragraph: 

Why the reference Mishra et al. (2014) is in the middle of the first sentence? It refers to a regional study.

Authors: The reference has been deleted

IPCC suggests using the reference IPCC, 2014: Climate Change 2014: Impacts,

Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Part B: Regional Aspects. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Barros, V.R., C.B. Field, D.J. Dokken, M.D. Mastrandrea, K.J. Mach, T.E. Bilir, M. Chatterjee, K.L. Ebi, Y.O. Estrada, R.C. Genova, B. Girma, E.S. Kissel, A.N. Levy, S. MacCracken, P.R. Mastrandrea, and L.L.White (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, pp. 688.

Authors:  The reference has been included

The relationship between temperature and rainfall is in most cases an inverse relationship; thus, the higher the temperature the lower the rainfall ced correctly. o Aguilar et al., 2009 is not listed in the references.

 Authors: The reference has been included

Collier et al (2008) is not listed in the references. Please, check all references.

Authors: The refence has been included

The last paragraph states only the objective. The authors should elaborate on the novel scientific contribution of the work.

Authors:

 

 

Material and Methods

 

The Setsoto Municipality falls under the administrative district of Thabo Mofutsanyane in the Free State province (Figure 1) and has a total area of about 5948.35 km2 (Figure 1)

 Authors:

The missing rainfall, Tmin and Tmax data were less than 10 % which satisfies the world meteorological organization (WMO) criteria for a robust climatic data analysis. 

Authors:

 

 Only stations with complete data set and have duration at less 30 years were used for the missing data treatment (table 1) duration of data availability data period?

Authors: Only stations with complete data set and have duration not less 30 years were used for the missing data treatment

For instance, yield data for Ficksburg (one of the stations used in this study) as only available from 1985-2005 only.

 

 

The authors use the Coefficient of variations and the standard deviation as CV and SD although they never define them in the text.

Authors: Coefficient of variance (CV) and standard deviation were calculated. The CV shows the variability data around the mean of the population

CV= μ/σ

where: σ=standard deviation, μ=mean, the variability of the data is determined with the values of CV which is unitless ranked to percentage. The standard diversion measures the dispersion of dataset as relative to its mean. It is the square root of variance

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors didn't include suggested or any other additional climate variables. The manuscript has a certain value, however, I think it does not meet the criteria to be published in Climate in the current form.

Author Response

Reviewer 1

The authors didn't include suggested or any other additional climate variables. The manuscript has a certain value, however, I think it does not meet the criteria to be published in Climate in the current form

Authors: We are sorry that we were not able to include some additional climate variables in an earlier revision but we have now been able to calculate Palmers Plant Stress Diversity Indices for the 4 selected sites and have analysed these data in three decadal periods. We believe that adding these data have added value to the manuscript and we thank the reviewer.

Reviewer 2 Report

Thanks to the authors for taking into account the suggestions provided with the review of the previous submission.

In many respects the paper has been improved. What remains to be done is:

  • An extensive search for typos. I saw many, but do not have, unfortunately, sufficient time to provide an edited version of the PDF. I trust the authors that they'll carefully scan the MS!
  • A careful formatting of the tables. Some do not fit within the margins, some have heading that are broken and printed on two lines because the columns are not sufficiently wide and/or the fonts are inadequate;
  • A careful check of the figures/tables captions (e.g. the caption of Tab. 10 does not mention what "p" is);
  • A check of the English language.

Author Response

Reviewer 2

An extensive search for typos. I saw many, but do not have, unfortunately, sufficient time to provide an edited version of the PDF. I trust the authors that they'll carefully scan the MS!

The entire manuscript has been edited and all typos eliminated.

A careful formatting of the tables. Some do not fit within the margins, some have heading that are broken and printed on two lines because the columns are not sufficiently wide and/or the fonts are inadequate

The Tables have been reformatted and we hope that they now meet the requirements of the journal.

A careful check of the figures/tables captions (e.g. the caption of Tab. 10 does not mention what "p" is);

All Figure and Table captions have been checked and are now complete and comprehensive.

A check of the English language.

The entire manuscript has been professionally edited by an English first-language speaker.

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors have responded to my suggestions. Many of them have not been taken into account. In my opinion, those suggestions could have helped improve the work.
Anyway, I think the study can be accepted for publication. I suggest carefully reviewing the writing. I have found typos and for example a repeated sentence in the conclusions.

Author Response

The authors have responded to my suggestions. Many of them have not been taken into account. In my opinion, those suggestions could have helped improve the work.
Anyway, I think the study can be accepted for publication. I suggest carefully reviewing the writing. I have found typos and for example a repeated sentence in the conclusions

The comments from the reviewer have now all been considered in this revision and have certainly improved the paper and we thank him/her. The writing has been reviewed, all sentences have been checked for logic and style. The manuscript does now present a coherent, scientific piece of research. 

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