A Sentinel-2 Dataset for Uganda
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Overall
The manuscript provides a Data Description of a new, analysis-ready Sentinel-2 data set for Uganda, which would appeal to a wide community of applied Earth observation scientists and practitioners, particularly to the latter category and those working on projects in Uganda, who may not have the expertise, resources, and/or capacity to process large volumes of Sentinel-2 data for applied analysis. The manuscript describes well how this new dataset is produced with free, open-source tools and could also serve as a basis for the development of similar analysis-ready datasets for other countries and applications. However, I found the manuscript falling short on information about the prospective applications of the data through, for example, case studies and suggest the manuscript is returned to the authors for major revision to 1) improve the structure of the presentation of the analysis-ready data set, 2) include some case studies showcasing what can be done with this data and what cannot be done, commenting on its utility and reliability, and 3) add an overview of the plans to maintain the continuity of the level 2 and level 3 analysis-ready dataset produced here beyond the end of 2020. Additional minor comments and suggested revisions are included below. There is missing information such as URLs related to accessing the data and it would be necessary to provide these as well.
Minor comments and suggested revisions
L5 – correct typo in ‘reflectant’
L7 – add comma after ‘year’
L9 – add full stop at the end of sentence
L13 – add comma to separate thousands in numerals here and throughout the manuscript
L15 – add ‘in’ before ‘year 2050’ and before ‘year 2100’
L16 – delete comma after ‘services’
L17 – add comma after ‘fuel’; replace ‘stress’ with ‘stresses’
L21 – add comma after [9]
L22 – add comma after ‘flows’
L31 – delete ‘that were’ and add comma after ‘2017’
L32 – delete hyphen in ‘5-days’
L35 – add comma after ’20 m’
L36 – add commas after ‘land cover’ and after ‘phenology’
L38 – replace ‘is’ with ‘are’
L42 – delete apostrophe in ‘PC’s’
L45 – add comma after ‘describe’; insert hyphen between ‘analysis’ and ‘ready’
L53 – add ‘s’ at the end of ‘cover’
L54 – add ‘s’ at the end of ‘follow’
L57 – add ‘s’ at the end of ‘indicate’
L58 – add ‘s’ at the end of ‘Character’
Figure 1 caption – suggest revising the figure to show Uganda within Africa and revising the caption for example as “Map of Sentinel-2 tiles covering Uganda, Africa. Background image: Uganda political boundaries and water bodies.”
L62 – replace ‘was’ with ‘were used’; delete comma after ‘Africa’
L63 – delete comma and ‘included’ after ‘2016’; replace ‘data set’ with ‘the land cover map’
L65 – replace ‘during’ with ‘in’
L66 – add ‘set’ after ‘data’; append ‘presented here’ at the end of the sentence
L68 – replace ‘during the’ with ‘for’
L69 – define the FORCE acronym and include reference on first occurrence, which seems to be here
L75-76 – FORCE doesn’t need to be defined here, if already defined above (see L69 comment)
L79 – there is a question mark in the reference cited here, is this due to a pending check on this?
L80 – I think the proper capitalization is GitHub. Please confirm.
L84-85 – sentence needs to be revised; delete blank character space before ‘%’ sign; add ‘capacity’ at the end of the sentence.
L86 – is the section title meant to refer to ‘Radiometric, atmospheric, and topographic correction?’
L89 – check in-text citation style
L100-101 – add ‘are available’ after ‘details’; insert ‘there’ before ‘were’, and use comma for numerals as suggested above;
L103 – Is the subsection title intending to refer to ‘Geometric correction’?
L104 – replace ‘use’ with ‘uses’
L106-107 – commas to separate thousands in numerals
L112 – insert comma after ‘Hence’, move ‘were’ after ‘bands’
L114 – delete ‘e’ at the end of ‘Sky’
L115 – move ‘were’ before ‘calculated’
L114-117 – are there any other uses/applications of CSO that could be mentioned here?
L123 – delete ‘was’, insert ‘were’ before ‘produced’, delete comma after ‘produced’
L127 – change ‘-vise’ to ‘-wise’; add comma after ‘observations’
L132 – delete ‘s’ at the end of ‘concerns’
L133 – add comma after ‘snow’
L138 – would be good to define NIR, although the readership is most likely familiar with this abbreviation; add comma after ‘RED’
L139 – add comma after ‘2019’; delete ‘was’
L140-141 – delete definitive article ‘the’ before ‘average’, ‘50’, ‘95’, etc. and delete blank character space before ‘%” sign; insert ‘were’ before ‘calculated’
L142 – insert comma after ‘Sep’, move ‘were’ before ‘calculated’ on the next line
L147 – replace ‘is it’ with ‘these are’
L148 – replace ‘is’ with ‘are’, use correct and consistent notation for GeoTIFF files as here
L150 – replace ‘is’ with ‘are’; insert ‘of’ after ‘factor’
L151 – delete ‘and contain 10 bands’ as this was said already above
L154 – replace ‘are’ with ‘is’
Table 1 – move table after first reference to it, it is not referred to here; edit caption – add comma after ‘(MSI)’, after ‘band’, and after ‘wavelengths’, delete ‘corresponding’
Table 2 – move table after first reference to it, it is not referred to here; use consistent capitalization for GeoTIFF
L155 – Table 3 should appear here after first reference on L154
L156 – replace ‘where’ with ‘and’
L162 – check Table 1 is not referred to previously and if this is the first reference, then table numbers should be revised to reflect this
L165 – insert comma after ‘year’
L166 – replace ‘as exemplified’ with ‘as shown’
L168 – replace ‘is’ with ‘of’
L170 – if introducing an acronym for CSO, suggest doing this on first occurrence in the methods section
L171 – add comma after ‘spatially’
L172/Figure 6 – explain the stripes in the images
L174 – URL needs to be provided prior to publication
Table 3 – caption needs a blank character space before ‘BOA’ and if URLs are not suitable for inclusion in Table 3, these would have to be provided in an Appendix or similar
L178 – insert comma after ‘hence’
L179 – hyphenate ‘analysis ready’
L182 – I think Landsat is commonly accepted and does not have to be all caps
L183 – delete ‘can such’, insert ‘can’ before ‘be’, replace ‘done by anyone’ with ‘carried out by users’
L185 – suggest replacing ‘PC’ with ‘computing’
L190-191 – Delete ‘Providing’ and replace ‘this’ with ‘These’; suggest adding to the end of this sentence ‘and potentially increase the use and applications of Sentinel data’
L192 – Landsat
L194 – replace ‘show’ with ‘shows’
L195 – insert ‘of’ after ‘example’
L196 – It would be good if the authors can elaborate on some case studies
L199 – replace ‘can it’ with ‘it can’; replace ‘get’ with ‘obtain’
L200 – replace ‘can there’ with ‘there can’
L202 – insert comma after ‘quantiles’ and after ‘hence’
L204-205 – consider deleting this sentence, it states the obvious and does not seem to add value to the results and conclusions presented. What would be of value, however, are some comments on the plans to update this analysis-ready Sentinel data set beyond the end of 2020.
L210-211 – Information is still missing here on data access.
L216 – add comma after ‘BAP’
L221 – replace ‘mean’ with ‘means’
Author Response
See attached file.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Very good work for Uganda but need improvement in presentations of the data. My specific comments are below:
How the cloud cover will be addressed ?
How different topographic geometry will be addressed not discussed properly?
Land use/land cover specially water, forest and urban set up should be covered in detail across Uganda.
Minor grammatical errors need to be taken care of.
Author Response
See attached file.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Overall Comments
Overall request point 1) was intended, as stated, to improve the structure of the presentation of the analysis-ready data set, not the structure of the manuscript. This is something requested by Reviewer 2 as well, i.e. improve the presentation of the data. One way of improving this would be to add a diagram/flowchart describing the processing involved, inputs and outputs with their full characteristics, especially because the authors state no intention to maintain the continuity of the dataset and because the real value and contribution of this paper then seems to be to report on how this analysis-ready dataset can be re-produced for other countries/regions and/or re-created over Uganda for future time periods. This would really improve the paper and make it the 'go-to' reference for future work.
Similarly, point 2) suggested to "include some case studies showcasing what can be done with this data and what cannot be done, commenting on its utility and reliability". This was in reference to case studies making use of the dataset generated in this paper in one or more of the applications mentioned in references 5-14. This amendment was suggested more strategically with a view toward improving the overall contribution of the paper (as above for item 1) and subsequent work. Perhaps in addition to the potential applications of the datasets, the authors could add that detailed application case studies are beyond the scope of the current manuscript and foreseen as part of future work. Again, the intention being to strenghten the manuscript and make it the 'go-to' reference for this work.
L202-208: Correct typos, English grammar, etc.
L216-221: Check sentences for English grammar and structure
L225: No apostrophe needed in Terabytes
Point 3) revisions ok.
Minor comments
All OK. I trust the outstanding or newly-introduced English grammar mistakes, typos, etc. will be picked up by the journal's proofreading team.
Author Response
Thanks for your review. See attached file.
Regards
/Jonas Ardö
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper has been substantially improved and the author incorporated all the previous comments.
Author Response
Thanks for your effort.
>The paper has been substantially improved and the author incorporated all the >previous comments.
As I understand do not reviewer 2 ask for additional changes
Regards
/Jonas Ardö
