Geoheritage of the Monchegorsk Igneous Layered Paleoproterozoic Intrusion (Kola Peninsula, Arctic Russia): Evaluation and Geotourism Opportunities

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for this interesting read. You can find my comments below:

The abstract is too long, with too many descriptions and details. Please focus only on the main subject of the paper, goal/aim of the paper, applied methods and key results and their significance.

Most of the content in the Introduction section would fit much better in a section entitled Study area (together with geological and geomorphological settings).

You do not mention evaluation at the end of the introduction section even though it is in the title of the paper. Isn’t that one of the aims of your research also?

Line 401 - you wrote: Once the sites were inventoried, they were evaluated… How did you evaluate them? You do not mention any evaluation/assessment methods. There are numerous geoheritage assessment methods for the purpose of geotourism development and you did not use any one of them. Please read the M-GAM method by Tomić N published in numerous papers, or the method by Brilha J. Others could be used as well. The method you used is too simple. Additionally, since the title of the paper mentions evaluation, the methodology section should briefly (one paragraph) mention geosite and geoheritage evaluation and the most significant methods today.

You mention geotourism evaluation, however there are not enough indicators related to tourism and other key elements necessary for tourists. Please look at other methods to see what exactly I mean. There are much more complex methods with lot of different indicators related to tourism and tourists. Natural, cultural, and historical values are a good start, but evaluation methods have significantly evolved. Your approach is similar to that used in 2005 by J.P. Pralong and others shortly before and after him. You also need to explain in more detail how did you carry out the assessment process and how did you rate the values for each site. Was it the subjective opinion of the authors? Was it something else?

Figure 5 - the word cultural is misspelled.

Please give some proposals for site interpretation.

In the results section you just list and describe each site. At some places it looks like reading a tourist brochure. How do these sites compare to one another, are some more attractive than others? If so, why? What kind of tourist infrastructure do they possess? If none, please suggest what should be the priorities for the future. What could be the main attractions at each site? You mention some of these issues in the discussion section but briefly. A much more detailed and analytical approach is necessary.

Overall, the paper requires quite a major revision and plenty of rewriting in my opinion before it can be published.

 Finally，I found a paper  with a very similar title in the journal Geoheritage written by you. The study area is different but there are some identical sentences in both abstracts. Can you describe the differences between the two manuscripts?

The link to that similar manuscript is as follows：

https://0-link-springer-com.brum.beds.ac.uk/article/10.1007/s12371-021-00592-6?fbclid=IwAR1x_nk5-c93jfer927kb9O32Jxqly_MM4HadZgFipSHuphEm9N8ftjLNGA

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, We sincerely thank you for reading our manuscript and the suggestions you sent.
Below we will address the suggestions indicated step by step:
1) The abstract has been shortened and the objectives and results more emphasized.
2) Some information from the Introduction paragraph was moved to the Study Area section.
3. evaluation information was added to the introduction.
4) In the paragraph about the methodology of sites evaluation MGAM method of evaluation was added and the work of Brihl and Sidorov was also cited. The numerical data obtained using these methods are discussed below. Let me also point out that the area in question is currently underdeveloped for tourism. All existing infrastructure there is either from the end of the 20th century (currently in a residual state) or is newer but rather locally oriented. The Monchegorsk region is basically not written about in guidebooks. The authors want to change it, as they see many important values in this area. Our text is the first study of this kind concerning this area. We hope that this will open a discussion on environmental protection and exposure of significant aspects of heritage in the Monchegorsk region. Unfortunately, in many places it was impossible to strictly follow the principles proposed by the MGAM method, there is no data on the number of tourists, their knowledge of the area, but this, in our opinion, does not exclude the potential of this place. To make our description more factual we asked for the opinion of the staff of the Lapland Reserve, which is located in the vicinity of the site in question. One of the employees of this facility was also included as a co-author.
We have corrected errors in fig. 5. and fig. 4.
6) In the results section the discussed sites were described practically anew with more accurate information included. 
7. yes, we wrote an article in Geoheritage about Khibina alkaline intrusion, but this is a completely different site. Khibina is an intrusion with an age of about 350Ma related to the impact of a heat spot in the Kola Peninsula region, while the Monchegorsk region is an intrusion with an age of 2.5Ga (i.e. more than 7 times older) which is made of alkaline and ultramafic rocks related to the breakup of Kenorland. The only feature of these two massifs is that they are in the NF Fennoscandia (Kola Peninsula) region. We have cited this work as well, but rest assured, this is a different topic and a different place - no conflict of interest here.

We sincerely thank you for the extensive comments you have sent and thank you for your efforts to evaluate our work.
A revised version will be uploaded soon, and then we hope that this text will bring more positive judgment.
Authors.

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

Your text requires a lot of work to improve English: grammar and spelling. Consider extending the references to European sources, which include the methodology of the valorization of geotourist potential. Many more comments can be found in the attached document in * .pdf.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Szanowny Recenzencie, Dziękuję za przeczytanie mojego tekstu.
Poprawiłem w nim wszystkie błędy ujawnione w załączonym dokumencie. Tekst został zredagowany, sprawdzono ortografię i gramatykę, dodano źródła europejskie, w tym prace Reynarda, Brihle, Tomicia i innych. 
Dziękujemy za twoją opinię.
Wkrótce tekst zostanie dołączony do systemu, mam nadzieję, że w nowej formie będzie lepiej.
Autorski.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

You have done most of the improvements. However, there are still some mistakes.

Lines 359-360 you wrote: "In addition, we were used a Geosite 359
Assessment Model (M-GAM) created by Vujičić et al"

First of all, the sentence is not written grammatically correct. Secondly, you did not use the M-GAM method for your paper (nothing is evaluated by using this method). And thirdly, the M-GAM model was not created by Vujičić as you cited. It was created by Tomić and Božić, 2014. Vujičić et al. created the GAM method, which was the basis for M-GAM.

Lines 391-392 You wrote:

The evaluation values of these areas according to the evaluation method proposed by Vujičić [68](modified for this text) are listed below in Table 1. 

The indicators from table 1 are not from Vujičić et al, only the numerical values (the scale 0; 0.25; 0.50, 0.75, 1). Since you wrote under the table that these values characterize the importance of a value, then the correct citation would be again Tomić and Božić, 2014 (IJER) or Tomić 2011 (GP) where the importance factor was introduced for the first time. Please make this more clear in the paper.

Finally, the new parts of the text written in red require language editing. There are more mistakes then the one I mentioned above.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,
I have corrected line 359 from M_GAM to GAM and now the Vujičić quote is fine, as you yourself wrote. I read both works and tried to evaluate the values according to these standards, of course, it is not exactly the same, but this is due to the specificity of the area where there is no record of visitors and you can not contrast the Main Values versus Additional Values to put it later on the chart. So there is only a table. Let me prose leave it as I described.
In line 391 I corrected the citation to Tomić and Božić, 2014 as you wanted.
You did not include the pdf file with the underlined text, so I checked the whole article again.
I hope that now everything will satisfy you.
Milosz Huber

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Author,

the corresponding language is English. Why have you used another one, Polish, additionally with mistakes???
I have noticed your correction, but I still insist to ask a native speaker to look it through

Author Response

Dear reviewer, the submitted manuscript is 31 pages long, please do not use hyperbole in your reviews.
If you see an error, please point it out specifically. 
This text has been checked again and now everything should be fine, however "feci, quod potui, faciant meliora potentes" according to the Roman maxim if you still see errors please point specifically.