the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Applied Machine Learning for Flood Susceptibility Mapping in the Loukkos Basin (Northern Morocco): Validation Using the February 2026 Ksar El Kebir Flood Event
Abstract. Flooding is a recurrent hazard in northern Morocco, where low-lying alluvial plains, strong river–floodplain connectivity, and winter storm sequences combine to produce damaging floods. This study develops an event-informed flood susceptibility assessment for the Loukkos Basin (Ksar El Kebir–Larache floodplain) by integrating satellite-derived flood evidence with geomorphometric and hydro-climatic predictors in a machine-learning framework. A binary flood inventory was derived from Sentinel-1 SAR change detection by contrasting pre-flood (October–November 2022) and flood-phase acquisitions (December 2022), and was validated using Sentinel-2 optical observations and field checks. Nine conditioning factors (elevation, slope, aspect, curvature, distance to rivers, drainage density, TWI, TPI, and CHIRPS-based rainfall) were compiled and standardized on a 10 m grid. Model training used a balanced sample of 220 points (110 flooded/110 non flooded) and was evaluated with a repeated hold-out strategy (10 iterations; 80 % training/20 % testing) using accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score. Both Random Forest (RF) and Multilayer Perceptron (MLP) produced coherent susceptibility patterns, with the highest classes concentrated along the Loukkos river corridor and downstream floodplains. Mean test performance indicates strong generalization, with MLP outperforming RF (accuracy ≈ 0.909 vs. 0.864; F1 ≈ 0.909 vs. 0.870). Jackknife sensitivity analysis identifies elevation as the leading control for both models, while RF emphasizes terrain metrics (slope, drainage density) and MLP assigns a more balanced importance to topography and hydrological drivers (TPI, rainfall, distance to channel). Notably, flooded areas observed during the January–February 2026 flood episode (Sentinel imagery dated 14 February 2026) largely coincide with zones mapped as high susceptibility, providing an independent, qualitative post-study consistency check. The resulting maps offer a practical inspection tool to support land-use planning and prioritization of mitigation actions across the most flood-prone sectors of the Loukkos Basin.
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RC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2026-1001', Anonymous Referee #1, 10 Aug 2026
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CC1: 'Reply on RC1', Hamza Akka, 10 Aug 2026
Dear Referee 1,
Thank you for the review and for the comments provided on our manuscript.
Before preparing our detailed point-by-point response, we would like to clarify one issue regarding the referee report. The submitted report appears to contain several sections referring to studies that are unrelated to our manuscript. In particular, some comments discuss sediment-yield prediction, landslide susceptibility, CO₂ forecasting, and other datasets and methodologies that are not part of our study.
Our manuscript concerns flood susceptibility mapping in the Loukkos Basin using Sentinel-1-derived flood information, nine conditioning factors, and Random Forest and Multilayer Perceptron models. We clearly recognize the section of the report that specifically addresses these elements, including the comments concerning the 220 training/testing samples, the 80/20 repeated hold-out strategy, spatial validation, the 2022 flood inventory, CHIRPS rainfall, and the February 2026 flood event.
We would therefore be grateful if the Editor could confirm whether only this Loukkos-specific section should be considered as the referee comments applicable to our manuscript, or whether a corrected version of the referee report will be provided.
Once this is clarified, we will be pleased to address all relevant comments carefully and provide a detailed response and revised manuscript.
Kind regards
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2026-1001-CC1 -
AC1: 'Reply on RC2', Oussama Mekkaoui, 05 Oct 2026
We sincerely thank the reviewer for the positive assessment of the manuscript, particularly regarding its structure, methodological clarity, practical relevance, and contribution to flood preparedness in Morocco. We also appreciate the detailed comments concerning event representativeness, rainfall characterization, omitted flood-driving factors, compound flooding, and interpretation of model-variable importance. These comments helped us clarify the scope of the study and avoid over-interpreting the susceptibility maps as a complete representation of flood hazard or risk. Accordingly, the revised manuscript now more clearly distinguishes flood susceptibility from flood risk and vulnerability and explicitly states the processes that are and are not represented by the present modelling framework.
Methods
Reviewer comment 1:
A single event may represent only a particular hydrological situation and may not characterize the overall flood situation of the Loukkos Basin. Loudyi et al. (2022) are suggested as an example of a broader event-severity assessment based on rainfall-station information.Response:
We agree with the reviewer. The flood inventory used to train the models is derived from the December 2022 event and therefore represents an event-informed inventory rather than a multi-event flood climatology. We have revised the manuscript to make this distinction explicit.We have also added Loudyi et al. (2022), who describe the use of rainfall-station data to characterize event severity across nine Moroccan catchments, including the Loukkos Basin. This provides an important broader context and illustrates the value of multi-event and hydrometeorological observations for comprehensive flood-risk assessment.
Because reconstructing additional historical flood inventories and retraining the models would constitute a substantially different modelling experiment, this was not introduced retrospectively into the present analysis. Instead, we now clearly identify the single-event training inventory as a limitation and emphasize that future work should integrate multiple flood events and seasons.
Importantly, we also clarified the role of the January–February 2026 flood. It was not used to train the models and is no longer described as a formal independent validation event. It is now presented strictly as a qualitative post-study consistency check of whether the mapped high-susceptibility areas correspond to persistent flood-prone sectors.
Reviewer comment 2:
Reliance on a single event may underestimate climate-change pressures, and longer climate-related time series would better capture temporal changes and event-to-event variability.Response:
We agree. The present study was not designed to quantify climate-change effects or temporal changes in flood frequency or magnitude. We have therefore revised the manuscript to prevent such an interpretation.The CHIRPS layer used in the model is now explicitly described as a spatial background precipitation proxy derived from the 2020–2024 period. It represents the spatial contrast in rainfall across the basin but does not reproduce the intensity, duration, antecedent wetness, or temporal sequencing of the rainfall responsible for individual flood events.
We have removed wording suggesting that this variable itself can be used to analyze climate change. The revised Discussion and Limitations sections now state that assessment of changing flood forcing would require substantially longer homogeneous rainfall records, event-scale precipitation indices, gauge observations where available, and, for climate-change applications, appropriate climate-model projections.
Reviewer comment 3:
The inundated areas in 2026 may overlap with the susceptibility map even though the flood-generating conditions differed, particularly because the 2026 event involved compound effects related to tidal conditions.Response:
We agree with this important distinction. Spatial overlap alone cannot demonstrate that the models reproduce the processes responsible for the 2026 event.The revised manuscript therefore no longer refers to the 2026 episode as a formal validation of the model. Instead, we describe it as a qualitative post-study consistency check. The overlap indicates that the models identify persistent low-lying and hydraulically connected sectors where floodwater preferentially spreads. It does not demonstrate that the models reproduce the particular combination of rainfall, antecedent saturation, reservoir operation, river discharge, tidal conditions, or coastal forcing associated with the 2026 event.
This distinction has been introduced consistently in the title, Study Area, Discussion, Limitations, and Conclusion.
Factors influencing flooding
Reviewer comment 1:
Vegetation cover, land use and infrastructure such as dams/reservoirs should be treated as flood-driving factors.Response:
We agree that these factors can significantly influence flood generation, propagation, and impacts. In particular, land-cover changes can modify runoff and infiltration, vegetation can influence both hydrological response and SAR flood detection, and reservoir operations can substantially modify downstream hydrographs.However, vegetation/land cover, engineered drainage, and dam/reservoir operation were not included as independent predictors in the original nine-factor model. Adding them retrospectively would require rebuilding the predictor dataset, retraining both models, repeating the validation procedure, and recalculating the Jackknife analysis. Rather than implying that these processes were represented when they were not, we have clarified the model scope explicitly.
The revised Methods section now states that these variables were not included as independent conditioning factors. Their relevance is discussed in the Study Area and Discussion, and their omission is explicitly identified as a limitation and as a priority for future model development. We have consequently defined the present outputs more precisely as geomorphometric–hydroclimatic flood-susceptibility maps rather than complete process-based flood-hazard or flood-risk maps.
Reviewer comment 2:
Interactions among river discharge, coastal water levels and nearshore conditions should be considered, particularly in downstream areas.Response:
We agree. The lower Loukkos is an estuarine environment, and flood severity can be affected by the interaction between high fluvial discharge and unfavorable downstream coastal boundary conditions.We have addressed this point in two ways. First, the scope of the modelling is now defined earlier in the Methods section, where tidal/coastal boundary conditions are explicitly identified as processes not included among the nine predictors. Second, the compound-flooding discussion has been shortened and reframed as an explanation of model limitations rather than as an additional process represented by the susceptibility maps.
The revised text makes clear that the model can identify the persistent spatial predisposition of the low-lying estuarine floodplain, whereas event-scale amplification associated with tides, coastal water levels, waves, reservoir releases, or their temporal coincidence requires coupled hydrological/hydrodynamic modelling.
Reviewer comment 3:
Why were daily precipitation data aggregated into monthly totals and then summed over five years when floods in the Loukkos Basin can be driven by intense daily rainfall?Response:
We thank the reviewer for highlighting this point. We agree that the original wording could imply that the five-year cumulative rainfall layer represents the triggering rainfall of individual floods, which was not its intended purpose.The rainfall variable was used as a spatial conditioning variable to describe the persistent geographical contrast in precipitation across the basin. It does not describe the intensity or temporal organization of the rainfall responsible for the December 2022 flood.
We have therefore rewritten this subsection to explicitly distinguish spatial rainfall susceptibility from event-scale rainfall forcing. The revised text acknowledges that rapid flood responses, particularly in tributaries and upstream sectors, may depend strongly on short-duration rainfall intensity, multi-day accumulations, antecedent wetness, and storm sequencing. Such applications would require daily or sub-daily rainfall extremes, antecedent-precipitation indices, and preferably gauge-adjusted data. The present CHIRPS layer should therefore not be interpreted as an event-trigger variable or a climate-change indicator.
Results
Reviewer comment 1:
A more convincing discussion is needed concerning differences in the ranking of flood drivers between the two models and their implications for decision-makers.Response:
We agree and have substantially strengthened this interpretation.The revised Discussion now emphasizes that Jackknife importance values quantify the predictive contribution of a variable within each fitted model; they should not be interpreted as direct percentages of physical causation or as universally transferable rankings.
RF concentrates much of its predictive sensitivity in elevation, slope, and drainage density, whereas MLP distributes predictive information more broadly among elevation, TPI, rainfall, and distance to the channel. This difference is consistent with the different learning structures of the two algorithms and with overlapping information among correlated terrain variables.
More importantly for management, we now emphasize the factors that are robust across both models. Low elevation/low relief and hydraulic connectivity to the river network consistently characterize the main susceptibility hotspots. These common signals can support floodplain zoning, river-corridor setbacks, infrastructure screening, and prioritization of detailed hydraulic investigations. Model-specific secondary factors are interpreted more cautiously: for example, rainfall sensitivity reinforces the importance of event monitoring and early warning but should not be interpreted as a fixed causal ranking applicable to every flood event.
Discussion
Reviewer comment 1:
Vegetation should be treated more clearly, and the discussion of rainfall appears inconsistent with the five-year cumulative rainfall variable used in the Methods.Response:
We agree. Vegetation/land cover is now explicitly identified in the Methods as an omitted independent predictor rather than being discussed later without clarification of its modelling status. Its additional influence on SAR backscatter and flood-inventory uncertainty is retained in the Limitations section.We have also revised the rainfall discussion so that it no longer implies that the five-year cumulative CHIRPS layer captures event intensity. The Discussion now distinguishes the spatial rainfall background represented by the model from short-duration rainfall intensity, antecedent wetness, and storm sequencing, which are event-dependent processes not resolved by the present rainfall predictor.
Reviewer comment 2:
The compound-flooding discussion is disconnected because the issue is not sufficiently introduced in the Introduction, influencing factors or Methods.Response:
We agree. We have therefore reorganized this part of the manuscript rather than presenting compound flooding as a new interpretation appearing only late in the Discussion.The estuarine setting and possible tidal modulation remain briefly introduced in the Study Area. More importantly, the Methods section now explicitly states that tidal/coastal boundary conditions and reservoir operations were not included as model predictors. The Discussion has then been shortened to explain the implications of this omission.
The revised manuscript therefore distinguishes clearly between: (1) the persistent spatial susceptibility identified by the ML models and (2) event-specific compound forcing, which can modify flood magnitude, duration and severity but requires additional hydrological and coastal data and coupled modelling.
We thank the reviewer for this suggestion, which has substantially improved the consistency between the scope of the Methods and the interpretation presented in the Discussion.
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EC2: 'Reply on AC1', Shasha Han, 22 Oct 2026
Dear Mekkaoui et al.,
These are the responses to Referee 2. Could you please reply in the correct thread? Many thanks!
Shasha Han
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2026-1001-EC2
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EC2: 'Reply on AC1', Shasha Han, 22 Oct 2026
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EC1: 'Reply on CC1', Shasha Han, 22 Oct 2026
Dear Mekkaoui et al.,
Thank you for letting us know. It appears that the referee report may be a combination of reviews for several manuscripts. I have asked the reviewer to provide an updated referee report.
Best regards,
Shasha HanCitation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2026-1001-EC1
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AC1: 'Reply on RC2', Oussama Mekkaoui, 05 Oct 2026
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AC2: 'Reply on RC1', Oussama Mekkaoui, 05 Oct 2026
We sincerely thank the reviewer for the careful and constructive evaluation of our manuscript. We fully acknowledge the methodological concerns raised and agree that the manuscript would benefit from a clearer presentation of the scope of the study, a more rigorous description of the data-processing and modelling procedures, and a more cautious interpretation of the model outputs.
We also agree that the novelty of the study does not lie in the RF and MLP algorithms themselves, which are well-established methods, but rather in their application to the Loukkos Basin using a Sentinel-1-derived flood inventory and a set of geomorphometric and hydro-climatic conditioning factors. We will revise the manuscript accordingly and avoid any wording that could suggest algorithmic novelty.
We are fully open to implementing the methodological corrections suggested by the reviewer. In particular, we will revise the treatment of the February 2026 flood so that it is either quantitatively evaluated using an independent flood extent and appropriate spatial-performance metrics or, if such quantitative validation cannot be established robustly, clearly presented only as a qualitative comparison. The title and related statements throughout the manuscript will be modified accordingly.
We will also substantially improve the documentation of the 2022 Sentinel-1 flood inventory by providing the acquisition dates, orbit information, preprocessing workflow, thresholding procedure, filtering and terrain-correction steps, permanent-water treatment, and the available information on inventory validation. Similarly, the RF and MLP implementation details and model hyperparameters will be reported in sufficient detail to ensure methodological reproducibility.
We agree with the reviewer that the use of random repeated hold-out validation may not completely account for spatial autocorrelation among the flood samples. We are therefore open to implementing the suggested spatially independent validation procedure, including spatial block cross-validation, in order to provide a more rigorous assessment of model transferability. We will also report the variability of model performance across the repeated evaluations, including the mean, standard deviation and confidence intervals, rather than relying only on average performance values.
The reviewer’s comment concerning the CHIRPS rainfall dataset is also well taken. We will clarify that the 2020–2024 cumulative rainfall layer represents a broad spatial rainfall background rather than event-specific rainfall associated with either the 2022 or 2026 floods, and that resampling to a 10 m grid was performed only for spatial alignment and does not increase the intrinsic resolution of the original rainfall data.
Finally, we agree that the outputs of models trained using a balanced flooded/non-flooded sample should be interpreted as relative flood-susceptibility scores rather than calibrated flood probabilities. The terminology and interpretation will therefore be revised consistently throughout the manuscript.
To ensure that all of these methodological aspects are documented in a complete and transparent manner without overloading the main manuscript, we will also prepare a Supplementary Information file. This supplementary material will compile the detailed Sentinel-1 acquisition and preprocessing information, thresholding and masking procedures, model configurations and hyperparameters, validation strategy, repeated-run statistics, spatial-validation details where applicable, rainfall-data characteristics, and any additional methodological information requested by the reviewer. This will allow the revised manuscript to remain concise while providing the level of technical detail necessary for full reproducibility and for directly addressing the reviewer’s requests.
Overall, we greatly appreciate these comments and consider them highly useful for strengthening the scientific robustness, transparency and reproducibility of the study. We are willing to incorporate the suggested corrections as closely as possible to the reviewer’s recommendations and to revise both the manuscript and the accompanying Supplementary Information accordingly.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2026-1001-AC2
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CC1: 'Reply on RC1', Hamza Akka, 10 Aug 2026
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RC2: 'Comment on egusphere-2026-1001', Anonymous Referee #2, 24 Aug 2026
Dear authors,
Thanks for your effort on such nice work. Please find my comments below:
General comments
In general, the article is well-structured and clear, which helps the reader follow the article flow easily. It also makes a novel contribution to flood management and preparedness by proposing a method for flood risk assessment that uses advanced techniques, such as machine learning, to produce flood maps with identified flood risk factors in Morocco, a challenge in this country. There is also a practical need to promote scientific research in risk management. Therefore, the risk maps generated by the model can be used to enhance stakeholders' and affected communities' understanding of flood risk. The research provides meaningful recommendations for flood management in the Loukkos River basin.
Methods:
The method is well presented, with clear flow, steps, and explanation. This is one of the cases of downscaling research on flood management at the basin scale.
In my view, for flood risk assessment, even with post-event validation that supports the general result, a single event may reflect only a specific case at a given time and not capture the overall flood situation in a place like the Loukkos River basin. Other references can be used to enrich the data for assessment; for example, Loudyi et al. (2022) reported that event severity is calculated using rainfall station data from each of the nine catchments, including Loukkos.
Additionally, relying on a single event might underestimate the pressures of climate change, an emerging challenge that calls for climate-related time series that capture changes over time and variation across events to manage natural hazards effectively. The authors used post-event data from 2026 for validation, but I think the inundation areas could overlap even though the flood conditions were different, as it was rather a compounding flood event due to the impacts of the tidal scheme; therefore, the drivers of flooding were different as well. This point is crucial for flood management.
Factors influencing flooding
The research will be more convincing if the authors treat vegetation cover (not included in the Exposition), land use, and infrastructure (such as dams/reservoirs) as driving factors in their flood risk analysis. The research may need to address/discuss interactions among fluvial discharge, coastal waters, and nearshore conditions that may be associated with compound flooding susceptibility in downstream areas, as it is also mentioned in the Study Area part (line 164, page 4) and some other relevant articles.
Regarding rainfall, could you please explain why you treat it as (lines 267 – 268, page 8) “…Daily precipitation data were aggregated into monthly totals and then summed to obtain cumulative rainfall over the five-year period…” while, in my understanding, the Loukkos River basin mainly faces flash floods due to daily intensive rainfall.
Result:
Even though the flood map results from both models classify the study area into four susceptibility categories: low (0–0.25), medium (0.25–0.5), high (0.5–0.75), and very high (0.75–1), I still expect a more convincing discussion/argument on the differences in the ranking of roles of the flood drivers from the two models. I think it is important for decision-makers and affected communities to understand the risk factors to prioritize and allocate resources for risk management, or to avoid flood risks through safer master planning or integrated planning for the whole basin.
Dicussion
In my view, aside from discussing your results, some parts of this section provide additional explanation of what the methods do not address/include and what the flood susceptibility maps have not shown, which are really useful and should be on the maps/results. They include:
- Vegetation coverage: as mentioned earlier, I think it should be treated as a separate influencing factor in the model.
- Rainfall ‘Line 458 – 463’: indicating the strong role of rainfall in triggering floods, and it may help represent event intensity. This confuses me as to why, in your method, you still treat the rainfall as it is in lines 267 – 268, page 8, as ‘Daily precipitation data were aggregated into monthly totals and then summed to obtain cumulative rainfall over the five-year period’. I am concerned about this because, in my understanding, flash flood susceptibility in the Loukkos River is emerging.
- From line 504, page 16 – line 529, page 17 and lines 505 – 518, page 18: these parts discuss/explain compound susceptibility to flooding in coastal areas. This is also what I expected to see on your maps after reading some references about flood management in the Lokkous River basin, but unfortunately it is not. Therefore, this part is quite disconnected because the issue is not mentioned in the introduction, influencing factors, or method. It would be more concise if you briefly introduced it and explained in your methods or factors sections why you do not cover or address it in your research, along with the limitations.
Thank you and best regards,
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2026-1001-RC2 -
AC1: 'Reply on RC2', Oussama Mekkaoui, 05 Oct 2026
We sincerely thank the reviewer for the positive assessment of the manuscript, particularly regarding its structure, methodological clarity, practical relevance, and contribution to flood preparedness in Morocco. We also appreciate the detailed comments concerning event representativeness, rainfall characterization, omitted flood-driving factors, compound flooding, and interpretation of model-variable importance. These comments helped us clarify the scope of the study and avoid over-interpreting the susceptibility maps as a complete representation of flood hazard or risk. Accordingly, the revised manuscript now more clearly distinguishes flood susceptibility from flood risk and vulnerability and explicitly states the processes that are and are not represented by the present modelling framework.
Methods
Reviewer comment 1:
A single event may represent only a particular hydrological situation and may not characterize the overall flood situation of the Loukkos Basin. Loudyi et al. (2022) are suggested as an example of a broader event-severity assessment based on rainfall-station information.Response:
We agree with the reviewer. The flood inventory used to train the models is derived from the December 2022 event and therefore represents an event-informed inventory rather than a multi-event flood climatology. We have revised the manuscript to make this distinction explicit.We have also added Loudyi et al. (2022), who describe the use of rainfall-station data to characterize event severity across nine Moroccan catchments, including the Loukkos Basin. This provides an important broader context and illustrates the value of multi-event and hydrometeorological observations for comprehensive flood-risk assessment.
Because reconstructing additional historical flood inventories and retraining the models would constitute a substantially different modelling experiment, this was not introduced retrospectively into the present analysis. Instead, we now clearly identify the single-event training inventory as a limitation and emphasize that future work should integrate multiple flood events and seasons.
Importantly, we also clarified the role of the January–February 2026 flood. It was not used to train the models and is no longer described as a formal independent validation event. It is now presented strictly as a qualitative post-study consistency check of whether the mapped high-susceptibility areas correspond to persistent flood-prone sectors.
Reviewer comment 2:
Reliance on a single event may underestimate climate-change pressures, and longer climate-related time series would better capture temporal changes and event-to-event variability.Response:
We agree. The present study was not designed to quantify climate-change effects or temporal changes in flood frequency or magnitude. We have therefore revised the manuscript to prevent such an interpretation.The CHIRPS layer used in the model is now explicitly described as a spatial background precipitation proxy derived from the 2020–2024 period. It represents the spatial contrast in rainfall across the basin but does not reproduce the intensity, duration, antecedent wetness, or temporal sequencing of the rainfall responsible for individual flood events.
We have removed wording suggesting that this variable itself can be used to analyze climate change. The revised Discussion and Limitations sections now state that assessment of changing flood forcing would require substantially longer homogeneous rainfall records, event-scale precipitation indices, gauge observations where available, and, for climate-change applications, appropriate climate-model projections.
Reviewer comment 3:
The inundated areas in 2026 may overlap with the susceptibility map even though the flood-generating conditions differed, particularly because the 2026 event involved compound effects related to tidal conditions.Response:
We agree with this important distinction. Spatial overlap alone cannot demonstrate that the models reproduce the processes responsible for the 2026 event.The revised manuscript therefore no longer refers to the 2026 episode as a formal validation of the model. Instead, we describe it as a qualitative post-study consistency check. The overlap indicates that the models identify persistent low-lying and hydraulically connected sectors where floodwater preferentially spreads. It does not demonstrate that the models reproduce the particular combination of rainfall, antecedent saturation, reservoir operation, river discharge, tidal conditions, or coastal forcing associated with the 2026 event.
This distinction has been introduced consistently in the title, Study Area, Discussion, Limitations, and Conclusion.
Factors influencing flooding
Reviewer comment 1:
Vegetation cover, land use and infrastructure such as dams/reservoirs should be treated as flood-driving factors.Response:
We agree that these factors can significantly influence flood generation, propagation, and impacts. In particular, land-cover changes can modify runoff and infiltration, vegetation can influence both hydrological response and SAR flood detection, and reservoir operations can substantially modify downstream hydrographs.However, vegetation/land cover, engineered drainage, and dam/reservoir operation were not included as independent predictors in the original nine-factor model. Adding them retrospectively would require rebuilding the predictor dataset, retraining both models, repeating the validation procedure, and recalculating the Jackknife analysis. Rather than implying that these processes were represented when they were not, we have clarified the model scope explicitly.
The revised Methods section now states that these variables were not included as independent conditioning factors. Their relevance is discussed in the Study Area and Discussion, and their omission is explicitly identified as a limitation and as a priority for future model development. We have consequently defined the present outputs more precisely as geomorphometric–hydroclimatic flood-susceptibility maps rather than complete process-based flood-hazard or flood-risk maps.
Reviewer comment 2:
Interactions among river discharge, coastal water levels and nearshore conditions should be considered, particularly in downstream areas.Response:
We agree. The lower Loukkos is an estuarine environment, and flood severity can be affected by the interaction between high fluvial discharge and unfavorable downstream coastal boundary conditions.We have addressed this point in two ways. First, the scope of the modelling is now defined earlier in the Methods section, where tidal/coastal boundary conditions are explicitly identified as processes not included among the nine predictors. Second, the compound-flooding discussion has been shortened and reframed as an explanation of model limitations rather than as an additional process represented by the susceptibility maps.
The revised text makes clear that the model can identify the persistent spatial predisposition of the low-lying estuarine floodplain, whereas event-scale amplification associated with tides, coastal water levels, waves, reservoir releases, or their temporal coincidence requires coupled hydrological/hydrodynamic modelling.
Reviewer comment 3:
Why were daily precipitation data aggregated into monthly totals and then summed over five years when floods in the Loukkos Basin can be driven by intense daily rainfall?Response:
We thank the reviewer for highlighting this point. We agree that the original wording could imply that the five-year cumulative rainfall layer represents the triggering rainfall of individual floods, which was not its intended purpose.The rainfall variable was used as a spatial conditioning variable to describe the persistent geographical contrast in precipitation across the basin. It does not describe the intensity or temporal organization of the rainfall responsible for the December 2022 flood.
We have therefore rewritten this subsection to explicitly distinguish spatial rainfall susceptibility from event-scale rainfall forcing. The revised text acknowledges that rapid flood responses, particularly in tributaries and upstream sectors, may depend strongly on short-duration rainfall intensity, multi-day accumulations, antecedent wetness, and storm sequencing. Such applications would require daily or sub-daily rainfall extremes, antecedent-precipitation indices, and preferably gauge-adjusted data. The present CHIRPS layer should therefore not be interpreted as an event-trigger variable or a climate-change indicator.
Results
Reviewer comment 1:
A more convincing discussion is needed concerning differences in the ranking of flood drivers between the two models and their implications for decision-makers.Response:
We agree and have substantially strengthened this interpretation.The revised Discussion now emphasizes that Jackknife importance values quantify the predictive contribution of a variable within each fitted model; they should not be interpreted as direct percentages of physical causation or as universally transferable rankings.
RF concentrates much of its predictive sensitivity in elevation, slope, and drainage density, whereas MLP distributes predictive information more broadly among elevation, TPI, rainfall, and distance to the channel. This difference is consistent with the different learning structures of the two algorithms and with overlapping information among correlated terrain variables.
More importantly for management, we now emphasize the factors that are robust across both models. Low elevation/low relief and hydraulic connectivity to the river network consistently characterize the main susceptibility hotspots. These common signals can support floodplain zoning, river-corridor setbacks, infrastructure screening, and prioritization of detailed hydraulic investigations. Model-specific secondary factors are interpreted more cautiously: for example, rainfall sensitivity reinforces the importance of event monitoring and early warning but should not be interpreted as a fixed causal ranking applicable to every flood event.
Discussion
Reviewer comment 1:
Vegetation should be treated more clearly, and the discussion of rainfall appears inconsistent with the five-year cumulative rainfall variable used in the Methods.Response:
We agree. Vegetation/land cover is now explicitly identified in the Methods as an omitted independent predictor rather than being discussed later without clarification of its modelling status. Its additional influence on SAR backscatter and flood-inventory uncertainty is retained in the Limitations section.We have also revised the rainfall discussion so that it no longer implies that the five-year cumulative CHIRPS layer captures event intensity. The Discussion now distinguishes the spatial rainfall background represented by the model from short-duration rainfall intensity, antecedent wetness, and storm sequencing, which are event-dependent processes not resolved by the present rainfall predictor.
Reviewer comment 2:
The compound-flooding discussion is disconnected because the issue is not sufficiently introduced in the Introduction, influencing factors or Methods.Response:
We agree. We have therefore reorganized this part of the manuscript rather than presenting compound flooding as a new interpretation appearing only late in the Discussion.The estuarine setting and possible tidal modulation remain briefly introduced in the Study Area. More importantly, the Methods section now explicitly states that tidal/coastal boundary conditions and reservoir operations were not included as model predictors. The Discussion has then been shortened to explain the implications of this omission.
The revised manuscript therefore distinguishes clearly between: (1) the persistent spatial susceptibility identified by the ML models and (2) event-specific compound forcing, which can modify flood magnitude, duration and severity but requires additional hydrological and coastal data and coupled modelling.
We thank the reviewer for this suggestion, which has substantially improved the consistency between the scope of the Methods and the interpretation presented in the Discussion.
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There are several issues that should be addressed, as follows:
The manuscript is lack in scientific aspect. There is no survey/collection, data process and analysis and just show the existing results. The manuscript looks like report. So, the manuscript is not suitable to published in “Geosciences Journal”.
There is big problem in input data. The salinity, temperature, rainfall and tide data were used for the study. But the station of the data is very few considering the study area. Moreover, the data used after interpolation and this is not accepted because the station is too few. Also, the selection of input data should be justified. To apply the machine learning, the data should be enough. If the data is not enough, the machine learning can’t be used. So, the manuscript is not suitable to published in “Geosciences Journal”.
I can’t find the new findings in data and methodology and the manuscript is not novel. So, the manuscript can’t be published in “Geosciences Journal”
Major Comments
The dataset is too small to support such a broad model comparison. The study uses only 31 annual observations to train and tune 15 models, which creates a serious risk of overfitting, especially for more flexible models such as the 100-unit MLP. The authors should either expand the dataset or narrow the analysis to a smaller set of parsimonious models. In addition, key forecasting baselines are missing. Naïve, drift, linear-trend, exponential-smoothing, ARIMA, and lagged-CO₂ models should be included, because year-only and lagged-CO₂ baselines are essential for determining whether the proposed machine-learning models actually improve upon the historical trend.
The validation and forecasting procedures also require substantial clarification. The current validation strategy is unclear and appears unsuitable for time-series data, since random splitting or shuffled cross-validation may introduce temporal leakage. Model tuning and evaluation should instead rely on rolling-origin or expanding-window validation, preferably within a nested framework. The 2021–2030 forecasts are also not reproducible. Because the models require future values of domestic credit, GDP, population, renewable energy consumption, and trade openness, the manuscript must clearly explain how these future predictor values were generated, forecasted, or assumed under specific scenarios.
Several methodological details and interpretation issues should be addressed before the results can be considered reliable. Preprocessing and hyperparameter tuning are insufficiently described; the manuscript should report scaling procedures, search spaces, validation criteria, random seeds, software versions, and complete model settings. Preprocessing must be fitted only on the training data, and all models should receive comparable tuning effort. The model-selection approach is also inconsistent: although Bagging performs best in Table 5, other models are later selected as the “most plausible” mainly because their forecast curves visually resemble the historical trend. Model selection should follow predefined out-of-sample performance criteria rather than visual judgment. Finally, the XAI analysis is unclear and appears overinterpreted. The manuscript should specify which model was explained using SHAP, LIME, and permutation importance, and given the small sample size and strong correlations among predictors, feature rankings should be treated as unstable predictive associations rather than causal effects.
Integrating Multi-Temporal Synthetic Aperture Radar Observations and Boosting Ensemble Learning for High-Resolution Flood Susceptibility Mapping in Napa County, California
The manuscript has lack in novelty and completeness in many parts. Please check the followings,
Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence
An environmental similarity-guided attention neural network for landslide susceptibility mapping in underrepresented environments
After checking the manuscript, the manuscript can’t be published in present form because there are some major issues such as followings,
Geoscience Frontiers
From spatial dependence to temporal memory: A unified graph neural network for spatiotemporal landslide susceptibility prediction
Before the check the model and validation, there are serious missing of basic information such as followings,
So, the manuscript can’t be reviewed and published to the journal.
- The manuscript addresses a relevant topic and the authors have made a clear effort to respond to the previous reviewers. However, I still have a major concern regarding the fundamental design of the study.
- The main issue is that the sediment yield used as the target variable is not based on direct observations. Instead, it was estimated from a discharge–sediment rating relationship. The authors now acknowledge this limitation and the resulting structural dependence between the target and several hydrological predictors.
- This makes the very high machine-learning performance difficult to interpret. In particular, runoff volume, peak discharge, and their derived variables are closely related to the discharge information already used to generate the proxy sediment yield. Therefore, an RF R2 of about 0.94 may partly reflect this built-in relationship rather than true predictive capability.
- The addition of 5-fold cross-validation improves the analysis, but it does not resolve this underlying circularity.
- I am also concerned about the small number of independent events (69) relative to the large number of tested model and feature combinations. Some configurations include up to 196 predictors, which further raises concerns about overfitting and the robustness of the reported results.
- In my view, these limitations affect the central conclusions of the paper and cannot be adequately addressed by further textual revision alone. Independent sediment observations would be necessary to properly validate the proposed framework.