Mars' Lowest and Highest Points Revisited

Comment #259 Kamilla Dyreborg Hansen @ 2025-12-05 22:05

The manuscript uses numerical-only references in some places (e.g., in the introduction), author-year plus numerical references in others (e.g., Voelker et al. (2017) [6]), and institution-year citations elsewhere (e.g., USGS (2002) [9]). I'm not sure whether this hybrid style is intentional or simply evolved through revisions, so I thought I'd mention it in case you decide to harmonize citation style in a future revision. No need to change it, of course — I just wanted to check whether it reflects a conscious choice.

In Section 3.1.2: Adding the explicit reference to Figure 1 may tidy the flow when discussing points A and B (e.g., “as evident in Figure 1”). It reads clearly as it is, but this would remove any ambiguity.
Figures 1 and 2 are excellent — very clean and intuitive. But if they are reused outside the manuscript context (talks, slides, future papers), a slightly more descriptive caption would allow you to preserve your intended interpretation.

In the conclusion, “metres” appears in US English context — you might want to change this to “meters” for consistency.

If you’d like to add a future-perspective sentence, this method could be applied to other topographic anomalies, particularly where MOLA sampling gaps complicate local interpretation. For example, this may benefit landing-site analyses where accurate local topography is vital for mission safety.

Your paper is refreshingly concise — many Mars papers drown the reader in context; yours delivers a single clear objective with a single clear result.
Given the methodological clarity and real improvement over MOLA-only estimates, you might allow yourself to assert the significance a bit more confidently in your conclusion section.
I enjoyed reading this, and I thank you for your work.