Within the very first point of the review, the expert reviewer mentions that he/she cannot find a reason for the reference scenarios. After strong and critical thoughts, we must admit that he/she is absolutely right, as we made a mistake because it should be much clearer right from the first line what has been the predominant objective of our current study. We should make clear that our research was and is the assess of the direct economic impact of potential volcanic eruptions of two chosen volcanic centers surrounding an important Ecuadorian canton and city. The reason on concentrating in the economic impact has been as there is a huge lack of any profound economic analysis in previous studies around the world regarding volcanic eruption. Even though after any natural hazard disruption practically all governments try to recover as soon as they are able to, to the normal / regular economic activity. This is extremely important in terms of people affected by such natural disruptions of their lives and socio-economic activities. In terms of the volcanological significance of the scenarios, once again, we realized to have committed a mistake that our concentration is on the direct economic impact. Yet, the given comment by the expert reviewer helped and allowed us to understand that we were not clear enough of what we really wanted to present in the first place. As you will be able to see, that this mistake has been corrected within the new version, rewriting the entire introduction, leading to a much better version  of our goals and intentions, as we concentrated on the economic impact of the potential volcanic eruptions in the supposed worst-case scenario of our study area.

The second observation the reviewer indicated towards that the proposed hazards maps are numerical artifacts or related to an insufficient number of simulations. We need to clarify that hazards maps were used to locate the potential impact areas in order to determine what kind of economic activities are taken place in that region, which allowed to estimate the economic direct impact. There was no simulation of any model, as this was not even necessary or needed at all. Our best guess is that the expert reviewer referred to figure 2 and desired to understand how we came up with such a graphic. Therefore, yet, we did specify in the text really clearly that we used more than (now) 16 thousand satellite images from 1999 to 2025 of five active volcanoes surrounding the two volcanoes of our study area, in order to determine which would be the direction of the ash fall if the eruption of these two volcanoes would occur. This data set is one of the highlights of our manuscript, as these are real data of real existing volcanic eruptions and their corresponding direction of ash falls, applied to “our” studied volcanoes of the same region. There is not any model from the literature we used to determine that, it’s as explained our own afford. We used only satellite images of past/recent volcanic eruptions in Ecuador to determine ash fall patterns. It may be simplistic as the expert reviewer mentions, but it has been extremely precise and very efficient in terms of our proposed goal.

The third concern was that we didn’t used advance modeling and probabilistic hazard assessment. Yet, as now it is very clear from the first line, we are and were interested in determining the direct economic impact of a potential volcanic eruption. We were not looking when it would potentially occur, so the references suggested by the expert reviewer as important they may be, did not really contribute to our objective at all.

The expert reviewer mentions that our assessment is not presented in terms of hazard, risk and vulnerability, which would be related to a given risk management. The expert reviewer is correct mentioning, that our assessment is in terms of economic impact, which appears after the natural hazard occurs. Unfortunately, any management risk assessment lacked to be the any of the objectives of the present study.

The expert reviewer mentions a regard about the references. Well, his/her observation were obviously considered, what we are thankful for and we reviewed all our references, so they are properly cited in the text and within the reference section.

Finally, the expert reviewer mentioned that our English should be improved in order to be published adequately. This suggestion has been welcomed, so we have asked our native English speaker to review our text and to improve it significantly and correspondingly. We also used Gemini AI of Chrome to review the grammar and orthography as an additional edition of our text and we included this activity in our acknowledge section.

Once again and with all due respect, we are very thankful for the comments and corrections of the expert reviewer, which helped to see a few unclear parts and or even faults of our side within our manuscript. With his/her comments we were able to smooth the text, clarify missing parts or wrong spellings, which resulted to an improved and much better than the initial version of this current study.

Thanks a lot on behalf of all authors

RESPONSE TO THE EXPERT REVIEWER 2, DR. ROBERT BUCHWALDT

The first observation from the reviewer is that our manuscript is difficult to understand, and as a result, it may not be suitable for publication in any academic journal. He is right in the sense that we lacked to make it particularly clear what the objective of our study has been, and we included references to other areas of volcanoes’ science that were not directly related to our predominant objective. We rewrote in a specific way the real scope of our study through the entire reformulated introduction in order to make clear the actual objective of this study. Therefore, we changed our original title and concentrated on the particular economic issues related to the two studied Ecuadorian volcanoes and their corresponding hazards.

The reviewer mentioned that at no point we introduced the Otavalo region. This observation is not really clear to us and kind of unjustified, because section 2.1 is dedicated exclusively to introduce the study area.

The third observation is related to difficulties to follow because of language issues. This particular observation was taken seriously, and the paper’s new version has been reviewed by a further native English speaker. In addition, we used Gemini AI from Chrome to support us with an academic edition of the paper text. Correctly, the expert reviewer also asked why Mount Vesuvius was mentioned in our study, as it may have had an indirect associated aspect to be referred to, so we eliminated its presence and the corresponding reference.

The fourth observation has been about a certain lack of explanation of the apllied methodology. This observation remained not clear to us, because the methodology is explained in detail in sections 2.2 through 2.4. We may make it clear again, that the present study was not about hazard and risk management assessment. We may particularly point out, that this study is about the direct economic impact of volcanic eruptions and this has been realized based on a limited amount of literature that concentrates on this important area of knowledge, although it is a key and strategic issue to policy and decision-making for corresponding authorities.

The fifth observation is related to some of the references cited. This observation is welcome and has led to a new review of all the used and cited references, focusing to use just those directly related to the main objectives of our study.

The sixth observation was considered, and we numbered all equations and explained all their components.

The reviewer also mentions that Figure 2 is meaningless and how wind directional data can be applied to it as it was applied. In section 2.3, line 150, we explained how this method is applied and how it is related to the potential ash fall of the Cuicocha and Imbabura volcanoes. Figures 5 and 6 illustrate the potential ash fall direction of these volcanoes.

Eighth observation is related to Figure 3, and the reviewer evaluated that it to be rudimentary, asking where the morphological data is, as well as different scenarios for the used VEI of the two studied volcanoes. In our case, we do not need different scenarios because, as mentioned before, our study is based on the worst-case scenario. The figure may be seen for some as rudimentary, but in a more detailed view it absolutely meets our main study objective, which is the economic assessment of potential volcanic eruptions. This study was not prepared to demonstrate the potential pyroclastic flow of the Cuicocha and Imbabura volcanoes, which may require different models to cover all potential directions. This study was exclusively designed to help to develop policies to prevent enormous potential losses in an area where no prevention or any other kind of risk management measures have taken place so far.

The final observation is related to the economic assessment and why it lacked to use GIS to georeference the economic impact. The reviewer is correct in the sense that locating the economic impact may help to explain it in particular spots. However, in the current study, with all the different potential impacts, some of them we considered the macroeconomic impact in terms of policymaking. In that sense, georeferencing the impacts did not really have impact on the results or outcome of the main objective of our study.

Once again and with all due respect, we are very thankful for the comments and corrections of Dr. Robert Buchwaldt, which helped to see a few unclear parts and or even faults of our side within our manuscript. With his comments we were able to smooth the text, clarify missing parts or wrong spellings, which resulted to an improved and much better than the initial version of this current study.

Thanks a lot on behalf of all authors