Dear authors,

first, I like to apologize for the delay in the editorial handling of your manuscript. The last weeks of the semester holidays were extremely busy.

Second, I like to thank the reviewers for their constructive and detailed comments on your manuscript. Moreover, I also like to thank you for the careful revisions to the previous version of the manuscript.

I have now read your revised manuscript. Overall, I think that your study is a timely and valuable contribution that advances how we measure surface changes in general, and how we monitor rock glaciers in particular. The paper is very well written, concise and easy to follow. I have only a few minor comments that might help to improve the presentation even more and which I detail below. Upon addressing these comments, I am glad to accept your paper for publication in ESURF.

With best regards,
Wolfgang Schwanghart


TITLE: Your analysis relies on two main techniques: Quantification of surface change relative to the surface normal using the M3C2 algorithm, and the tracking of boulders. Both techniques measure surface changes but not necessarily different surface change types. The term "disaggregating" in the title suggests to me that one technique is used to correct for a surface change type that potentially influences measurements made by the other technique. For example, the flow field measured by boulders could potentially be used to dissagregate surface changes to those invoked by creep and those due to frost heave or thaw settlement. I am not seeing where this is actually done in this study. However, I am not demanding that it should be done. Rather, I'd suggest to reformulate the title to better reflect the focus of this study, which is, in my view, the comparison of three-week vs one-year observation period.

FIG 3: Here you use the abbreviation LOD which you should mention in the caption, too. You might consider using this abbreviation throughout the paper, too.

137: least squares fit?

138: residual distances?

147: consider adding some information about the size of the boulders.

159: consider providing the exacht number of boulders here.

FIG 5: It is a bit confusing that panel a and b show different observation periods and places. Would it be possible to place both in one panel and indicating the different periods using different colors for the arrows?

213: I am missing a figure that shows the boulder tracking results for the active zone 2.

233: Our uncertainty analysis is consistent with these findings.

Dear authors,
I have now received your revised manuscript. Thank you very much for these careful revisions. I am glad to accept your paper and recommend to publish it as is.
Thanks again for submitting to ESURF.
With kind regards,
Wolfgang Schwanghart

Dear Veit Ulrich and team,

I am happy to convey that your manuscript has now been accepted for publication. Thank you for working with Associate Editor Wolfgang Schwanghart and the reviewers. I feel your manuscript has substantially gained from adressing the issues raised.

Thank you for considering ESurf,
Andreas Lang