Research on the Spatio-Temporal Changes of Vegetation and Its Driving Forces in Shaanxi Province in the Past 20 Years

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Your paper has some merits,but some questions should be responded as below:

1 All the presentation in the submission must be checked ad improved;

2 Concrete conclusions must be made basing on your data basis;

3 Discussions must be cited and made mutually by updated references;

4 All the references must be checked out including the format and updated.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

This paper must be made major revision as I commented above.

Author Response

Dear reviewer, hello.
We have made modifications to the original document in accordance with the review
requirements, and a response to the modifications is shown in the attachment
at your request.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article “Research on the Spatio-temporal Changes of Vegetation and Its Driving Forces in Shaanxi Province in the Past 20 Years” is devoted to solving environmental problems using modern control methods in a specific country, or rather even in a specific province. Almost 20 years are covered, which is very representative of the spatio-temporal changes of vegetation. From the detailed description, conclusions can be drawn about recommendations for the use of similar control methods for other geographical locations, including expanding the coverage area. Formally, this publication corresponds to the Sustainability publication and will undoubtedly find its reader for a number of reasons: presentation of the obtained assessment according to the criterion “the spatial-temporal changes in vegetation” with the possibility of replication and increasing the scale of coverage, a simple presentation of a rather complex environmental problem, a cosmic approach to “ sustainability”, as well as the objectivity of collecting information for processing. For readers to understand, the article contains enough details of the organization of the experiment: the geographical location of the area under study with the features of the organization of human activity on it is described in detail, the diagram of the experiment is given, and an idea of ​​the method of collecting and processing information is given. It is especially pleasant that the authors cited a large number of publications from 2023, which should be attributed to the merits of this work. Due to the specificity of this manuscript, several questions and comments arose, which are listed below and are aimed at correcting the manuscript.

 

Notes and recommendations:

1. Given the international nature of the Sustainability publication, it is necessary to add an indication of the country other than the province in the annotation.

2. Not everyone may understand what the abbreviation KNDVI means in the annotation. An analysis of the cited sources shows that out of 63 references, only three, two of them published in 2023, used this abbreviation in the title of the article. Therefore, I recommend expanding this abbreviation in the annotation.

3. Section 4.1. Temporal Analysis of Mean Value about KNDVI. It is necessary to supplement this section with a proposal with a positive assessment of the observed growth trend of vegetation and “independence” from human activities in these regions. It is possible to move it to section “5. Discussion".

4. Figures 4 and 5 show absolute positive results. In this case, what reasons contributed to the need for these studies? The reviewer discovered a recent publication by the corresponding author, which raised some concerns, in particular about crop yields. Therefore, the reviewer recommended supplementing the discussion of Figures 4 and 5 with text on the topic “the sustainability of vegetation over the past 20 years in conditions of intensive development of industry and agriculture in this region, as well as the expected consequences of this phenomenon...”. It is possible to move these additions to section “5. Discussion".

Hu, Y.; Yang, S.; Qian, X.; Li, Z.; Fan, Y.; Manevski, K.; Chen, Y.; Gao, W. Bibliometric Network Analysis of Crop Yield Gap Research over the Past Three Decades. Agriculture 2023, 13, 2105. https://doi.org/10.3390/ agriculture13112105

5. Lines 481-483 in the description of Figure 7. Continue the description of this figure with an explanation: why other factors do not have an important influence. It is possible to move it to section “5. Discussion".

6. Section 5. Discussion. We recommend that the authors include three-dimensional figures 9 and 10 in the applimentary, while maintaining the description in the main part of the article. Leave Tables 3 and 4 in the main text.

7. Lines 545-546. Here, an important and well-founded observation “...this suggests that climatic conditions are the primary driving force behind the changes in vegetation KNDVI in the study area.”, understandable to readers of the Sustainability publication, should occupy the most important place in the abstract. Many details given in the abstract obscure the most important conclusion.

8. The terminals are small in volume, so it is recommended to remove the terminal numbering.

Author Response

Dear reviewer, hello. We have made revisions to the original document according to the review requirements, and the response to the revisions is shown in the attached file as per your request.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear author

You have done an excellent job of writing this manuscript. It was my pleasure to review this manuscript. You will find some suggestions for the improvement for the manuscript.

Comments:

The title of the manuscript is looking very good.

The introduction of the manuscript is written very nicely.

Materials and Methods

The materials and methods section of the manuscript is also written very nicely. But needs to incorporate the data set of evaporation, precipitation and temperature in the study area between study periods.

Results

The results section of the manuscript was written very nicely. But needs to give the significance level whre needed.

The results of the correlation coefficient given in lines no 389 to 393 without a significant level, do not prove the level of significance of these values. please write the level of significance for justification of correlation in the study.

Discussion

The discussion of the manuscript must be improved by adding some new references.

The discussion needs to be shortened remove the table from this section and add these tables to the results.

Conclusion

The conclusion of the study is written very long and needs to be shortened.

 

Hopeful my submitted comments help in improving the manuscript.

Author Response

Dear reviewer, hello. We have made revisions to the original document according to the review requirements, and the response to the revisions is shown in the attached file as per your request.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Now,the revised can be accepted.