Rural Landscape Change: The Driving Forces of Land Use Transformation from 1980 to 2020 in Southern Henan, China
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The study contains all the essentials and, in my opinion, can be published after minor adjustments. By improvement I mean the following:
Introduction:
The aim of the study from the end of the introduction deserves to be a separate paragraph.
Overview of the study area:
The territory is well described, however, I stopped at the fact that the text section mentions altitudes between 22-1584m, but the maximum elevation on the map is 2128m. Does only the (auto-generated) tag in the legend have such a wide range, or is it an inconsistency? I would also prefer the rounded values in Figure 3.
Materials and Methods
Data sources are listed adequately. The link ttp://wwwgscloud.cn is missing a dot to keep the link alive. Tools and procedures are well described.
Results and Analysis
In Table 5, apparently as a result of rounding for the year 1990, the proportion is more than 100%, and in 2010 it is less. Similarly, the resulting amount in Table 7 differs by one hundredth. I understand how it happened, but to be sure, please verify the values.
The paragraph starting on line 254 copies the table's values. If you know the reasons for the changes, it would be more interesting to mention the most important differences - e.g. whether the increased representation of water bodies is a response to floods and the like. The next paragraph is written that way.
Line 260 contains a duplicate occurrence of "body".
Figure 10: Coordinates are hard to read. I recommend adding a higher-resolution image to the final version.
Discussion
Have other provinces been processed similarly?
Conclusion
I have no comments on this part.
Author Response
Dear Editors and Reviewers：
Thank you for your letter and for the reviewers' comments concerning our manuscript entitled "Rural Landscape Changes -the Driving Forces of Land Use Transformation From 1980 to 2020 in Southern Henan, China"(ID: 2140308）. Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. We have studied comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval. Revised portion are marked in yellow in the paper。 The main corrections in the paper and the responds to the reviewer’s comments are as flowing：
Point 1: Introduction: The aim of the study from the end of the introduction deserves to be a separate paragraph.
Response 1: According to the suggestion of the reviewer, I have adjusted the research purpose at the end of the introduction to a separate paragraph.
Point 2: Overview of the study area:
The territory is well described, however, I stopped at the fact that the text section mentions altitudes between 22-1584m, but the maximum elevation on the map is 2128m. Does only the (auto-generated) tag in the legend have such a wide range, or is it an inconsistency? I would also prefer the rounded values in Figure 3.
Response 2: According to the comments of the reviewers and after careful check, we corrected the maximum value of altitude to 2128m.
Point 3: Materials and Methods
Data sources are listed adequately. The link ttp://wwwgscloud.cn is missing a dot to keep the link alive. Tools and procedures are well described.
Response 3: Thank you very much for the reminder of the reviewer. We have modified this problem to maintain the link activity.
Point 4: Results and Analysis
In Table 5, apparently as a result of rounding for the year 1990, the proportion is more than 100%, and in 2010 it is less. Similarly, the resulting amount in Table 7 differs by one hundredth. I understand how it happened, but to be sure, please verify the values.
Response 4: We have carefully checked and revised Table 5. The main reason for the problems in Table 7 is that when calculating land use transfer, the conversion project of raster data to vector data will cause a certain area error, but this error is within the allowable range, which will not affect the research results.
Point 5: The paragraph starting on line 254 copies the table's values. If you know the reasons for the changes, it would be more interesting to mention the most important differences - e.g. whether the increased representation of water bodies is a response to floods and the like. The next paragraph is written that way.
Response 5: We have made appropriate modifications to the paragraph starting of line 254 to make it more general, and added some explanations for these changes, according to what we know. The revised paragraph reads as follows:
From 1980 to 2020, the area of cropland has always maintained the maximum value, of which the area of cropland in 1990 was the largest, 37468.08 km2, indicating that the landscape of cropland is the dominant landscape type in the rural areas of southern Henan, reflecting the landscape characteristics of the main grain-producing areas. The area of forest is only second to that of cultivated land. In the past 40 years, the area of forest in the study area has continuously increased from 12101.55 km2 in 1980 to 12393.78 km2 in 2020, indicating that the study area not only has high forest coverage, but also has effectively protected the forest, which can continuously and effectively play the ecological service function of forest, thus better promoting regional ecological security. The proportion of construction land area ranks the third and shows an increasing trend year by year, with a cumulative increase of 670.92 km2 over the past 40 years, indicating that the study area is still in the rapid development stage of social economy and urbanization. As an important type of landscape, the grassland area reached 2501.69 km2 in 2020, which is also the main distribution area of animal husbandry in the study area. The area of the water area is relatively small, with a cumulative increase of 291.2 km2 in 40 years. The reasons may come from two aspects: first, the construction of water conservancy facilities has increased the area of the water area; Another aspect may be related to the shooting time of remote sensing data. For example, the remote sensing data taken in the month with the largest precipitation may make the value of water area larger. The area of unused land is the smallest, and its area has increased in the past 10 years, which may be related to the rapid development of social economy and urbanization process.
Point 6: Line 260 contains a duplicate occurrence of "body".
Response 6: We have completed the modification.
Point 7: Figure 10: Coordinates are hard to read. I recommend adding a higher-resolution image to the final version.
Response 7: We will add a higher-resolution image to the final version.
Point8: Discussion: Have other provinces been processed similarly?
Response 8: At present, other provinces have not carried out similar research specifically for rural areas in China.
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear colleagues,
Thank you for the opportunity to read a manuscript that addresses a current topic, namely the changes in the rural landscape in Southern Henan, China.
To increase the quality of the manuscript, I think you should answer one more question:
What can you say about the research gap: what is missing from the specialized literature and what does your study come up with? The answer to this question should be integrated in the introduction chapter.
Sincerely,
Author Response
Dear Editors and Reviewer：
Thank you for your letter and for the reviewers' comments concerning our manuscript entitled "Rural Landscape Changes -the Driving Forces of Land Use Transformation From 1980 to 2020 in Southern Henan, China"(ID: 2140308）. Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. We have studied comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval. Revised portion are marked in yellow in the paper。 The main corrections in the paper and the responds to the reviewer’s comments are as flowing：
Point 1：What can you say about the research gap: what is missing from the specialized literature and what does your study come up with? The answer to this question should be integrated in the introduction chapter.
Response 1: In response to this problem, we have supplemented and revised it in the introduction of Chapter 1. The revised content is as follows (note: the highlighted yellow part is the revised and supplemented content):
- Introduction
The concept of land use transition was first proposed by the British scholar Grainger [1], who believed that land use transition is a dynamic process with a time series of changes in regional land use patterns in response to socio-economic development changes. The basic characteristics of land transition are land use change and intensification [2], and the rapid land use transition caused by urbanization has great impact on the ecological environment [3-5]. Chinese scholar Long Hualou introduced the concept of "land use transition" to China in 2002 as a new way of integrated land use and cover change research [6]. A large number of scholars have followed to conduct a series of studies on land use transformation in terms of theory and hypothesis [7], characteristic and laws [8-9] and development prediction [10-13], and a systematic theoretical framework has been formed. With the rapid development and continuous transformation of the social economy, especially the strategy of ecological civilization construction, land use transformation research has mostly focused on the relationship between urban function and rural revitalization, and in the last decade [12,14,15]. Landscape pattern is one of the core elements in the field of landscape ecology, and change in pattern is a prominent sign of land use transformation [16-18]. Landscape pattern refers to the composition and configuration of different ecosystems or land cover types in time and space, and it is the result of the action of ecological processes at different scales [15,19]. The quantitative analysis of landscape pattern is the basis for studying the interrelationship between pattern and process. The size, shape and arrangement of landscape patches reflect, to a certain extent, the way and intensity of human activities, and influence the ecological processes and forms of material cycling, energy flow and information transfer in them [20]. Changes in land use transformation affect the development pattern of towns and cities. By exploring the characteristics of regional land use transformation, the evolution of a region’s landscape pattern can be analyzed, which is of great significance to the development of regional ecological security [21].
Land system science is committed to monitoring land change, explaining driving factors and feedback mechanisms, and understanding human-environment interactions occurring on land. Relevant theoretical achievements are still scarce [22-25]. Research on land use transition is an important content of current land system science research. The explanation and prediction of land use transition depend on the reference of relevant academic theories and theoretical construction of land use research [26].At present, the research on the evolution of landscape pattern under the transformation of land use mainly focuses on the impact of rapid urbanization on regional landscape pattern; The research on the spatial evolution of land use and landscape pattern mostly focuses on large scale regions, while the research on small scale such as local rural areas is less, especially the focus on the evolution of rural landscape pattern reflected by the main grain-producing areas is low, and the research on the evolution of rural landscape pattern in the context of land use transformation is lacking.
The southern area of Henan province is located in the transition zone from a subtropical humid monsoon climate to a warm temperate semi-humid monsoon climate. It is the main grain production base of Henan Province and is rich in resources, but is also an important ecological zone for carbon fixation and oxygen release, water conservation and soil conservation in the central plains of China. It also has a high incidence of natural disasters such as soil erosion, and the ecological environment is relatively fragile, which inevitably makes the conflict between socio-economic development and ecological environmental protection more acute. With the rapid development of urbanization, the increase of regional population and over-exploitation of land have led to increased ecological and environmental pressure in southern Henan, and some rural areas have serious problems such as soil erosion, frequent natural disasters, and degradation of ecosystem service values.However, at present, few scholars have conducted qualitative and quantitative research on the dynamic evolution and optimization strategy of landscape pattern in rural areas of southern Henan from the perspective of landscape ecology, especially on the landscape pattern in rural areas of southern Henan based on the background of land use transformation.
In view of this, this study takes the rural areas in southern Henan Province as the research target area, and based on the perspective of land use transformation, uses remote sensing (RS) and geographic information system (GIS) and other technologies and means and geographic detector models, selects the period from 1980 to 2020 as the research period, and discusses the spatial-temporal evolution characteristics and driving forces of the landscape pattern under the background of land use transformation in the study area in the past 40 years, It is expected to provide scientific basis for land use planning and management in the study area, so as to improve the value of ecosystem services in the study area and improve human well-being in rural areas.
Reviewer 3 Report
This study used techniques of GIS technology and geo-detector model to analyze the key drivers of the landscape pattern evolution in southern Henan in China from 1980 to 2020. In general, the idea is clear, the structure is reasonable, the article has certain practical significance. Some suggestions:
1. The content of land use type change in the article was studied many years ago, so the research contents, research methods and conclusions should be concise and not too wordy. It is suggested to focus on the driving mechanism and analyze the influencing factors in depth.
2. Figures like Figure 2 and Figure 3 are too simple, and the elements are too single.
3. Did you consider the collinearity problem when selecting the influencing factors? Such as temperature and DEM. It is suggested to give the basis for selecting influence factors.
4. The analysis of impact mechanism should not only focus on the relationship of mathematical statistics, but also try to analyze the spatial heterogeneity of its response to different impact factors. Therefore, it is suggested to supplement the spatial differences in the figure in the result section.
5. The limitations of this study should not be put in the conclusion, but in the discussion. In addition, the conclusion should focus on the findings of this study, rather than on what should be done in the future (line-645-649).
Author Response
Dear Editors and Reviewer：
Thank you for your letter and for the reviewers' comments concerning our manuscript entitled "Rural Landscape Changes -the Driving Forces of Land Use Transformation From 1980 to 2020 in Southern Henan, China"(ID: 2140308）. Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. We have studied comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval. Revised portion are marked in yellow in the paper。 The main corrections in the paper and the responds to the reviewer’s comments are as flowing：
Point 1：The content of land use type change in the article was studied many years ago, so the research contents, research methods and conclusions should be concise and not too wordy. It is suggested to focus on the driving mechanism and analyze the influencing factors in depth.
Response 1: According to the suggestions of the reviewers, we further simplified the research contents, research methods and conclusions. At the same time, we have made a more in-depth analysis of the driving mechanism and influencing factors. Please see the attachment.
Point 2：Figures like Figure 2 and Figure 3 are too simple, and the elements are too single.
Response 2: The terrain in the rural areas of southern Henan is complex and diverse, and the slope and altitude are the main factors affecting the change of land use and landscape pattern. Visual expression of slope and altitude can help readers better understand the terrain and geomorphic features of the area. Therefore, we think it is necessary to retain Figure 2 and Figure 3. Alternatively, we can combine Figure 2 and Figure 3 into a single figure, which can be considered in the final version.
Point 3：Did you consider the collinearity problem when selecting the influencing factors? Such as temperature and DEM. It is suggested to give the basis for selecting influence factors.
Response 3: This study uses geographic detector analysis, based on factor detection q value and significance test, to realize the identification and construction of ineffective factors and dominant factors in the driving factors affecting land use and landscape pattern change, and then selects the logistic regression model to screen the independent variables (dominant factors) that have significant impact on the dependent variables.
This study selects the driving factors that affect the evolution of land use and landscape pattern in rural areas of southern Henan according to the following criteria: (1) The factors are quantifiable and independent of each other; (2) The driving factors include socio-economic factors, terrain factors, climate factors and location factors; (3) Each driver is available and easy to obtain. In this study, a total of 10 driving factors were selected according to the actual situation of the study area and relevant literature. Among them, socio-economic factors include population density, GDP and nighttime lighting, topographic factors include elevation and slope, climatic factors include annual average rainfall and annual average temperature, and location factors include distance from major railways, distance from major highways, and distance from water systems above Class III. Use ArcGIS 10.6 spatial analysis tool to calculate the average value of various factors in each administrative unit.
According to the suggestions of the reviewers, we added the basis for the selection of impact factors in this revision process.Please see the attachment.
Point 4：The analysis of the impact mechanism should not only focus on the relationship between mathematical statistics, but also try to analyze the spatial heterogeneity of its response to different influencing factors. Therefore, it is suggested to supplement the spatial differences in the figure in the result section.
Response 4: The analysis of the impact mechanism in this paper is based on the historical statistical data of five different years in the study area, and calculated by using the geographical detector and logistic regression model. If it is necessary to try to analyze the spatial heterogeneity of its response to different influencing factors, at least the average value of various statistical data such as temperature, rainfall, and population in each township administrative unit should be obtained. Because the study area is located in rural areas, part of the historical statistical data in the township administrative unit is difficult or unavailable, so this part of the research results is difficult to supplement.
However, we supplemented the analysis of the impact mechanism in the discussion and briefly described how the dominant driving factors affect the evolution of land use and landscape pattern in the study area. Please see the attachment.
Point 5： The limitations of this study should not be put in the conclusion, but in the discussion. In addition, the conclusion should focus on the findings of this study, rather than on what should be done in the future (line-645-649).
Response 5: According to the suggestions of the reviewers, we adjusted the limitations of the study to the discussion section. What should be done in the future in the conclusion has been deleted, and only the main results of this study are highlighted.Please see the attachment.
Note: The yellow highlighted part of the attached document is the revised content, which also includes the revised content according to the revised comments of other reviewers.
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
The author has made detailed modifications to the comments and suggested acceptance.
