A Multi-Scenario Prediction and Spatiotemporal Analysis of the Land Use and Carbon Storage Response in Shaanxi

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper predicted the potential changes in terrestrial carbon storage under different land use scenarios in Shaanxi province from 2020 to 2060 in combination of observed data and simulations. Overall, the paper has clear logic and sufficient discussions. I suggest minor revision before acceptance.

Detailed comments:

1. Line 154 please clarify what kind of raster data are used as model inputs.

2. Line 164 the comma before reference 26 should be deleted.

3. Line 257 another Y axis can be used for land use change.

4. If the artificial land use in Fig 5-6 is the same as constructed land use?

5. Lines 251-265, the description of land use between 2000-2020 is too simple.

6. Line 272 the prediction period 2020-2060 also should be mentioned in the parts of introduction and method.

7. In Fig. 9a and Fig. 11a, the simulated years should be 2030.

 

Author Response

We feel great thanks for your professional review work on our article. As you are concerned, there are several problems that need to be addressed. According to your nice suggestions, we have made extensive corrections to our previous draft, the detailed corrections are listed below.

1.Line 154 please clarify what kind of raster data are used as model inputs.

We have revised the relevant content in lines 177-180 according to the reviewer's suggestion.

 

2.Line 164 the comma before reference 26 should be deleted.

We were really sorry for our careless mistakes. Thank you for your reminder. We have revised the related issues.

 

3.Line 257 another Y axis can be used for land use change.

Thank you very much for your suggestion. We have modified Figure 4 to take the Y axis as the land use series.

 

4.If the artificial land use in Fig 5-6 is the same as constructed land use?

We feel sorry for our carelessness. In our resubmitted manuscript, the typo is revised. Thanks for your correction.

 

5.Lines 251-265, the description of land use between 2000-2020 is too simple.

Thank you very much for your suggestion. We added the description of land use change in lines 269-273.

 

6.Line 272 the prediction period 2020-2060 also should be mentioned in the parts of introduction and method.

We have re-written this part according to the Reviewer’s suggestion. See lines 93-96 and 157-160 for details.

 

7.In Fig. 9a and Fig. 11a, the simulated years should be 2030.

We are sorry for our carelessness. In our resubmitted manuscript, the error description has been revised. Thank you for your correction.

We have done our best to improve the manuscript and have made some yellow labeled changes in revising the paper that will not affect the content or framework of the paper. We sincerely appreciate the enthusiastic work of the editors/reviewers and hope that the revisions will be recognized. Thank you again for your comments and suggestions.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The submission is well written with clear research framework and convinced results. I would like to recommend this submission for publication on Remote Sensing pending minor revisions.

Abstract: This section should be re-organized to highlight the limitations of previous studies and the motivations and novelties of your study. There is no need to introduce specific numbers of model-simulated results, please summarize the critical findings and practical implications instead of repeating results in Conclusion Section.

Introduction: The literature review is very shallow, please deepen your introductions for existing research approaches and their limitations, and the deficiencies in previous case studies. It is important to tell us the novelties of your study.

Discussion： There are already many studies regarding landscape pattern’s impacts on ecosystem services including carbon sequestration, carbon stock, and carbon neutrality, so I think the possible emphasis of Discussion Section should be optimizing strategies of landscape configuration to enhancing carbon stock and facilitating carbon neutrality target. You explored the associations between carbon stock and land use/cover/landscape pattern, but how to further practically support landscape planning and direct landscape management?

You can slightly discuss the strategies for multi-objective optimization of ecosystem services associated with landscape structure which concurrently coordinate carbon, water, and soil aspects, because your recommended policies were only based upon carbon storage, but the practical landscape planning needs a comprehensive perspective that balancing multi-aspects or sectors.

Result: please remove some specific numbers in abstract to this section to show more details instead of only general results and findings.

The submission is well written with clear research framework and convinced results. I would like to recommend this submission for publication on Remote Sensing pending minor revisions.

Abstract: This section should be re-organized to highlight the limitations of previous studies and the motivations and novelties of your study. There is no need to introduce specific numbers of model-simulated results, please summarize the critical findings and practical implications instead of repeating results in Conclusion Section.

Introduction: The literature review is very shallow, please deepen your introductions for existing research approaches and their limitations, and the deficiencies in previous case studies. It is important to tell us the novelties of your study.

Discussion： There are already many studies regarding landscape pattern’s impacts on ecosystem services including carbon sequestration, carbon stock, and carbon neutrality, so I think the possible emphasis of Discussion Section should be optimizing strategies of landscape configuration to enhancing carbon stock and facilitating carbon neutrality target. You explored the associations between carbon stock and land use/cover/landscape pattern, but how to further practically support landscape planning and direct landscape management?

You can slightly discuss the strategies for multi-objective optimization of ecosystem services associated with landscape structure which concurrently coordinate carbon, water, and soil aspects, because your recommended policies were only based upon carbon storage, but the practical landscape planning needs a comprehensive perspective that balancing multi-aspects or sectors.

Result: please remove some specific numbers in abstract to this section to show more details instead of only general results and findings.

Author Response

We feel great thanks for your professional review work on our article. As you are concerned, there are several problems that need to be addressed. According to your nice suggestions, we have made extensive corrections to our previous draft, the detailed corrections are listed below.

Abstract: This section should be re-organized to highlight the limitations of previous studies and the motivations and novelties of your study. There is no need to introduce specific numbers of model-simulated results, please summarize the critical findings and practical implications instead of repeating results in Conclusion Section.

Thank you very much for your professional opinion, we think it is a good suggestion. We have already made changes to the abstract section.

 

Introduction: The literature review is very shallow, please deepen your introductions for existing research approaches and their limitations, and the deficiencies in previous case studies. It is important to tell us the novelties of your study.

Thank you very much for your professional comments. We have now described and revised the progress of the relevant studies and the limitations of the relevant studies. See lines 71-91 for details

 

Discussion：There are already many studies regarding landscape pattern’s impacts on ecosystem services including carbon sequestration, carbon stock, and carbon neutrality, so I think the possible emphasis of Discussion Section should be optimizing strategies of landscape configuration to enhancing carbon stock and facilitating carbon neutrality target. You explored the associations between carbon stock and land use/cover/landscape pattern, but how to further practically support landscape planning and direct landscape management?

You can slightly discuss the strategies for multi-objective optimization of ecosystem services associated with landscape structure which concurrently coordinate carbon, water, and soil aspects, because your recommended policies were only based upon carbon storage, but the practical landscape planning needs a comprehensive perspective that balancing multi-aspects or sectors.

We have added this section as suggested by the reviewers. More specific and comprehensive landscape pattern distribution and optimization requires further research, which will be the direction of our future research. Thank you very much for your professional opinion, which is very important for us to improve our research! See lines 583-696 for details of the addendum.

Result: please remove some specific numbers in abstract to this section to show more details instead of only general results and findings.

Thank you very much for your suggestion, we have changed the relevant content of the abstract section

 

We have done our best to improve the manuscript and have made some yellow labeled changes in revising the paper that will not affect the content or framework of the paper. We sincerely appreciate the enthusiastic work of the editors/reviewers and hope that the revisions will be recognized. Thank you again for your comments and suggestions.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

I find the article well-written and the different land-use scenarios and their projections clearly underscore the need to balance economic development and ecological protection and enhancement. As far as carbon sequestration is concerned, proper land use planning is recommended, and their regulation needs to be regularly monitored and implemented. Improper land-use conversion has major implications on the amounts of carbon emitted vis-a-vis carbon sequestration and storage.  The Inter-governmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) recommends the Reduction of Emission due to Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) Program which can be incorporated in national and regional policies to attain carbon neutrality. One scenario that can be incorporated in future studies of this nature is to include nationally determined contributions (NDCs) of carbon emissions and storage in various sectors and land uses. Among the areas which need further studies are the built-up areas and other carbon-emitting sectors. In order to attain carbon-neutral communities carbon sinks and emissions need to be regularly monitored. Increasing forest cover in terrestrial and mangrove ecosystems to include greening of urban sprawls are measures that can adopted to decrease carbon emissions.

The study has clearly demonstrated the impacts of different land use scenarios projected over a longer period.  While it is true that economic development needs to be pursued but has to be balanced with social well-being and environmental protection to attain sustainable communities in the future.

Line by line review of the article shows the following observations: 

1. The carbon stock data sources for the above, below, and soil carbon have not been clearly indicated;

2.  There is an inconsistency in the use of units of carbon storage and emission while the text indicates Mg, it has to be expressed in Mg C. The graph's units are expressed, however, in tons. I suggest to use Mg C as the standard unit used in literature to express carbon storage and emission; 

3. Reference to Shaanxi has often been repeated but refers to the Shaanxi Province instead. It starts with the title of the manuscript which refers only to Shaanxi but the exact and complete locale of the study has not been indicated; and 

4. Incorporate the error bars in your bar graphs to indicate the variance of the measurements made. 

I recommend the acceptance of the paper after minor revision of the manuscript which I indicated in my line-by-line comments. I would like to see the revisions made before my final recommendation for acceptance. 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

We feel great thanks for your professional review work on our article. As you are concerned, there are several problems that need to be addressed. According to your nice suggestions, we have made extensive corrections to our previous draft, the detailed corrections are listed below.

1.The carbon stock data sources for the above, below, and soil carbon have not been clearly indicated;

Thank you very much for your suggestion, we have made changes to the relevant content, as detailed in lines 175-178

2.There is an inconsistency in the use of units of carbon storage and emission while the text indicates Mg, it has to be expressed in Mg C. The graph's units are expressed, however, in tons. I suggest to use Mg C as the standard unit used in literature to express carbon storage and emission; 

We sincerely thank the reviewers for their careful reading. Based on the reviewers' suggestion, we have corrected "toons" to "Mg C", and we thank you for your suggestion. We invited a native English speaker from the United States to help us polish the article.

 

3.Reference to Shaanxi has often been repeated but refers to the Shaanxi Province instead. It starts with the title of the manuscript which refers only to Shaanxi but the exact and complete locale of the study has not been indicated; and 

Thank you very much for your suggestion, this study uses the whole province of Shaanxi as the study area. To avoid ambiguity, relevant descriptions have been added in the relevant regions. See line 103 for details

 

4.Incorporate the error bars in your bar graphs to indicate the variance of the measurements made. 

Thank you very much for your suggestion to add error lines due to the nature of the data not being suitable. For Figure 8, we have added trend lines for each set of data to show the differences according to the time progression.

We have done our best to improve the manuscript and have made some yellow labeled changes in revising the paper that will not affect the content or framework of the paper. We sincerely appreciate the enthusiastic work of the editors/reviewers and hope that the revisions will be recognized. Thank you again for your comments and suggestions.

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf