A Comparative Analysis of Farmland Occupation by Urban Sprawl and Rural Settlement Expansion in China
, Shan He 5 and Shaofeng Yuan 1,*
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear editors and reviewers,
My co-authors and I wish to thank you for your encouraging and thoughtful comments, which have helped us to improve the paper. We have revised our paper according to the reviewers’ comments; a detail response to each point follows this brief letter. We have highlighted the revision part (in red) in the manuscript in response to the comments.
The following are our responses to the specific points that need change as per your comments.
Aims and contributions:
The broad aim of the paper is to comparatively analyze the farmland loss due to urban sprawl and rural settlement expansion at different scales from 2000 to 2020 in China using remote sensed and meteorological data. This study can contribute immensely to urban-rural development and environmental sustainability, and it can help urban land use planners, farmers, and policymakers to make crucial informed decisions about land use in urban and rural context in China.
Point 1: Abstract:
Line 22: I suggest that you close the gap between “a” and “comparative analysis”.
Line 25: km2 should be in superscript and corrected to “km2”
Line 34: The authors should correct the word “alloaction” to “allocation”.
Response 1: Thank you for your valuable suggestion. We have corrected these spilling errors. Please see line 23, 25, 27, and 39
Point 2:
Line 44: km2 should be in superscript and corrected to “km2”
Line 48: The authors should delete the word “responsibility” and change it to “responsible”
Line 118: I suggest that you delete the word “attempts” and changes it to “aims”
Response 1: Thank you for your valuable suggestion. We have corrected these spilling errors. Please see line 49, 53, and 124.
Point 3:
Line 532: Km2 should be in superscript and corrected to “km2” (I suggest that the authors correct “km2” throughout this manuscript).
Response 1: Thank you for your valuable suggestion. We have corrected these spilling errors throughout this manuscript.
Point 4:
The materials and methods, results, discussion, and conclusion were properly highlighted and explained.
However, to enrich the manuscript, I suggest the authors should include a short paragraph into the conclusion section explaining the concept of policy recommendations and sustainable environment as related to this study.
Response 1: Thank you for your valuable suggestion. In this paper, we have given some valuable policy advice on sustainable land use in the Discussion, please see line 476-428. Meanwhile, we have further pointed out the significance of these results for sustainable environment in the Conclusion, please see line 562-564, and 569-572.
Point 5:
Line 562-699: The authors should properly follow the guidelines for listing of references (italicized the name of journal; darkened the year of journal). When you abbreviate a particular journal title, put period (.) before the year of journal. Please see the examples below and revise this section. To properly list your references, read the MDPI Reference List and Citations Style Guide from the Website.
Response 1: Thank you for your valuable suggestion. We have corrected the format of the references according to the MDPI Reference List and Citations Style Guide. Please see the References.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
General Comments:
This is an interesting study on the effect of urban sprawl and rural settlement expansion on farmland and its net primary productivity in China. The authors have done a good job of collecting a 20-year dataset from the various provinces in China. The paper is generally well written and structured. Sufficient information about the literature review was presented for readers to follow the present study rationale and methods and also the findings were quite informative. However, in my opinion, the paper has some shortcomings regarding some texts. Below, I have provided some remarks in the text. Also, in the abstract section, I suggest that you add some analytical data results as this would help to have a better understanding of your research findings.
Specific Comments:
Line 34 p1. Change.."allocation" of urban... to ... "allocation" of urban...
Line 48, Change China is "responsibility" to China is "responsible"
Line 67, Change "Unit states" to United States"
You can look through your manuscript and check your spellings again.
Author Response
Dear editors and reviewers,
My co-authors and I wish to thank you for your encouraging and thoughtful comments, which have helped us to improve the paper. We have revised our paper according to the reviewers’ comments; a detail response to each point follows this brief letter. We have highlighted the revision part (in red) in the manuscript in response to the comments.
The following are our responses to the specific points that need change as per your comments.
Point 1: This is an interesting study on the effect of urban sprawl and rural settlement expansion on farmland and its net primary productivity in China. The authors have done a good job of collecting a 20-year dataset from the various provinces in China. The paper is generally well written and structured. Sufficient information about the literature review was presented for readers to follow the present study rationale and methods and also the findings were quite informative. However, in my opinion, the paper has some shortcomings regarding some texts. Below, I have provided some remarks in the text. Also, in the abstract section, I suggest that you add some analytical data results as this would help to have a better understanding of your research findings.
Response 1: Thank you for your valuable suggestion. We have added some analytical data results in the Astract. These results focused more on the gap between the total loss of farmland due to urban sprawl and rural settlement expansion. Please seen line 27-31. t
Point 2: Specific Comments:
Line 34 p1. Change.."allocation" of urban... to ... "allocation" of urban...
Line 48, Change China is "responsibility" to China is "responsible"
Line 67, Change "Unit states" to United States"
You can look through your manuscript and check your spellings again.
Response 2: Thank you for your valuable suggestion. We have corrected these spilling errors throughout this manuscript.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
Review land-1946327
Title: A comparative analysis of farmland occupation by urban sprawl and rural settlement expansion in China.
The topic of the paper is relevant and very interesting. The paper addresses crucial issue related to farmland loss and farmland NPP loss caused by urban sprawl and rural settlement expansion. This issue is essential from the point of view of the effective use of the agricultural area land and food safety.
I have the following comments:
1. What are the causes of uncontrolled development of cities and villages? Is there no law in China that regulates such an expansion?
2. Why is there no information regarding what percentage of farmland was lost as a result of urban sprawl and rural settlement expansion? The information is given in numbers only: 49,086.6 km2 and 18.006.84 km2 - row 230 and row 256.
3. How is net primary productivity (NPP) of farmland calculated? Please explain that.
4. Row 256 says - Table 2 should be Table 1.
5. What can be the role of the technological development in reducing the negative results of farmland loss caused by urban sprawl and rural settlement expansion?
6. Are changes regarding the use of farmlands for developing cities and villages affecting the structure of farms, or changes in agriculture. Are larger, more modern, and more efficient farms established? The changes in agriculture are most often stimulated by the economic development of the country. The outflow of the agricultural population to non-agricultural activities, on the one hand, increases the pressure to occupy agricultural land for non-agricultural purposes, but also allows for the modernization of agriculture, and above all, to improve the efficiency of using labor resources in agriculture. I leave this comment as a problem for further research. I fully agree with the authors that the management of agricultural land must be subject to some state intervention.
7. The work lacks data on the actual change in agricultural outputs. The authors mention it as a limitation of the conducted research. Therefore, the presented picture is incomplete. I understand that it will be a focus of a further research.
Best regards
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear editors and reviewers,
My co-authors and I wish to thank you for your encouraging and thoughtful comments, which have helped us to improve the paper. We have revised our paper according to the reviewers’ comments; a detail response to each point follows this brief letter. We have highlighted the revision part (in red) in the manuscript in response to the comments.
The following are our responses to the specific points that need change as per your comments.
Reviewer 3
The topic of the paper is relevant and very interesting. The paper addresses crucial issue related to farmland loss and farmland NPP loss caused by urban sprawl and rural settlement expansion. This issue is essential from the point of view of the effective use of the agricultural area land and food safety.
I have the following comments:
Point 1: What are the causes of uncontrolled development of cities and villages? Is there no law in China that regulates such an expansion?
Response 1: Thank you for your valuable suggestion. We have given the reason uncontrolled development of cities and villages. “In the process of urban-rural transformation, due to the imprefect rural housing system and the increasing income of farmers, a tendency of “outward expansion while inside hollowing, one family of more house, building new houses without dismantling the old one, unused new houses” was widespread in rural China”. please see line 96-100. “In order to control the increasing urban and rural construction land and farmland loss, Chinese government has innovatively proposed the Requisition–Compensation Balance of farmland Policy and the Integrated Consolidation and Allocation of Rural-Urban Construction Land Policy”.please see line 480-483.
Point 2: Why is there no information regarding what percentage of farmland was lost as a result of urban sprawl and rural settlement expansion? The information is given in numbers only: 49,086.6 km2 and 18.006.84 km2 - row 230 and row 256.
Response 2: Thank you for your valuable suggestion. We have added the information regarding what percentage of farmland was lost as a result of urban sprawl and rural settlement expansion. Please see line 239-242, 268-272.
Point 3: How is net primary productivity (NPP) of farmland calculated? Please explain that.
Response 3: Thank you for your valuable suggestion. In section 2.3.2, we have used the CASA model to calcualte the net primary productivity of farmland. Please see line 185-207.
Point 4: Row 256 says - Table 2 should be Table 1.
Response 4: Thank you for your valuable suggestion. We have revised this error. Please see line 271.
Point 5: What can be the role of the technological development in reducing the negative results of farmland loss caused by urban sprawl and rural settlement expansion?
Response 5: Thank you for your valuable suggestion. We focused more on the farmland loss caused by urban and rural construction land expansion in this study. The impact of technological development on farmland protection has not been explored in depth. In my opinion, rural land remediation can increase the area of farmland and improve the quality of arable land by relying on land restoration technology. Meanwhile, The development of industrial technology will also help improve land use efficiency and reduce the occupation of arable land by urban industrial expansion. These theoretical assumptions are expected to be further corroborated in future related studies,. Thanks again the reviewers for their inspiration.
Point 6: Are changes regarding the use of farmlands for developing cities and villages affecting the structure of farms, or changes in agriculture. Are larger, more modern, and more efficient farms established? The changes in agriculture are most often stimulated by the economic development of the country. The outflow of the agricultural population to non-agricultural activities, on the one hand, increases the pressure to occupy agricultural land for non-agricultural purposes, but also allows for the modernization of agriculture, and above all, to improve the efficiency of using labor resources in agriculture. I leave this comment as a problem for further research. I fully agree with the authors that the management of agricultural land must be subject to some state intervention.
Response 6: Thank you for your valuable suggestion. W aggree with the reviewer. The development of intensive agriculture and modern farms is are effective means to improve the efficiency of agricultural land use in China. China’s urbanization has transferred a large number of agricultural populations to cities and towns, and urban expansion has inevitably taken up surrounding farmland. The decline of the agricultural population provides opportunities for agricultural scale operations. However, due to the lack of an effective rural land management system, the rapid expansion of rural construction land has led to further occupation of farmland. To protect arable land, China has introduced a series of land management policies to ensure the red line of 1.8 billion mu of farmland. However, in order to further improve the farmland protection system, the government should pay more attention to improving the efficiency of agricultural land use and increase the economic benefits of farmers to stimulate the enthusiasm of farmers to protect farmland, rather than relying on rigid control measures to forcefully prevent the loss of farmland. Thanks again for the research inspiration given by the reviewers.
Point 7: The work lacks data on the actual change in agricultural outputs. The authors mention it as a limitation of the conducted research. Therefore, the presented picture is incomplete. I understand that it will be a focus of a further research.
Response 7: Thank you for your valuable suggestion. The actual change in agricultural output is an important indicator reflecting the quality of agricultural land. We have pointed out this flaw in Section 4.4, and we will further improve this research in combination with socio-economic development data in the future. Please see line 537-540.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
