Meeting Human and Biodiversity Needs for 30 × 30 and beyond with an Iterative Land Allocation Framework and Tool

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is a good paper. I only have three minor concerns.

First, 30 by 30 is rarely mentioned in the paper, please considered is it necessary in the title.

Second, the format shoud be carefully checked before publication. For example, it is difficulty for the readers to tell which one is first-level subheading and which one is second-level subheading.

Third, the article is very long. It is recommended to shorten it for more readers.

Author Response

Reviewer #1:

We provide a point by point response, in italics,  to the review...

 

This is a good paper. I only have three minor concerns.

First, 30 by 30 is rarely mentioned in the paper, please considered is it necessary in the title.

Good point. We increased the mention, and also removed it from the title.

Second, the format shoud be carefully checked before publication. For example, it is difficulty for the readers to tell which one is first-level subheading and which one is second-level subheading.

This has been kindly addressed by MDPI staff (thank you team).

Third, the article is very long. It is recommended to shorten it for more readers.

Agreed that it is very long. We cut a large amount of text and several paragraphs. But we felt it important to keep the transdisciplinary and holistic view, so left most of the ideas and outline. That is a beauty of an all-online journal: can publish longer articles with very little extra cost.. 

Reviewer 2 Report

1. Missing key words.

 2. All names of Figures should be placed at the bottom of the Figures.

 3. The Introduction section is too long. It is suggested to delete some common-sense expressions and highlight the research background, research purpose and research significance, main research progress, existing shortcomings and innovative contributions of this paper.

 4. The Material section is too long. It is suggested to increase tabular display and reduce text narration.

 5. The Discussion section needs to be further expanded.

Author Response

Reviewer #2:

We provide a point by point response, in italics,  to the review…

 

1. Missing key words.

Keywords added back in.

2. All names of Figures should be placed at the bottom of the Figures.

Done.

3. The Introduction section is too long. It is suggested to delete some common-sense expressions and highlight the research background, research purpose and research significance, main research progress, existing shortcomings and innovative contributions of this paper.

We did that and we also deleted a few paragraphs. We also made a new section that clearly delineates the Introduction of the entire paper, from the description of the four implementation challenges.

4. The Material section is too long. It is suggested to increase tabular display and reduce text narration.

Agreed.  Some text narration removed.

5. The Discussion section needs to be further expanded.

Agreed.  Much text added, and the conclusion material is moved back out of the discussion into a conclusion.

Reviewer 3 Report

This manuscript was generally very well-written, and was organized in a way that helps readers understand most of the high-level concepts that were introduced. I have provided some comments, and feedback below, which I hope the authors find useful.

#1. Generally, the topic is interesting, and the framework was relatively well explained. Something that I thought was missing and was not confronted much, or contrasted, were existing and extant standards, policies, and regulations, surrounding land-use planning and conservation. There was not really much mention of either of these in the entire manuscript, which made it difficult to gauge how far away current endeavors are from target goals. While I understand that these may vary considerable, based on the country or location of interest, these could have been selected from the three case locations.

#2. I was not sure whether this paper should be consider a “meta-paper”, considering that it introduces case studies, and the literature reviewed did not appear to be entirely systematically identified. It may have been useful to clarify this point, since the literature search appeared to cover a lot of different domains.

#3. While I agree that there is an increased disconnection people experience with nature, it is worth mentioning that attempts are being made to introduce nature back into spaces through better urban (e.g., green spaces and corridors), and architectural (e.g., biophilic elements, and windows views) designs. Further, forest bathing experiences are being more widely advocated, helping people reconnect with nature, particularly when their everyday lives are based in urban spaces.

More minor points:

#1. There are no keywords.

#2. Please clarify “building living.”

#3. Open Science: The first paragraph on page 8 doesn’t seem overly necessary to the scope of this work, and could be removed. Further, it is not entirely clear what success leveraging of the internet really entails, particularly within the context of open science.

#4. P8, L303-304: I think “machine sensors” refers to “smart sensors”, which are fitted with advanced data streaming capabilities (e.g., Internet of Things.) These are become more popular to stream large amounts of information from their locale to generate big datasets.

#5: P22, L735 and P23, L768: Please check the reference error sources.

#6: Figure 12. I think the caption for the third image (below A and B) is hidden behind the illustration. Also, does the legend color key code apply to the entire image? There is an image to the bottom-right that has similar colors to the “Connectivity Value”, giving the impress that the entire study area has a relatively low connectively value, while Botswana, has a very high connectively value. Further, there are two colors study area, when also considering the key color under “B: Road Impact.”

Author Response

Reviewer #3:

 

We provide a point by point response, in italics,  to the review…

 

This manuscript was generally very well-written, and was organized in a way that helps readers understand most of the high-level concepts that were introduced. 

Thank you very much!

 

I have provided some comments, and feedback below, which I hope the authors find useful.

#1. Generally, the topic is interesting, and the framework was relatively well explained. Something that I thought was missing and was not confronted much, or contrasted, were existing and extant standards, policies, and regulations, surrounding land-use planning and conservation. There was not really much mention of either of these in the entire manuscript, which made it difficult to gauge how far away current endeavors are from target goals. While I understand that these may vary considerable, based on the country or location of interest, these could have been selected from the three case locations.

We added some material in to address this, including especially Adams et al. The manuscript was already too long as it was, so we were cautious in how much extra material we added here.

#2. I was not sure whether this paper should be consider a “meta-paper”, considering that it introduces case studies, and the literature reviewed did not appear to be entirely systematically identified. It may have been useful to clarify this point, since the literature search appeared to cover a lot of different domains.

Good point, we dropped the “meta-paper” assertion. Further we assert 

#3. While I agree that there is an increased disconnection people experience with nature, it is worth mentioning that attempts are being made to introduce nature back into spaces through better urban (e.g., green spaces and corridors), and architectural (e.g., biophilic elements, and windows views) designs. Further, forest bathing experiences are being more widely advocated, helping people reconnect with nature, particularly when their everyday lives are based in urban spaces.

Rather than adding more text to an already long paper, we instead downplayed the “disconnection from nature” narrative by removing some key text and moving other key text to lower down in the document.

More minor points:

#1. There are no keywords.

This is fixed.

#2. Please clarify “building living.”

That phrase is no longer in the text.

#3. Open Science: The first paragraph on page 8 doesn’t seem overly necessary to the scope of this work, and could be removed. Further, it is not entirely clear what success leveraging of the internet really entails, particularly within the context of open science.

The page numbers did not translate properly, but we are pretty sure we understand which paragraph you refer to, and it has been deleted.

#4. P8, L303-304: I think “machine sensors” refers to “smart sensors”, which are fitted with advanced data streaming capabilities (e.g., Internet of Things.) These are become more popular to stream large amounts of information from their locale to generate big datasets.

Thank you, we have clarified this sentence.

 

#5: P22, L735 and P23, L768: Please check the reference error sources.

Fixed, thank you.

#6: Figure 12. I think the caption for the third image (below A and B) is hidden behind the illustration. Also, does the legend color key code apply to the entire image? There is an image to the bottom-right that has similar colors to the “Connectivity Value”, giving the impress that the entire study area has a relatively low connectively value, while Botswana, has a very high connectively value. Further, there are two colors study area, when also considering the key color under “B: Road Impact.”

Thank you for this attention to detail. Nobody has ever noted these points. Unfortunately, the GIS data and file that were used to make this figure have been corrupted, so it is no longer editable within a reasonable amount of time. Fortunately, the third image (i.e. Figure 12C) is never referred to in the text as Figure 12C. We added text in the caption to clarify that this is the connectivity value map associated with the connectivity value legend. Regarding the inset legend, it is a standard practice to have each country be a color but not be associated with a legend.  We can add “The colors of the inset map do not correspond with any of the legends.” to the caption if the editor deems this necessary.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

All my concerns are treated carefully. It can be published in its present form.

Best wishes.

Author Response

Thank you, and thank you for your time in reviewing this manuscript.

Reviewer 2 Report

1. Too many keywords. Also, “30 X 30” doesn't fit as a keyword.

 

Author Response

Comment: "1. Too many keywords. Also, “30 X 30” doesn't fit as a keyword."

Reply: Thank you, we have changed to the more common term which is 30x30, and we have limited the number of keywords to the max limit of 10.

And, thank you for your time in reviewing this manuscript!

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank for considering all my original comments, this was highly appreciated. The revisions made to the manuscript were quite extensive, and carefully articulated. I thought that these addressed my earlier points. I have recommended a few more minor comments for considerations below:

#1: Figure 11 and other similar figures. Please consider placing the individual captions (e.g., A: Habitat Types) to the top-left of their image. Also, adding more vertical space between Figure 11(e) and the legend. Similarly, between the legend for Figure 11(a), and Figure 11(b). Legend could also be removed, since it should be clear to the reader what this represents. Does kilometers need to be spelt of could this be km?

#2: Very minor point, but worth considering. For Figure 13, the legend order goes from low to high, while for Figure 12 it is reversed. Maybe the authors could consider swapping the former.

#3: Discussion, paragraph 1: Please check "disconnected from nature nature". 

Author Response

Our replies are below, in italics:

Thank for considering all my original comments, this was highly appreciated. The revisions made to the manuscript were quite extensive, and carefully articulated. I thought that these addressed my earlier points.

Thank you! And thank you for your time in reviewing this manuscript.

I have recommended a few more minor comments for considerations below:

#1: Figure 11 and other similar figures. Please consider placing the individual captions (e.g., A: Habitat Types) to the top-left of their image. Also, adding more vertical space between Figure 11(e) and the legend. Similarly, between the legend for Figure 11(a), and Figure 11(b). Legend could also be removed, since it should be clear to the reader what this represents. Does kilometers need to be spelt of could this be km?

Thank you. A couple of the co-authors and end-users of the tool wanted the figures in this paper to be useful for conservation on the ground too, so requested that the graphics were as big as possible. To get the full page width, and also get a caption, this entailed crowding the elements of Figure 11.  In hindsight, the benefits of this probably do not outweigh the costs.  However, the GIS .mxds (project files) that we used to make these figures got corrupted over the years, likely when the lead author had an office fire, but possibly even before that. It would take much extra time to replicate the figures and then edit them, so I hope you understand why we choose to keep them as they are currently.

#2: Very minor point, but worth considering. For Figure 13, the legend order goes from low to high, while for Figure 12 it is reversed. Maybe the authors could consider swapping the former.

Nice catch! We never noticed that before. However, due to the reasons in the previous comment, we have decided it best to leave as is currently. I hope you understand.

#3: Discussion, paragraph 1: Please check "disconnected from nature nature". 

Thank you, second "nature" is now deleted.