Land Use Simulation and Landscape Ecological Risk Assessment on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 1)
It is an interesting research work on land use change, its driving factors, and landscape ecological risk on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. The idea is good, and the writing is good too. It is suggested to be accepted for publication after minor revision. Here are some suggestions to revise the manuscript. 1. The scientific questions of this study,like the simulation of land use change and landscape ecological risk, should be clarified and revised more clearly, as well as the significance and application of this study 2. The data and methods should be checked and described with the necessary details. For example, the background and related parameters of the PLUS models, also the verification of simulation results of land use. More information on the scenario background should be added. 3. The results and discussion should be revised to focus on the spatial and temporal changes in land use and landscape ecological risks. The quality of the figures and tables, like Figure 2, should be improved for more clearly. Line 226, why the landscape vulnerability can be divided into 6 levels, also the Fi? 4. More discussion should be added on the novelty and new findings, as well as the limitation and outlooks. For example, land use change simulation, landscape ecological risk change and it potential application.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.Thank you very much for your comments. Although there are still some problems, you have commented positively on my manuscript from the beginning. Every comment you made improving the quality of my manuscript greatly. In a sense, your comments have encouraged me a lot more than just the manuscript.Thanks again.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 2)
I carefully read the author's revised draft, but unfortunately my opinion was not respected by the author, who did not systematically revise the paper according to my opinion. This includes the marginal contribution of the article, including the construction of the theoretical analysis framework of the research.
Author Response
Please see the attachment. I'm sorry that the first revision did not satisfy you, but I believe that this revision has solved the problem you raised. Thanks for very much your comments, I learned a lot from the construction of the research framework.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)
The manuscript addresses a relevant scenario analysis of the ecological risk assessment on a vast and valuable area.
The writing seems readable since the use of acceptable plain English, but many key points about the methods and the results remain poorly developed so that spoiling the reader's interest and trust.
I would ask the authors to rewrite section 2.3 to explain better how they tackled the problem, and hopefully make the interested reader able to follow or even reproduce the steps of the adopted approach; maybe this goal could be accomplished by reducing the equations (too dense and full of symbols not clearly described in the accompanying text) and including more direct references to the literature and the manuals of PLUS model implementation, and at the same time focusing on the logical input-output sides of the model. In the present form, the details complicate any attempt to follow the process for people not yet accustomed to the modelling framework, so heavily narrowing the set of potential readers.
On the results, I would suggest checking the way some claims are presented; adjusting the tone and being more precise about the novelty of the findings could improve the manuscript and enhance its value as a published scientific paper, because the offered insights, even if some of the results do not sound exceptional.
To be concrete, I would just highlight some points that sprang out as critical during my reading of the manuscript:
L. 97-98 on page 3:
This data adopts emerging methods such as cloud platform and cloud computing,
I see only technologies (customary to date) and no mention of any method; moreover, I find it weird that the subject of the statement is data instead of the body responsible for producing and releasing the dataset.
L. 117 on page 4:
two land use development probabilities a and b were generated.
It seems to me that authors are referring to patterns, and labels a and b do not help clarify it (f.i., a few lines below, in the caption of Figure 2, letters a to k are used to label driving factors).
L. 157 on page 6:
${OP^{1, t}}_{i,k}$ is the probability that land use type ? develops into type ?,
The dependence of the OP symbol by (1 and) t is not clarified here nor elsewhere; the same happens about $D^k_t$ introduced on line 159.
The meaning of subscript i has been inconsistently defined as the unit (line 158), land use type (lines 170, 171) and then on line 172 again apparently the identifier of an area (but I am afraid the final comma in the sentence: "$?_?$ for the actual land use data of 2010 land use types in the area of the ?." includes some misprints.
Explanations of other symbols and quantities become weird on line 177: "????? is ????? coefficient"
and really hard to believe on lines 179-181:
"If the value of ????? coefficient is greater than 0.7, it indicates that the simulation results are more accurate than the actual results".
Please, authors would note that their (second hand) quote never states what is included in the manuscript:
Wu, C., Chen, B., Huang, X., & Dennis Wei, Y. H. (2020). Effect of land-use change and optimization on the ecosystem service values of Jiangsu province, China. Ecol. Indic., 117, 106507. doi: 10.1016/j.ecolind.2020.106507
Generally, the value of Kappa greater than 0.7 indicate higher con-
sistency, and the range of values from 0.4 to 0.7 shows consistency, and
those below 0.4 indicate poor consistency and poor simulation accuracy
(Feinstein and Cicchetti, 1990).
The presentation of results suffers from similar issues of clarity and consistency, making it hard to recognize the quality of the findings.
Here are a few examples:
L. 240 on page 8:
It can be intuitively seen from Figure 4
I have found it hard to figure out that; I trust authors can supply more quantitative evidence.
L. 295 on page: 10
and the P-values and OR values of each driving factor were obtained to explore the degree of influence of each driving factor on land use type change. The results are shown in Table 6.
The Odds Ratios and the p-values related to the coefficients of the Logistic Regression are very poorly presented and the many 0.000 values in the mentioned table 6 do not help to support what the author claims; values of OR = 1 (i.e., B = 0 => Exp(B) = 1) are captured by many 95% confidence intervals in the same Table; nonetheless, the p-value on the same rows is always less than 5%, suggesting that the coefficients always significantly differ from zero. This presentation of results could not be more misleading and, regrettably, zeroes any trust in the results of the estimation procedure. Moreover, no mention is made of which statistical software has been used.
Overall I do not deem the manuscript worth being published in its present form and hope the authors would review it thoroughly before resubmitting it.
Author Response
Please see the attachment. Thank you very much for your comments, which enhance the rigor of the manuscript.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 2)
I have no other comments, thank you.
Author Response
This reviewer has no other comments.Thank you very much!
Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)
Please, find my remarks in the attached document.
I would ask You to remove the faulty and misleading Logistic Regression analysis: it does not deliver what it promises, the approach is poorly explained, and the results of the method are wrongly interpreted in the manuscript.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Please see the attachment. Thank you very much!
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 3
Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)
I see that the concern is more focused on a timely publication than a quality publication. I cannot oppose any rigidity from my side to this, since it is an unfortunate and hazardous general tendency in scientific publication; so I green-light the manuscript in the present form with an hearty message to its authors, especially the younger ones: in this struggle for “publish or perish” science is already losing , that means You are perishing (instead of flourishing) as a true scientist, even if advancing in the academic career, as I really hope for You.
This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Land use change and ecological assessment of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP) are vital for the sustainable development and alpine ecological conservation of the QTP. It is an interesting research work on land use simulation and landscape ecological risk assessment of the QTP. It is recommended to be accepted for publication after some revision. Here are some suggestions and questions to improve the manuscript.
1. The introduction part should be rewritten and improved for clearer. More research progressed on land use change, driving forces, and landscape ecological assessment, especially in the alpine area, should be added. The scientific questions of this study should be clear and definite.
2. More information on the method and data used should be added for more scientific, like the PLUS model, methods on scenarios, scenario background, landscape risk assessment, and the selection of the driving factors.
3. Discussion on land use simulation and its results, driving forces, and landscape ecological risk should be reorganized, added, and rewritten for clarity and concise.
4. The framework and writing should be updated for more scientific. The manuscript should be revised and checked carefully.
5. There are some questions for improvement listed below.
L91: Location of the study area? It seems that all the captions of the tables and figures should be renamed and rewritten for more scientific, it should be a sentence, not a phrase.
L100: forestland, shrubland, sparse woodland?
L101: DEM? GDP? River and lake? Why the distance to the river is a driving factor, but not including the lakes? There are many lakes in the QTP with an important role in water supply and ecological functions. Maybe the rivers and lakes should be included.
L223 More information on the land use scenario should be added for more clarity, more words should be added to the discussion parts.
L274 How to assign the value of different driving factors? Why 0 and 1 for some and Continuous numerical variables for others?
L288: Is the legend of Figure 5 right? It seems should be landscape ecological risk levels.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
This is an interesting and meaningful study. However, the theoretical analysis of the whole study is weak, and the key scientific questions and marginal contributions are unclear. Here are some suggestions for your reference:
(1) The introduction needs a modest rewrite. One is that it is not clear what the key scientific question is to be addressed. Second, compared with the previous research, the marginal contribution of this study is not clear.
(2) Research lacks an in-depth dialogue with classical theory and classical research. The outstanding manifestation lies in the lack of theoretical support in the selection of indicators and methods of this research. It is suggested to increase the dialogue with classical theory and classical research, and put forward a theoretical analysis framework of the research under the guidance of classical theory and combined with the reality.
(3) The research and discussion section needs to be further strengthened. What are the differences between this study and other studies? What are the reasons for the differences? What implications can this study have for future research? What implications can this study provide for regional policy making? These can be further clarified in the discussion section.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
