Spatiotemporal Patterns in Land Use/Land Cover Observed by Fusion of Multi-Source Fine-Resolution Data in West Africa

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

 

General comments:

The manuscript is entitled "Spatiotemporal Patterns in Land Use/Land Cover Observed by Fusion of Multi-Source Fine Resolution Data in West Africa". There are problems with this manuscript, mainly related to the readability and composition of the manuscript. Other general comments:

ü  The authors should review the quality of English throughout the manuscript.

ü  There is a line spacing issue.

ü  Reduce the number of words in the abstract.

Specific comments:

Point 1: Line 69; spatial-temporal scales…be changed to spatiotemporal scales.

Point 2: Line 421; Table 3 should be moved to the annexe section.

Point 3: Line 497; Figure 2: Reduce the font size.

Point 4: In the result section, put the classification maps for the three periods (1990–2000, 2000–2010, and 2010–2020).

Point 5: Write some recommendations separately to policymakers and implementers as a new subsection after the conclusion.

Questions:

ü  What are the contributions of your research?

ü  How does it improve our overall understanding of the subject material?

ü  What future directions in research are suggested from your findings and conclusions?

ü  How does your research complement and support the key hypotheses from the published literature on this subject?

 

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for inviting me to review the manuscript. Upon careful examination, I have identified two strong aspects of the paper:

i) The literature review provides an investigation into the meanings of dormant and active transitions, emphasizing the importance of stationarity in LULC change analyses. The paper explores the variation in change patterns in West Africa at different times, among categories, and across different transitions.

ii) The paper utilizes an intensity analysis to link detected LULC patterns with underlying processes that cause transitions and understand environmental change in different time intervals. The findings, results, and output are valuable and provide readers with a comprehensive understanding of LULC transitions.

However, while the manuscript presents valuable output, the LULC classification scheme is not provided in detail. The authors claim to have adopted the framework and material from a previously published article (http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.11877), where only one author is common between the two papers. This raises concerns, and the authors should justify whether they used the previous material with the permission of all authors of the previous article or if the output of the previous paper is open-source.

Despite this concern, the manuscript's investigation of LULC transitions with intensity analysis remains valuable and guarantees publication.

A minor check is required. 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper presents an analysis of spatiotemporal patterns in land use/land cover in West Africa using fusion of multi-source fine resolution data. Through the methods used and the results obtained, the research represents brings important contribution to land use/cover change and resource management studies.

The Abstract is extensive and comprehensive.

The Introduction presents a complete assessment of the role and importance of land use/cover change investigations for global environmental changes in general, and for the spatial changes that affects the West African space, in particular.

The authors present numerous methodological aspects from the perspective of the various contributions of the literature to the state-of-the-art in this field. It would be useful to capture a series of similar approaches in relation to the causal factors of land use/cover change at the global/regional level in order to complete and strengthen the general picture of the scientific background of the work.

Materials and Methods are completely and comprehensively presented.

The Results are clear and well represented visually through the maps and graphs made.

The Conclusions present the most important research findings of the paper; however, some quantitative aspects could be added to support the concluding remarks.

In my opinion (non native speaker), English requires minor revisions.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

LAND Manuscript ID: 2364731 – Reviewer Comments:

Aims and contributions:

The objectives of the study are to examine the time intervals with the slowest and fastest annual rate of land use change; to examine the gains and losses; as well as the transition of land use/land cover categories in West Africa. This study can contribute immensely to the formulating of economic and social development policies, and it can help land use planners and policymakers to make crucial informed decisions about the land use management pertaining to crop production and food security in West Africa.

Abstract:

Line 27: The authors should delete “Land Use/Land Cover” and leave acronym “LULC” since you already stated the acronym earlier.

Introduction:

Line 166: The authors should delete the semicolon (;), and insert colon (:) after the short sentence – “Some of these LULC data are:”

Line 340: Insert a “space after Li [49] and was” and correct as “Li [49] was”.

Discussion:

Line 692, 4.1: The authors should insert “of” in the sub-heading. The right sentence is: “Identification of the time intervals with the slowest and fastest annual rate of change”

Strength and weakness:

The materials and methods, results, and discussion were properly highlighted and explained. However, to enrich the manuscript, I suggest the authors should include a sentence or short paragraph into the conclusion section explaining the “policy recommendations and sustainable land use” as related to this study.

 

 

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx