Land Use Transition and Its Driving Mechanism of “Human–Elephant” Conflicts Zone in Yunnan, China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Harmonious coexistence between man and nature is now an important link of sustainable development. Based on first-hand survey data, the author focuses on the relationship between human-elephant conflict and land use transition. The topic selection is very meaningful and the perspective is relatively novel. In general, this article is likely to be published, but in order to improve the quality of the article, there are still some improvements to be made. Specific suggestions are as follows:

       (1) The introduction needs some rewriting. One is that the key scientific question the study was supposed to address seems unclear, at least not explicitly mentioned by the authors. Second, compared with the existing researches, it seems unclear where the marginal contribution of this research is, which can be from the research perspective, the research content or the research method.

       (2) The introduction of data sources needs to be more detailed. The author used first-hand survey data, involving four time nodes across the 40-year cycle. Theoretically, the author should collect the previous data by farmer review, which may have some bias, and the author needs to make some in-depth discussion on the influence of this bias on the results.

       (3) The result analysis suggests more detail. The author has done research on the influencing factors of land use transition, but it seems that there is no measurement method, and it is still inclined to summary and induction. I don't know how the author considers this issue.

 Minor editing of English language required

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

 Seems like a different approach  and It is interesting , nevertheless the authors should explain in details each part of the index elaborated, and why each component might be included, also talking about how this index would be linked to the elephant conflict. I think the grammar should be improved and might be find out a better way to  show the results. 

Please find a native speaker or someone with scientific background  in order to double check the grammar lapses

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf