Land Use and Land Cover Change Effects on the Value of Ecosystem Services in the Konqi River Basin, China, under Ecological Water Conveyance Conditions

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The submitted manuscript presented an important case study that examine the impacts of ecological water transfer on the land cover and land use, and the subsequent ecosystem services value changes in an arid floodplain landscape. The impacts of water transfer were studied by a quntitative approaches to land use and ecosystem services value changes. The socio-ecological and economic impacts of such inter-basin water transfers (IBTs) project are highly controversial. Thus quantitative evidences in this topic may be of international interest. However, many parts of the submitted study is poorly written, needs significant improvement to meet scientific standard, uses poorly defined scientific term and english language. 

 

 

 

 

The introduction is poorly written, missing important international literatures, but also the description of key terms, projects and frameworks such as ecological water transfer, its impacts on the biodiversity, land use and society in the light of international researches. Moreover, some introduction on terms and researches on ecosystem services valuation approaches, among which the monetary approach applied in this study is on possible way. Discussion should be significantly re-written. In the present form, discussion is rather the re-telling of the story of water transfer project of the study area than the discussion of the most important and relevant results of the study. In the present form, conclusion is rather the summary of the result than a synthesis drawn upon your result and the discussion of result in the context of evidences provided by other international researches. I suggest to re-write it a synthetizing way and also involving management ant nature conservation implications. Even after re-writing the manuscript, it is highly questionable it it fits the scope of the journal as it only marginaly discuss issues related to the broad fields of forest ecology and management or its relation to the society. It focuses much more on floodplain management. Another consern is the novelty of the results, as the impact of water transfer on river basins is a well-research topic. However, if the authors more clearly write that in what respect their result may be regarded novel and how the results relates to the international scientific evidences, it would definately improve the manuscript. See my specific comments below.

Abstract

The relevance of the topic is poorly introduced and discussed in the abstract. On the other hand, the results section is unproportionally long. The abstract would benefit from a little bit more introduction at the beginning and some more conclusion and/or management implication at the end.

 Line 18: ’closely related to it’ – it seems as repetition. If the process of land use change has a significant impact on ES, then they, of course, closely interrelated.

 Line 21-22: ‘tree forest land use areas’ – What does this term mean?

 Line 23: grassland? – What aspects or characteristics of grassland? Do you mean on cover of grassland? Please clarify it.

 Line 24-25: ‘water area shows a trend of stable change’ – In this formulation this sentence is a little bit hide the clear result. It would probably more helpful to understand the situation if you indicate here the direction of the trend (decreasing or increasing?).

 Line 27-28: ‘ESV … was high … and low’ - compared to what? Please specify it.

 Introduction

Generally, it is poorly written, missing important international literatures. I would kindly suggest to briefly introduce the theory of ecosystem services evaluation and among them your approaches, in my understanding, is the part of monetary approaches. The introduction also lacks a chapter on the general introduction of ecological water transfer, of which socio-ecological and economic impacts are controversial. Please cite the most recent international literature in this topic.

 Line 55: Please give the long form of this abbreviated term at the first mention to be clear what does this mean.

 Line 64: Please give more specification on multifunctionality of watershed ecosystems in general. In what terms do you refer to multifunctionality?

 Line 69: ‘essential part of the desert riparian forest’ – It is a repetation. Just mentioned above in Line 66.

 Line 71: What do you mean on ‘ecological water supply’. Please specify it.

 Line 91: What does ‘typical river section’ mean in your context. Characteristics or typical to what scale? Please give more details.

 Line 88-96: This paragraph is a mix of introduction, the description of study aims and their socio-economic and management implication. I would suggest to clearly formulate here what is the aim of the research presented in this paper and separate them from their socio-economic and ecological importance.  The importance and implication should be presented elsewhere in previous parts of the introduction. As I understood, this paper has the following research aims: i) to reveal the spatial and temporal change of land cover and land use and ii) to show the change of ecosystem service values as a response of ecological water transfer. All the other points in this paragraphs are rather the soci-economic and ecological consequences of this water transfer or river revitalization and justification of its necessity.

Material and methods

 Line 101: ‘diminishes’ may probably not the best term to describe the characteristics of the terrain. Please check English. Maybe decline or shrink would be more suitable.

 Line 103: An unnecessary dot is placed after Tarim Basin.

 Line 104. Please give precise climatic data instead of mentioning ‘dry and little precipitation’, e.g. the amount of precipitation, mean temperature.

 Line 105: What characteristics has a typical section of the river here?

 Line 109: Different in what terms? Please give more information on this aspect and also on what does a typical section of the river look like.

 Figure 1: The caption of Figure 1 is not complete as it is not the ‘schematic diagram of the study’, rather represent the geographical location of the study area. The map and its legend also need some clarification. E.g. 1) the blue colour indicates not only a basin but a specific river basin: the Tarim Basin. It is also should be written on the map, above the blue line; 2) the green colour indicates a specific country, Lopnur Country?; 3) Red dots along the river basin are not fully explained. It is unclear what kind of ‘dividing points’ are they.

 Line 126: Why did you use a capital letter in the term ‘Unused land’, while the other categories are written with lower case?

 Line 131: A reference needed for supporting data source on food price. Without giving this references, the reader do not know where to find this essential data involved into the analysis.

 Line 146: ‘worth of the crop’ – Maybe ‘value of the crop’ will better describe the meaning of the term.

 Table 1: The term ‘ecological value coefficient’ appear in the caption and the first row of the table is something new, and mentioned here for the first time. I think you mean on ‘ecosystem service value coefficient’ as this later term were sufficiently described in Line 144-162. Please do not use different terms for the same phenomenon. I also think that variables presented in the Table 1 describes not only ecological values, e.g. raw materials or food production may less be regarded as ecological values. Moreover, it is not clear what the authors mean on ‘Providing and aesthetic landscape’ in the last column of the table. Does it somehow related to provisioning ecosystem services? Furthermore, does it really true that ‘Construction land’ or ‘Town’ do not have any ecosystem service value as the zero values indicating in the table? Finally, in later tables authors displayed ‘settlements’ as land use type. How does it relate to ‘Construction land’ or ‘Town’ used here. And why ‘roads’ ESV are not presented in this table, while it is presented in later tables and figs?

 Results

Line 189: I think the following sentence is unnecessary here, as it is proven in the material and method section that the results are based on a well-designed quantitative analysis: ‘Based on remote sensing images, the statistics on land use were tallied.’

 Line 190-193: These lines are redundancy, presented previously in the material and method sections and also in the captions of tables. Please write only the most important results of your research in this section and move all explanations on how the results were drawn into the material and method section.

 Line 195: What does ‘arboreal forest’ mean here? It is mentioned for the first time. Please avoid using new terms in the results section.

 Line 198: ‘residential land’ is also a new term here. Is it the same as ‘Construction land’ or ‘Town’ displayed in Table 1?

 Line 200: ‘land use dynamic degree assessment’ is also a new term. I think it is the same as ‘singular land use dynamic attitude’ assessment mentioned in the material and method section. I would once again suggest using the same terms throughout the whole manuscript.

 Figure 2: What do black lines mean on sub-figure b?

 Information displayed in Table 4 and Table 5 are highly redundant as the same information was shown in Figure 4. Pleas remove this tables to supplementary materials.

 Line 274: Sub-section ‘Dynamic changes in ecosystem service values’ contains reasoning which should be presented elsewhere in the discussion section, e.g. Discussing different strategies at the upper section of the river which in turn resulted in the expansion of green space is not studied but rather the discussion of the studied pattern in data.

 Line 275: Why do you use these two different term here: ‘the ecosystem service values and the ecological service values’?

 Line 276: What do you mean on ‘each system’? Does it refer to ‘land use type’? If yes, please use the previously introduced term consistently.

 Line 277: How does a typical section of river look like? Please display more information on this.

 Line 277-280: It sounds a little bit as oversimplification that the watershed provided only nine ecosystem services. I think this study involves the examination of nine services. Please nuance your statement.

 Line 282: Unnecessary dot is displayed.

 Line 284: What does that mean that the lower section matched the upper section in style? Style in what respect?

 Line 289: This table involves not only spatial but temporal changes as well. Please pay attention to it in the title of the table.

 Discussion

Discussion should be significantly re-written. In the present form, discussion is rather the re-telling of the story of water transfer project of the study area than the discussion of the most important and relevant results of your study.

 Conclusion

In the present form, conclusion is rather the summary of the result than a synthesis drawn upon your result and the discussion of result in the context of evidences provided by other international researches. I suggest to re-write it a synthetizing way and also involving management ant nature conservation implications.

A careful proof-reading by an English native is needed before the manuscript is submitted again.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Manuscript.

Number.: Forests-2348354

Title: Impact of Land Use and Land Cover Changes on Ecosystem Services Value under the Ecological Water Transfer Conditions in the Konqi River Basin

 

Major revisions are needed for this manuscript to be published in the Forests.

 

Introduction

1.      What is the main innovative aspect of the research study?

2.      Research on this topic should be explained in detail as to how it relates to forests.

Materials and Methods

3.      A methodology to account for errors or quality control should be added.

Results

4.      Why is it not calculated at the total basin area when calculating land use and land cover changes in the river basin?

5.      How can you prove the reliability of the calculated results of land use and land cover changes?

6.      When making a transfer matrix, you should use the kappa coefficient. Or other quality assurance must be done.

7.      The general focus of the journal will be on forests, so you should consider forest changes more in your research.

 

Conclusions

8.      Some numerical results should be included in this section.

 

9.      In particular, a section with information related to forest changes should be added.

 

 

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for considering my reccomendation and integrating them in order to improve the quality of your paper. I think all parts of the manuscript were significantly improved except the conclusion. It is still full of repetetion, which statement are listend in the results or in the discussion section. I would reccomend to shorten its extent excluding these repetitions. For example Lines 486-490 should be presented rather only in the results section. There is no need to repeat this pure results sentences in the conclusion section.

I would kindly suggest to revise your manuscript by an native English speaker.

The text is full of typo. Please read the manuscript carefully to eliminate them.

The clear introduction of the novelty of your research is still missing. Is it the first such research in the studied region or in a broader geographic scale? If not, what do you consider as a new discovery?

The english of the manuscript must be significantly improved.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Kappa coefficient should be entered in the results section.

It is good. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx