The Spatial and Temporal Land Cover Patterns of the Qazaly Irrigation Zone in 2003–2018: The Case of Syrdarya River’s Lower Reaches, Kazakhstan
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper is well structured and well written but it needs some changes and the clarification of some aspect. Please check the punctuation and spaces in the document.
Introduction
Considering modern digital cartography and recent remote sensing images it is possible to provide a very powerful tool for a better-informed analysis and targeted decision-making strategies about the most appropriate rural landscape planning. In particular, I advise to consider also the paper:
· Statuto D.; Cillis G., Picuno P., 2019. GIS-based Analysis of Temporal Evolution of Rural Landscape: A Case Study in Southern Italy. Natural Resources Research. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11053-018-9402-7
that analyse the land use changes in a typical rural landscape in Southern Italy, using free and open-source GIS tools, covering a period of about two centuries, from 1829 to 2017.
Materials and methods
Figure 3. The caption is not under the figure.
Line 183. I assume that it refers to Table 2.
Figure 6. The map uses Landsat 8 false-color composition, but it is not very clear the representation of the land and the point of “Observed Land Use”. In my opinion, it could be better to use a map with True color and show the point in a more clear way.
Line 204. “The basic sequence of operations on supervised classification consisted of three main steps” but in the next bulleted list they seem to be only 2. Please check it.
Line 226-228. Some words are not clear. Please check. (meet requthe ired condition…. By majoa rity??????)
Results
Line 254. Is it Figure 9 or 8? The percentage of land cover are reported in Figure 8.
Line 264. But due to some reasons, Alfalfa, Saflor, and Wheat were not recognized, and we consider several reasons for that. What are these reasons??? Is it possible to insert a hint?
Line 265. Rice croplands had a minimum area in 2004 (~ 40 sq. km) but in Table 3 the value is 0.01, why?
Line 273. “The Supervised Random Forests classification” is not so clear in my opinion.
Figure 10. Please insert the title of the axes in the graph to make the representation clearer.
Line 332. “2015 data were selected” it refers for the year 2015? Please specify.
Figure 11. The comparison of classification and existing land cover products is not very clear because, I mean, the land cover categories are different. I know that they are expressed in different way, but I think that could be important, to make the figure easily understandable, merge the categories and represent them in a homogeneous way.
Line 350. The mean is not clear.
Figure 13. The image is not clear. Please improve the quality of the image and also the representation, considering mostly the “Observed land use”.
Line 378. Is it NDVI?
Line 387. Are they 300 sq. Km????
Line 411-412. “a huge part of the study area” is repeated 2 times.
Conclusion
Line 451-453. Can the approach presented in this paper be considered also for other study areas or it appear to be valid only for arid areas?
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear Reviewer, thank you very much for your reasonable and useful, detailed comments which of course contribute to the quality of our manuscript. We wish you good luck with your research works! It was pleasure for us to read and answer your comments.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The topic of the manuscript is very interested and actual. The methods used are quite appropriate. The results and their implications should be discussed in the "Discussion" section in the broadest context possible and limitations of the work highlighted. They have to be interpreted in perspective of previous studies and of the working hypotheses, pls. provide more examples of the studies.
Not all references are described in accordance with Instruction for Author, citing web-page in the text is also quite disturbing for readers.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer, thank you very much for your reasonable and useful comments which are very important. We also wish you good luck with your research works!
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
Please make corrections in the following lines:
Line 226, last two words: the required.
Line 378: you are missing an "I" in NDVI.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer, thank you very much for your reasonable and useful comments!
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The "Discussion" is still the weakest part of the manuscript. There is only one additional work cited, more studies have to be presented and compared in broader context, to highliht the novelty of the approach, compare with other similar studies etc.
Author Response
Dear Sir/Madame,
we tried to improved the discussion part and thank you for your time and patience.
Round 3
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript have been improved.
