Migration of Rural Residents to Urban Areas Drives Grassland Vegetation Increase in China’s Loess Plateau

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

First of all, thank you for letting me review this paper which concerns important and interesting issues of "Migration of rural residents to urban areas drives grassland vegetation increase in China's Loess Plateau". I have some comments and suggestions for minor revision which are presented below.

In the Abstract section: Line 24 ...7.7% should be added the word respectively,

Also in the abstract section, in the last part line 32, I suggest that add an important recommendation.

In key words, I suggest that added words Human activity and Climate change.

I don't understand the word inline 77 ....counties... is it countries?

Line 110 selects one of the two either underdeveloped or less developed.

Line 115 ...decades (needs source).

Line 131 is it really Landsat images are high-resolution?

5. Conclusion:

I suggest writing the conclusion part in an elaborative way by revising the most fundamental things from the introduction, method, result, and discussion.

 

 

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The objectives of the paper were to assess the extent to which human activities and climate change factors impact the increase of grassland vegetation and identify the specific human activities that drive the increase of grassland vegetation in the Loess Plateau. In Authors’ opinion, answering these questions will greatly improve a mechanistic understanding of the potential factors affecting long-term grassland vegetation dynamics in the semi-arid regions of the world.

The conclusions obtained by the authors are not very revealing and could be confirmed in a simpler way, however, the research workshop they use gives research to the scientific character and it allows to confirm the theses using scientific methods.

The paper needs some corrections:

I recommend to the authors to add more literature review in order to emphasize the need and originality of your research. So far is not clear what gap in the literature the paper fill.

The discussions section is looking more like a conclusions section. Please compare your results with other similar researches in order to emphasize the originality and novelty of the research. I recommend to the authors to present the managerial aspects of study, limits and future research directions. Also it is recommend to underline the link between the research and the aim and topic of the journal. 

Article and chapter titles should not be formulated as conclusions from the research. Change the title of the paper and the title of chapter 4.1.

You use writing in the first person very often (e.g. lines 20, 80, 108, 122, 125, 130, 132 etc.). You should change it to passive voice (e.g. no: we did,  but:  it was done … etc.). Change it in all paper.

Lines 27-28: I don’t understand the sentence: “The higher the urbanization rate is, the higher the number of residents migrates from rural areas to urban areas will be.” Maybe You should change “is” on “means”. And what does it mean: “will be”?

In Figure 1b I see four different colours and the same descriptions. You should change it.

You must rebuilt table 2. The page 9 cannot be orientated horizontally but vertically.

Maybe I am not a language expert but you should ask for proofreading of the paper to a native speaker.

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

This is a very well written and researched paper on how migration of rural residents to urban areas drives grassland vegetation increase in China’s Loess Plateau. I have attached the document with a few minor revisions required. However, the main issues are with the discussion section. The discussion should only interpret the results found it should not be used to discuss the PCA or reference and direct the reader to figures or tables, this should all be in the results section. Morever, there should also be no figures or supplementary material in the discussion. This also needs to be in results. The other main suggestions is to revise the abstract to better summarize the findings and that there are many figures which aren't directly tied to the main purpose of the paper and can be supplementary materials. 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx