Carbon Sequestration Total Factor Productivity Growth and Decomposition: A Case of the Yangtze River Economic Belt of China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

 The figures are of poor quality. In many instances it is hard to understand what the authors are trying to convene.

 

Although the English and grammar was good most of the times, there were words or phrases in lines 651, 774, 777 and 793 that did not confer the intended meaning.

 

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

The paper under the title: “Carbon Sequestration Total Factor Productivity Growth and Decomposition: A Case of the Yangtze River Economic Belt of China” deals with a very interesting research topic of great interest to a broader community. Although the paper is very interesting, the papers lacks on several typos, structure and the flux of ideas. The methodology does not allow replication. Discussion does not present proper link with previous studies of the literature. The figures are made with poor quality. Finally, I am not sure if this paper would fit better as a review article or a research article to Sustainability Journal.

I am not a native English speaker, but I feel a English proof-reading service strongly adviced prior acceptance. I am also wondering about the new proposed methodology. I was unable to find articles under the topic "carbon sequestration total factor productivity" what the authors labeled as CSTFP. In fact, the reader is conducted to understand that this is an improvement to previous TFP. However, the TFP concept could be better introduced. Then, what are the advantages of considering CSFTP?  

Below some other concerns:

L18: did you evaluate 3 models and you perform such study over 3 watersheds?

L40: please introduce better the importance of vegetation and photosynthesis;

L63: therefore (please check several typos like this);

L89: please explain your abbreviations; Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD);

L72: always check the references, several are not correctly formated; additionally, some appears in the list twice; some didnt appear; quite confuse your paper;

L101: explain reasons for selecting this study area;

L171: the "analysis framework" does not follow a proper flowchart of activities what makes understanding a bit difficult; how to conect everything and follow the steps allowing reproducible research;

L223: please check space, formatation and style;

L319: check quality of the figure, almost unable to read axis of that figure;

L330: please check quality of the figure, use proper colors you can explain, explore cartographic elements as requested and label with letters A and B and explain in caption;

L337: add the source of the information provided in Table 1; it would be worth to know the timeframe and conversion of the local currency to US dollars (as a caption of table1);

L374: provide source as a caption;

L434: provide reference;

L449: by the end a proper flowchart would be necessary to follow methodology;

L469: explain the three models in the caption;

please check quality of figures 7 and 8;

Discussion section: a better link with previous findings reported in literature must be presented;

In general, the paper requires a better reformulation. THe idea and concept are nice, but try to explore accordingly.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Abstract:

»» Overall, abstract needs to be review. Authors may need to find a better strategy to summarize and present in an appealing way the information about their manuscript

» The abstract length is too long. Authors need to check if the 200 words are not overpassed

»» Authors should remove noise from the abstract, such as “percentage points”, or repeating words such as “firstly”

» There is much numeric information in the abstract which might be overwhelming for a first insight.  Authors need to review if sharing so many numeric results it is fundamental on the abstract. More than 10 % values seem too much for an abstract. A strategy would be to describe the key results

L12-14 Please, review. Is the carbon sequestration effective for dealing with dilemmas between promoting economic development and mitigating climate change through carbon sequestration total factor productivity growth just in river basin economy? This is the retained idea of the described sentence. Authors need to clarify that this is not exclusively to river basin economy

L14-15 Replace the question by an affirmative sentence

L31 Remove obviously

 

Text

L42-44 Add reference

L63 Review “Therefor”

L64 Before using the CSTFP acronym, authors need to explicitly mention what CSTFP states. Even if it is done in the abstract, the same needs to be done in the text. The same applies to all other acronyms. Please, review and make sure all are properly excplicty  

L73-77 Add reference

L80 “such” should be within the previously text

L91 Remove “obviously”

L121 “we would like to apply” it does not suit the context of a manuscript

L621-625 Rephrase without introducing a rhetorical question

L765 remove obviously

»» The introduction is too long and a bit confusing. From L121 on, the clearness and coherence are lacking a structure. For example, L121 “In this paper we would like to apply”; L137-138 “in this paper…we would like to”. It does not make sense. Authors need to re-structure all the text from L121 in order to deliver coherence and structure.    

»» Why in some equations the others cite the sources and in another’s don´t (methodology section)? Please, add the sources for each equation (even if adapted) if it is not originally proposed.

»» Section 3 is an actual methodological approach input to formulate the analysis and not an empirical analysis as stated. Study region and analysis can be introduced in the methodology, which is already too extensive. If authors prefer to separate those, they need to replace “empirical analysis” section by another name. One suggestion could be "study area and data".

»» Please, add an inset map (National-Regional-Local) for the Fig.3. One in another continent may not know exactly where Yangtze is located.

» All the visual elements need to be reviewed and replaced for high quality images. The images are too coarse – equations; graphs, maps. They are not effectively displayed, and they cannot be presented in the actual form. One clear illustration of a coarse image can be identified in Fig.8: it is impossible to read the annotations as well as the legend, and even the scale. Moreover, the image quality is very low and therefore the maps have a lower quality at the same rate.

» In my opinion, section 2 and 3 care to be review in order to be more explicitly and simplified.

» Section 4 should be dedicated only to results. Following, authors may add section 5 to be only dedicated to the discussion of those results (instead of 4.2)

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript improved significantly. However, the quality of the figures could be still improved. They do not look that attractive (seems something quickly edited rather than using a proper GIS software and putting some love in these maps). Although I must agree that they show what they have to show in a poor way. This may imply fewer citations of the work in the near future surely do not reflect the wish of the authors.

I would like to recommend the use of the color brewer tool (see the link http://colorbrewer2.org/). This webpage gives you some good hints to choose colors for a given number of classes.

Additionally, it is known that the exchange rate of RMB to US dollar is changeable. Therefore, the inclusion in the text of the manuscript describing the values of such fluctuation (for example, the currency in early January of year A was X and in December of year B reached Y. During the period, the min and max values fluctuated from X to Y). This would give at least some impression of the local currency power.

Additionally, it is advisable to follow the changes the authors made and this is easily performed by changing the color of the text. It helps and facilitates the life of the reviewer tremendously besides making the reviewer process faster.

Finally, it seems that the paper does not follow the template of the Journal. By making changes (probably by making a copy and paste from other word documents the formation is lost, changes of font size appear and so one). This needs to be checked at some moment.

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors,

The manuscript is now much better presented and its quality increased. Yet, the graphical presentation-quality needs to be improved.

However, another issue arises at the moment. The manuscript is too long. Check the introduction, for instance, which might be too long. Try to find a way, if possible, to summarize your topics of research into a shorter and direct approach to capture the readers' attention for the full paper.

Author Response

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