A Spatiotemporal Assessment of Land Use and Land Cover Changes in Peri-Urban Areas: A Case Study of Arshaly District, Kazakhstan
, Chaimgul Alipbekova 2, Arnold Sterenharz 3, Zhanat Toleubekova 1, Meirzhan Aliyev 1, Nursultan Mineyev 1 and Kaiyrbek Amangaliyev 1Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The Authors presented an approach to assess changes in basic groups of the land use and land cover for an agricultural district characterized by arable land, pastures, water, forests and built-up areas. Though the district is specified and limited to the area near the capital of the Republic of
Kazakhstan, the value of the paper is enhanced by a general consideration of a peri-urban zone which is relevant to other typical districts of the same sort.
The introduction provides a good, generalized background of the topic, references support the Authors' motivation, and the importance of the research is well presented. The objective is clearly defined in the last sentence of the Introduction. However, I feel this sentence could be better harmonized with the previous one on the purpose of the study, to create a logic and consistent objective of the work.
Research design and methods conform to required standards. The area of analysis is well depicted and data acquisition methods are acceptable, also as spectral composition and wavelengths are taken into consideration. In particular the diagram in Fig. 2 facilitates the comprehension of the structure of the methodological approach.
The use of the Landsat multispectral images was effective to study the LULC dynamics. A question arises whether the supervised classification in the limited period of 1998, 2008 and 2018 with the maximum likelihood classifier is the most adequate approach. I think the Authors could expand their trivial arguments for such methodological choice by giving more convincing reasons, especially as they correctly implemented that method in the following parts of the paper, and the method brought satisfying results.
The broad set of results with respect to the overall LULC changes is clear, and the analysis of image classification reliability is acceptable.
The discussion of the results is a strong point of the paper. The conclusions correspond to the results and cover the most important findings of the research, but the organization of that chapter is poor. It should be rewritten in a concise form to wrap up the whole paper.
Author Response
Please see attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments for sustainability-707757 entitled “A Spatiotemporal Assessment Land Use Land Cover Changes in Peri-urban areas: A Case Study of Arshaly district, Kazakhstan”
This study analyzes the land use and land cover change in the Arshaly district of Aqmola oblast during 1998-2018. This area is increasingly becoming a hot spot for studies with remote sensing, land use, ecology, etc. However, this study lacks significant merit because the method is not novel, no scientific question is answered (i.e., the research question is not well defined or analyzed), and no research gap is addressed to fill. In addition, the whole manuscript needs to be revised in an academic way regarding the use of grammar and the written English. Therefore, I suggest major revision, which hopefully will encourage a diligent effort to make a substantial improvement.
Detailed suggestions including examples are provided below.
In the abstract, it should be ‘noticeable LULC changes have occurred’ (line 17); ‘territory of’ (line 18) should be deleted; ‘in the suburban zone’ to the part behind ‘the build-up area’ (line 19). In addition, the wording issue should be paid attention. For example, the word ‘hilly plain’ (line 95) seems self-contradictory: why would a geography be plain if it is hilly. In line 239, ‘manufacturer’ should be ‘producer’. Also, I suggest to use ‘administrative area’ and ‘study area’ instead of ‘territory’ throughout the whole manuscript.
In the introduction, the illustration that ‘there are only two works using RS and GIS to study LULC in Kazakhstan’ is not convincing. The authors should do more homework on literature review, referring to such as a recent paper published by Qi et al 2020. I believe there are a lot of similar studies already published. Following this, what knowledge gap would this study fill? It is necessary to think about why this study is important, why analyzing LULC change in Arshaly district matters, what made this area typical, special or representative? Moreover, the purposes/objectives of this study in the introduction should be clearly stated.
Section 2.3, ‘collateral data’ should be ‘ancillary data’. In this section, what does thematic map means? What type of thematic maps is used? Please provide more information about this data (e.g., When was it produced? What information does it provide?).
In section 3.2. If there is already reported user/producer accuracy, there is no need to report commission/omission error, as they basically provide the same information.
The whole discussion section should be revised, deleting the duplicated information that should have been integrated into introduction (paragraph 1&2) and accuracy assessment section (the last three paragraphs), and expand the true discussion about the LULC change (possible drivers, consequences, and future implications, etc.).
The maps should be edited as well. In the figure 1, please add latitude and longitude lines, and a ‘C’ is missing in the bottom right of the latitude tick. In figure 3, remove a, b, c and replace them with 1998, 2008, 2018 directly. The Blue color in subfigure c is not the same blue as it is in the legend. The class ‘forest’ in the figure are too small to be seemingly called forest, maybe tree cover would be more precise. In addition, please provide more information about this figure in the title so that the readers can understand what it is without reading the whole manuscript.
Author Response
Please see attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
I think this is typical remote sensing study focusing land use and land cover change. A few things the authors may need to consider further:
(1) How is this study related to the topic of sustainability?
(2) What new insights would this study bring to the community, either the scientific community or the community who cares about this data set?
(3) Nothing new in you classification method. Why do you choose the maximum likelihood method rather than other supervised classification algorithm such as support vector or random forest?
(4) Still, discussion should emphasize broader implications of this study to the community.
Author Response
Please see attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Based on the letter and revision, the significance of the paper appears to be raised and the writing is clearer. To increase the readability, I encourage the authors to go through the paper again for the remaining grammar and logic issues, even though minor revision is given. Below lists some, not all, suggestions.
(1) In line 49-50. The logic should be: studying urban sprawl is important, so that there are many literatures. However, it is inappropriate to state that a lot of studies focusing on urban sprawl can support the important of this study.
(2) It would be better to combine the paragraph in lines 58-61 to the next paragraph.
(3) In line 82, ‘20-year-old RS data’ reads awkward.
(4) Line 90, only two sets of values for the longitude and latitude are sufficient to know the boundary; thus, no redundant information is needed.
(5) Figure 1. The longitude and latitude information always go with ticks and/or grid. If you have lat/long information, scale bar is not necessary. In addition, what are B and C following the lat/long? Enlarge the legend.
(6) Line 117, the word ‘dimension’ should be surface area as I reckon.
(7) Line 134, why using only visible bands and NIR, while excluding other bands?
(8) Line 145, what is the purpose of determining land ownership?
(9) Line 161, what is the criteria about ‘not clear’?
(10) Line 174, why may this number (I think you mean the value in the diagonal of confusing matrix) be random?
(11) Line 193, how many times was the process repeated, and what could be called reliable enough?
(12) Line 235-236, report the area of arable land and pasture separately, as they are one of the most important things in this study.
(13) Figure 4. For better visualization, display the shape of those land covers using the transparent fill and colored boundary.
(14) Line 250-251, this sentence is redundant.
(15) line 282, pay attention to the typeset of table 4.
(16) Line 380, seizure of land for what? Conservation or urban development?
(17) Line 410, avoid using sentences like ‘our study is extremely useful’. In this paragraph, at the same time, discuss more about how this study influences a broader audience (local residents, governments, researchers in difference fields).
I look forward to reading the paper again in a published format.
Author Response
Thank you very much for your precious comments. Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
No further comments
Author Response
Thank you very much for your precious comments.
