Landscape Pattern Evolution in a Mining City: An Urban Life Cycle Perspective

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper should be reframed not as typical of mining cities in China or in other parts of the world.

To preface coal as an energy source used in China is to ignore that fact that coal is a dirty non renewable resource that most of the world is turning away from. I appreciate the effort to examine the evolution of Jixi as a coal mining location, but the article leaves me with many questions that the landscape pattern and urban life cycle perspective shed no light on.

What is often not seen are impacts, cumulative impacts, and those that can not be easily seen at the landscape level. For example, water quality is not discussed, yet mapping water bodies seems to be unimpacted. Same with air. Air and water quality in mining cities typically decline and cause significant population health impacts locally and downstream.

line 33 is one of many strawmen that the authors should guard against. That mining leads to a series of negative and ecological impacts needs to be unpacked. If jobs raise workers out of poverty then there is some good. If doing this results in lower life expectancy, not so good, etc.

It is important to note that Sustainable Development, SDGs, were not part of the thinking of cities, government and industries until the 1980s. I expect rapid industrialization and impacts from the 1920s on, should be included in this analysis.

The language in the paper is somewhat technical, with a mix of mining engineering and ecology/urban planning. Such a multidisciplinary approach should be careful when applying ideas and terms outside the disciplinary context. Brownfields and reclamation are not discussed. Mitigation is not discussed, much is left out of this paper from the large body of research on the impacts of mining (coal or otherwise).

line 56 "hot research" is a funny way to say there is a lot of interest or many studies. I would not encourage the use of hot when one means something other then temperature. If it is trendy, or if it is important and growing then say that.

Tailings and other disturbances of ground water, aquifers, etc., are not considered in the research.

Line 75 Jixi is a typical coal city? What are the characteristics that make it typical? In fact what are the populations numbers, demographics, economic and political features of the city?

Line 83 scientific basis really should be replaced with evidence of impacts.

Use consistent style of measurement. It is either 2.250 million km2 or 5,912,000,000. With large numbers be kind to the reader, use the comma. I have no preference if you are using either the decimal or long version and apply the same style to both tonnage and space.

Line 92 use of unreasonable when I think the authors mean unsustainable. All of 93-96 needs to be unpacked. There are assumptions and it is a dense sentence.

At 104, I take it there are no parks, protected areas, species at risk, etc? In jurisdictions outside of China, landscape ecology and regulation of human impacts have added a few more categories.

At 111 Suazervilla's urban life cycle theory is noted and on page 5 the table lists transition after decay. If this is the case then transition should also be added here and what it means.

There are many old mining cities in the world. Resource extraction, single industry/sector, rarely sustain a city beyond 50-100 years, and extraction is by its nature not sustainable. However, mitigation measures can be taken to reduce or offset impacts.

The economics of mining need to come in and I am curious in China if the cost of extraction goes up when mining needs to go "deeper", as the coal depletes does the price and value of the coal go up, is there no regulation on mining? Does cheap coal that is unregulated lead to lack of innovation.... so many questions... 

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 1’s Comments

 

Point 1: The paper should be reframed not as typical of mining cities in China or in other parts of the world. To preface coal as an energy source used in China is to ignore that fact that coal is a dirty non renewable resource that most of the world is turning away from. I appreciate the effort to examine the evolution of Jixi as a coal mining location, but the article leaves me with many questions that the landscape pattern and urban life cycle perspective shed no light on.

 

Response 1: Thank you for your comment. We believe that China is well aware that coal is a dirty non-renewable resource; however, owing to the special national conditions of China, coal will remain the main energy source for a long time in the future [1]. For other countries, turning away from coal does not mean completely abandoning it either. Developed countries that have been consuming coal for a long time should accommodate developing countries' demand for coal.

In addition, the research boundary of this paper is as follows: To discuss the spatial-temporal evolution process of landscape of mining cities in different development stages. Many problems are unexplainable from this perspective and are outside the scope of this study.

 

Point 2: What is often not seen are impacts, cumulative impacts, and those that can not be easily seen at the landscape level. For example, water quality is not discussed, yet mapping water bodies seems to be unimpacted. Same with air. Air and water quality in mining cities typically decline and cause significant population health impacts locally and downstream.

 

Response 2: Invisible impacts at the landscape level, such as water quality, air, and other non-landscape issues, are beyond the scope of this study.

 

Point 3: line 33 is one of many strawmen that the authors should guard against. That mining leads to a series of negative and ecological impacts needs to be unpacked. If jobs raise workers out of poverty then there is some good. If doing this results in lower life expectancy, not so good, etc.

 

Response 3: The purpose of this sentence is to emphasize the significance of landscape pattern research in mining area. Therefore, this study only focuses on the negative problems caused by landscape level, and does not further discuss other impacts caused by mining in detail.

 

Point 4: It is important to note that Sustainable Development, SDGs, were not part of the thinking of cities, government and industries until the 1980s. I expect rapid industrialization and impacts from the 1920s on, should be included in this analysis.

 

Response 4: We understand that sustainable development, as a part of urban development, is a concept that only emerged in modern times. Moreover, Jixi City, our research area, was established in 1956, and there have been changes in the urban spatial pattern since then. However, this does not contradict our findings.

On the one hand, since each stage is characterized by different leading factors, cities develop in an upward spiral process; every individual stage experiences its own complete S-shaped life cycle of “birth, growth, development, and decay.” This study aimed to analyse the changes and impacts of the urban landscape pattern in different stages of a cycle, and then provide planning suggestions for cities in each stage of any cycle. Our analysis revealed that Jixi city has entered a new cycle in the 1990s; therefore, we took 1990 as a new round of urban development cycle for research.

On the other hand, this study focuses on the landscape pattern of mining cities from the perspective of spatial change characteristics, which needs the support of remote sensing image data. However, limited by technology, there was no remote sensing image data available in the early 20th century. In this study, the development process of the whole mining city is divided into different cycles through the life cycle theory, and the study of the latest cycle avoids the lack of early data, which leads to the inability to study the development process of mining cities from the perspective of spatial evolution characteristics.

 

Point 5: The language in the paper is somewhat technical, with a mix of mining engineering and ecology/urban planning. Such a multidisciplinary approach should be careful when applying ideas and terms outside the disciplinary context. Brownfields and reclamation are not discussed. Mitigation is not discussed, much is left out of this paper from the large body of research on the impacts of mining (coal or otherwise).

 

Response 5: Although this study mixes ecology/urban planning and other disciplines, its purpose is to provide decisions and recommendations for mining urban planning based on landscape ecological methods and perspectives; consequently, there is no in-depth discussion and analysis of mining disciplines.

 

Point 6: line 56 "hot research" is a funny way to say there is a lot of interest or many studies. I would not encourage the use of hot when one means something other then temperature. If it is trendy, or if it is important and growing then say that.

 

Response 6: Thank you for your comments. We have revised this sentence as “In recent years, quantitative studies on regional landscape pattern evolution resulting from mining activities have increased.”

 

Point 7: Tailings and other disturbances of ground water, aquifers, etc., are not considered in the research.

 

Response 7: As mentioned above, the disturbances of ground water, aquifers, among others, are not within the scope of this study.

 

Point 8: Line 75 Jixi is a typical coal city? What are the characteristics that make it typical? In fact what are the populations numbers, demographics, economic and political features of the city?

 

Response 8: "Typical coal city" means that it is representative of China's mining cities, because its economic development almost entirely depends on the coal industry, and its urban development conforms to the development law of China's general coal cities. At the same time, the National Sustainable Development Plan for Resource-Based Cities (2013–2020) issued by The State Council of China in 2013, also clearly points out that Jixi is a typical coal city, which has been reached by some scholars (Quoted in the original text (Ye, X. et al.)).

According to the suggestions of the reviewer, we have added supplementary explanations in the "Introduction" section.

 

Point 9: Line 83 scientific basis really should be replaced with evidence of impacts.

 

Response 9: Thank you for your comment. We have modified the expression “scientific basis” to “evidence of the impact.”

 

Point 10: Use consistent style of measurement. It is either 2.250 million km2 or 5,912,000,000. With large numbers be kind to the reader, use the comma. I have no preference if you are using either the decimal or long version and apply the same style to both tonnage and space.

 

Response 10: Thank you for your comments. We have replaced “2250000km2” with “2.250 million km²”.

 

Point 11: Line 92 use of unreasonable when I think the authors mean unsustainable. All of 93-96 needs to be unpacked. There are assumptions and it is a dense sentence.

 

Response 11: What we want to discuss in this section is the phenomenon caused by the unreasonable exploitation of resources. In order to express this clearly, we have rewritten this part as follows:

“The unsustainable exploitation of mineral resources and land resources leads to the destruction of the regional landscape ecological environment, which greatly affects the landscape pattern of the regional surface.”

 

Point 12: At 104, I take it there are no parks, protected areas, species at risk, etc? In jurisdictions outside of China, landscape ecology and regulation of human impacts have added a few more categories.

 

Response 12: In order to study the evolution of the characteristics of different landscape types from the perspective of space, the landscape types in the study area were divided into cultivated land, forest land, meadows, construction land, bodies of water, and unutilized land according to the classification system of Land use remote sensing monitoring in China. As urban functional land, parks are divided into construction land landscape, and protected areas are divided into forest land or meadows landscape according to different landscape types. Species at risk are not landscape types, so they cannot be divided.

 

Point 13: At 111 Suazervilla's urban life cycle theory is noted and on page 5 the table lists transition after decay. If this is the case then transition should also be added here and what it means.

 

Response 13: As mentioned in the article, cities go through a complete cycle of "birth-growth-development-decay" in each round of development. However, when cities fail to move from one cycle to the next, they will continue to decline. When the city enters a new cycle through new dominant factors, the decline stage is defined as the transition stage. We have added to the manuscript based on the reviewer’s suggestions:

“In addition, when the development of cities cannot progress to the next cycle, cities will continue to decline; when new factors invade or substitute the preceding leading factors, cities will be transformed. These new factors that influence urban transformation may be newly discovered resources or some form of human intervention.”

 

Point 14: There are many old mining cities in the world. Resource extraction, single industry/sector, rarely sustain a city beyond 50-100 years, and extraction is by its nature not sustainable. However, mitigation measures can be taken to reduce or offset impacts.

 

Response 14: We understand that resource extraction is not sustainable, yet the purpose of this study is to provide planning advice for mining cities at different stages of development, and the two are not incompatible.

 

Point 15: The economics of mining need to come in and I am curious in China if the cost of extraction goes up when mining needs to go "deeper", as the coal depletes does the price and value of the coal go up, is there no regulation on mining? Does cheap coal that is unregulated lead to lack of innovation.... so many questions...

 

Response 15: As mentioned above, the research boundary of this study is to study the landscape pattern characteristics of mining cities from a spatial perspective, while mining economics requires a different perspective, which is far from the research objective of this manuscript. Moreover, in China, especially for Jixi city, the current coal exploration and development is still the tip of the iceberg, and deeper mining means to increase the development of new coal resources.

In addition, since 2013, China's energy regulator, the National Energy Administration, has introduced new measures to reduce the country's dependence on coal, setting targets for energy conservation and emissions reduction [3], along with long-term regulation and control of mining. While it is worthwhile to discuss these, they are beyond the scope of this article.

 

 

[1]Wang, Ce & Li, Bing-Bing & Liang, Qiao-Mei & Wang, Jin-Cheng, 2018. "Has China’s coal consumption already peaked? A demand-side analysis based on hybrid prediction models," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 272-281.

[2]Ye, X.; Dong, L.; Lv, L.; Shang, Y. Spatiotemporal Evolution Law and Driving Force of Mining City Patterns. Environ. Sci. Pollut. Res. 2022, 29, 10291–10307. DOI:10.1007/s11356-021-16488-5.

[3] National Energy Administration. Circular of the State Development and Reform Commission and the State Environmental Protection Administration on Issuing opinions on Energy Conservation and Emission Reduction in the Coal Industry. 2013. http://www.nea.gov.cn/2013-10/10/c_132786300.htm

 

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript analyzed the landscape pattern at different development stages. The results reveal some problems in the development of mining cities. Some suggestions have been provided to address these problems, supporting the sustainable development of mining cities. The topic is timing, and the paper is well-written. However, the explanation of the methodology and discussion can be improved. Following are my concerns:

·         Please articulate the research objectives in the introduction.

·         It is difficult to follow the methodology section. I suggest adding a framework or diagram to explain.

·         When talking about what you did, it should be past tense, such as Line 101, and Line 210

·         I would recommend moving the “Theory of urban life cycle” to the introduction.

·         The “2.3.1.2. Features of a mining city’s life cycle stages” is more like the development of indicator systems.

·         Please add a comparison with previous studies in the discussion.

 

·         Some sentences are quite long, such as Line 395-397. Please revise.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper is specifically about a Chinese coal mining town and the title is unacceptable. This is not a framework that can be applied to all mining towns.

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

The authors generally addressed my concerns. However, the comparison in the discussion do not make sense. The discussion should compare the similarities and differences with previous studies rather than simply adding a sentence. Please revise.

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf