Fuzzy-Based Ecological Vulnerability Assessment Driven by Human Impacts in China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I provided comments and suggestions within the manuscript itself. 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

We would like to express our sincere appreciation for your careful reading and constructive comments. We have improved our paper’s English language according to your helpful and rigorous suggestions which can be seen in the revised manuscript but not shown here one by one. We have taken your valuable comments into account in our revision. The list of changes and our reply to your questions are given in the Response.

Many thanks for your valuable comments and suggestions again, other necessary corrections have been made in the revised manuscript, and if you have any questions about the corrections, please let us know.

Sincerely yours,

Yang Zhang

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

In the article, it is possible to add an analysis on information systems, for example, the IAS "Region" developed at the Institute of Ecology of the Volga Basin of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Togliatti, Samara region, Russia.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

We would like to express our sincere appreciation for your careful reading and constructive comments. We have improved our paper’s English language according to your helpful and rigorous suggestions which can be seen in the revised manuscript but not shown here one by one. We have taken your valuable comments into account in our revision. The list of changes and our reply to your questions are given in the Response.

Many thanks for your valuable comments and suggestions again, other necessary corrections have been made in the revised manuscript, and if you have any questions about the corrections, please let us know.

Sincerely yours,

Yang Zhang

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors,

I have suggested some considerable changes in the manuscript. Kindly go through it and respond point by point.

Best,

 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

We would like to express our sincere appreciation for your careful reading and constructive comments. We have improved our paper’s English language according to your helpful and rigorous suggestions which can be seen in the revised manuscript but not shown here one by one. We have taken your valuable comments into account in our revision. The list of changes and our reply to your questions are given in the Response.

Many thanks for your valuable comments and suggestions again, other necessary corrections have been made in the revised manuscript, and if you have any questions about the corrections, please let us know.

Sincerely yours,

Yang Zhang

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

The article built an ecological vulnerability assessment framework integrated with the fuzzy method, multiple-criteria decision analysis, Exposure-Sensitivity-Adaptive Capacity (ESC) framework, and GIS spatial analysis. The authors consider the human impacts to handle the uncertainties in the assessment process. 

Please add the line numbers.

Introduction. last 6 lines in the second paragraph of Page 2: References are needed.  There is a substantial lack of surveys in the literature. Without this background information, it is hard to tell if the proposed method has any academic merits.

I recommend the author widen their literature search to include the main findings of the studies on the ecological vulnerability assessment framework, as well as the relationship between the multiple-criteria decision analysis and Exposure-Sensitivity-Adaptive Capacity (ESC) framework. The introduction should identify their limitation and address the research gap, instead of the background information on China. 

Please use KM rather than miles for the scales in all the maps. 

Please modify the color scale in all the maps for readability. 

The results and discussion section are in need of a large revision, as the latter has some presentation of new results. The discussion session messed with the result. The discussion could be more in-depth, in particular with regard to the pons and cons of the proposed methods. Comments on sources of uncertainty and error are also suggested. The possible reasons for the different adaptive capacity values among different places should be discussed.  

Moreover, the discussion can include some comparisons with other studies. Please also highlight the academic merits of the proposed method.

Overall, the findings and their implications should be discussed in the broadest context possible, and the limitations of the work should be highlighted.  

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

We would like to express our sincere appreciation for your careful reading and constructive comments. We have improved our paper’s English language according to your helpful and rigorous suggestions which can be seen in the revised manuscript but not shown here one by one. We have taken your valuable comments into account in our revision. The list of changes and our reply to your questions are given in the Response.

Many thanks for your valuable comments and suggestions again, other necessary corrections have been made in the revised manuscript, and if you have any questions about the corrections, please let us know.

Sincerely yours,

Yang Zhang

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors,

The figures and illustrations have not been improved. They are clumsy and do provide good insights of the results. 

 

Moreover title is very absurd. "Uncertainty" to what?

 

Authors need to clarify it. Further, a lot of improvement is still required in the English language. It has not been take care of efficiently.

 

Unless these issues are taken care off, the manuscript still needs a major revision 

Author Response

The authors would like to express their sincere appreciation to the editor and the reaviewers for their careful reading of the paper and constructive comments. We have taken these comments into account in our revision. 

Please see our point-to-point response in the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

The writing of the paper still has some space to be improved upon. 

I would first recommend extensive editing for the English language and style throughout the manuscript.  

 

 

Author Response

The authors would like to express their sincere appreciation to the editor and the reaviewers for their careful reading of the paper and constructive comments. We have taken these comments into account in our revision. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 3 Report

I am still not satisfied with the quality of the maps. They are very clumsy with bad color combinations. The language still requires English proofreading services.

Author Response

We thank you and the reviewers for your constructive suggestions and comments. Our point-by-point answers to the reviewers’ comments are in the document of ‘Response to Reviews’. Using the "Track Changes" function, all modifications to the manuscript have been marked and are visible to the reviewers.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf