County Ecosystem Health Assessment Based on the VORS Model: A Case Study of 183 Counties in Sichuan Province, China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper carried out the assessment of the ecosystem health at the level of county. This topic is important and interesting, but some some major problems should be addressed before the paper can be accepted. 

(1) the indicators system lack the ecosystem or ecological elements, e.g. ecosystem services or protected area. The indicators was insufficient to reveal the ecosystem status.

(2) the discussion for the results is poor. What valued contribution can be obtained from your results, comparing other similar study area or other methods? or implactions for development for Sichuan? What is the nature difference between the county ecosystem health and other scales? Drivers? pressures?

(3)  what differences and advantages of framework of VORS compared with other farmework ? (e.g. PSR) 

(4) English language and style need to be improved.

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 1 Comments

Point 1： The indicators system lack the ecosystem or ecological elements, e.g. ecosystem services or protected area. The indicators was insufficient to reveal the ecosystem status.

Response 1: Thank you for your advice. As the county is the smallest administrative governance unit in China, many indicators have not been monitored at this scale, and there is a serious lack of indicator data on ecosystem or ecological factors. Based on the indicator screening principle of "availability", these indicators are discarded in this county indicator system. However, as you said in your proposal, the ecosystem status is a very important part of the county-level urban ecosystem health. Due to the problem of data collection, this paper has not quantified it. Therefore, we supplement the deficiencies of the current research and look forward to the related research content in the article. We hope to enrich and enrich the existing indicator system when future indicators and data are available. Thank you again for your advice.

The evaluation index system constructed in this paper has reference significance for promoting the health level of the county ecosystem in Sichuan Province. However, limited by factors such as the difficulty of collecting county data, we need to further improve the indicator system. In the follow-up research, we suggest that the National Bureau of Statistics accelerate the construction of a county-level urban ecosystem health monitoring system, and further refine the statistical caliber of county-level related data. Strengthen the monitoring and statistics of indicators such as ecology, social vitality, and social resilience factors at the county scale, and support comprehensive research on the health of county-level urban ecosystems.

Point 2： The discussion for the results is poor. What valued contribution can be obtained from your results, comparing other similar study area or other methods? or implactions for development for Sichuan? What is the nature difference between the county ecosystem health and other scales? Drivers? pressures?

Response 2:Thank you for your advice. The research in this paper has reference significance for improving the health level of the County Ecosystem in Sichuan Province. The evaluation results show that there are some problems in the county ecosystem health, such as a lack of vitality. The article we submitted last time did not explain these problems well in the discussion part. According to your suggestions, we made corrections and rewritten the conclusion and discussion part. Thank you again for your advice.

(a)The county ecosystems in Sichuan Province are generally at the sub-health level. The ecosystem health levels differ little among the counties and have significant spatial distribution characteristics. The healthy and sub-healthy counties are mainly distributed in the southeast of Sichuan, and the unhealthy counties in the northwest Sichuan. When improving the health of county-level urban ecosystems, Sichuan Province needs to pay special attention to the urban vitality of county-level cities, and take measures to expedite the economic and ecological vitality of county-level cities. In particular, in the southeastern region, the government should strive to improve the ecological vitality and environmental resilience of county-level cities and make up for the shortcomings of the healthy development of urban ecosystems. In the northwest, while maintaining environmental quality, the government should strive to increase the economic vitality required for the health of the urban ecosystem, continuously improve the quality of life of the people, and optimize the social and economic structure of the county seat.

(b) The ecosystem health level and the four criterion indicators have strong agglomeration in the spatial distribution, the correlation between counties is strong, and the global Moran's I index is positive and all > 0.4. Analysis of the LISA index showed that the local correlation between the health levels of ecosystems in each county in Sichuan was obvious, the H-H agglomeration area was distributed in the Chengdu–Mianyang area, and the L-L agglomeration area in the northwest Sichuan area. Almost all the criteria layer indicators showed different degrees of H-H agglomeration in the Chengdu plain and L-L in the northwestern Sichuan region. It is necessary to seize the opportunities for coordinated regional development such as the construction of the Chengdu-Chongqing economic circle, strengthen the radiation and driving effect of counties with relatively healthy ecosystems such as Chengdu–Mianyang, and generate positive spillover effects with the help of spatial autocorrelation.

(c) The analysis of obstacles shows that economic development is still a shortcoming for the healthy development of ecosystems in Sichuan counties, and economic vitality, economic resilience, and quality of life are the largest obstacles. The ecological environment quality of most county units is out of sync with the social and economic quality. The counties with relatively developed social economies often lack consideration of environmental protection while developing the economy. Governments at all levels should actively take measures to effectively narrow the development gap between the ecological environment and social economy in each county, promote the decoupling of economic growth and environmental costs, explore differentiated and characteristic development paths according to local conditions, strengthen resource complementarity and functional integration, and achieve the organic unity of ecological benefits.

(d) The handicap results discussed in this article also help indicate where counties should work in the future. Counties with low levels of ecosystem health such as Xiangtang, Shiqu, Seda, and Meigu should focus on indicators with higher barriers, improve the treatment level of urban sewage and domestic waste, and increase the per capita disposable income of residents, to promote the resilience and service function of the urban ecosystem. Counties need to take action to improve performance on indicators with higher barriers. For example, Wuhou should reduce the level of pollution emissions, increase the density of vegetation coverage and biological abundance, and effectively improve the ecological vitality of the region.

Point 3：What differences and advantages of framework of VORS compared with other farmework ? (e.g. PSR) 

Response 3: Thank you for your advice. We have improved the description of the advantages of VORs model in Chapter 2.1.Compared with other models, sush as PSR model, the VORS model can better characterize the operation mechanism and the entire operation process of the urban ecosystem and has been widely used in the study of urban ecosystem health.Thank you.

RAPPORT,D.J. first proposed and demonstrated ecosystem health， considering that ecosystem health refers to the ability of an ecosystem to maintain its original organizational structure, self-regulation, and recovery when under external coercion, and is expressed by vitality, organization, and resilience. Since then, many scholars have different views on ecosystem health, but there is no unified urban ecosystem health indicator system. COSTANZA. proposed the VOR model, which described ecosystem health as a comprehensive, multiscale, measure of system vigor, organization, and resilience. Compared with other models, the VOR model can better characterize the operation mechanism and the entire operation process of the urban ecosystem and has been widely used in the study of urban ecosystem health. This study enriches and expands the "Vitality-Organizational structure-Resilience" model, and constructs a "Vitality-Organizational structure-Resilience-Service function" assessment framework centered on the coordinated development of the environmental, the economic, and the social system.

Point 4：English language and style need to be improved.

Response 4: Thank you for your advice. We reviewed and revised the full article again, and our manuscript have been checked by a professional English editing service, the supporting material are provided in the attachment. Thank you.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The article “County Ecosystem Health Assessment Based on VORS Model-A Case Study of 183 Counties in Sichuan Province, China” addresses an interesting topic for the development of the territory, where ecosystems are the basis of regional sustainability. Therefore, I consider this article interesting to publish in the Journal Sustainability with some improvements.

The Introduction is well developed and perfectly justifies the importance of carrying out this study. The main objectives of the study are well presented in this topic.

The captions in Figure 1 should be enlarged so that the reader can understand the relationship between the colors and the respective category. Also, I think that Figure 2 should appear before Figure 1, in order to frame the location of the study area on the world map. If the authors wish, they can join the 2 maps in a single figure.

I think it would be interesting to add some data on bioclimatology for the reader to better understand the area of study. For this, you can consult the following work: DOI: 10.5616/gg110001

At least subtopic 1.2. Data Sources should be included in topic 2. Materials and methods.

Regarding Figure 3, why were the categories of Social Vitality and Social Resilience not included? Also in this figure, the words of the Indicator layer must be significantly increased.

The remaining methodology seems to me adequate to the objectives defined above.

Line 242 – The information that was used in the ArcGIS program should appear in the topic materials and methods and not at this stage.

The results are presented clearly and do not raise relevant doubts. However, the discussion seems a little poor to me. Authors should compare the results obtained with other similar studies, in order to validate or highlight the main originalities. DOI: 10.3390/land11081201

The Conclusions are well organized and based on the results obtained.

The formatting of bibliographic references must be changed according to the norms of the Journal Sustainability. For this I suggest that authors use an automatic referencing program such as Mendeley or Zotero.

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 2 Comments

Point 1：The captions in Figure 1 should be enlarged so that the reader can understand the relationship between the colors and the respective category. Also, I think that Figure 2 should appear before Figure 1, in order to frame the location of the study area on the world map. If the authors wish, they can join the 2 maps in a single figure.

Response 1: We appreciate your valuable comment. As you said, the captions in Figure 1 are too small to be clear, so we modified the picture according to your opinions. Since the two figures will be more unclear when put together, we have adjusted the order of the two figures according to your suggestion. Thank you very much for your suggestion.

The modified figure is as follows:

 

Figure 1. Location of Sichuan Province in Biodiversity Hotspots[31].

 

Figure 2. Study area

Point 2：I think it would be interesting to add some data on bioclimatology for the reader to better understand the area of study. For this, you can consult the following work: DOI: 10.5616/gg110001.

Response 2: Thank you for your valuable advice. Based on your suggestion, we have reviewed and cited the latest publications on the topic of Sichuan bioclimatology. In addition to the papers you mentioned, We also consulted the official monitoring data of the region, for the reader to better understand the area of study. Thank you very much for your suggestion again.

Sichuan Province is between 97°21'-108°33' east longitude and 26°03'-34°19' north latitude. It is located in the southwest hinterland of mainland China(, with an area of 486,000 square kilometers, ranking fifth in China and administering 21 cities (states) and 183 counties (county-level cities, districts). Sichuan Province borders seven provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities), including Chongqing, Guizhou, Yunnan, Tibet, Qinghai, Gansu, and Shaanxi, and has the largest inhabited area of Yi people, the second largest inhabited area of Tibetan people, and the only area inhabited by Qiang people.

The landform of Sichuan Province is complex and diverse, with differences between East and West. The terrain is high in the West and low in the east. It is composed of mountains, hills, plain basins, and plateaus. Sichuan province belongs to three climates, the subtropical humid climate in the Sichuan Basin, the subtropical semi-humid climate in the mountainous areas of Southwest Sichuan, and the alpine and plateau alpine climate in Northwest Sichuan. There are significant differences in regional climate performance. The east is warm in winter, dry in spring, hot in summer, rainy in autumn, cloudy and foggy, with less sunshine and a long growing season. While the west is cold, long in winter, basically, no summer, sufficient sunshine, concentrated precipitation, and distinct dry and rainy seasons. There are many kinds of meteorological disasters, with high frequency and wide range, mainly drought, and rainstorms.

Sichuan Province is rich in natural resources, with three World Natural Heritage Sites, a world cultural heritage site, and a world cultural and natural heritage site. Sichuan Province has 145 wild animals under Special State Protection, ranking first in the country, including 1387 wild giant pandas. The forest volume of Sichuan Province is 1.897 billion cubic meters, ranking third in the country. The forest coverage rate of Sichuan Province is 39.6%, and the comprehensive vegetation coverage of grassland is 85.6%. Sichuan Province is also one of 36 biodiversity hotspots in the world with the mountains in Southwest China[31], and its ecological status is important.

Point 3：At least subtopic 1.2. Data Sources should be included in topic 2. Materials and methods.

Response 3: Thank you for your advice. We adjusted 1.2. Data sources to 2.5 Data sources in 2. Materials and methods.

Point 4：Regarding Figure 3, why were the categories of Social Vitality and Social Resilience not included? Also in this figure, the words of the Indicator layer must be significantly increased. The remaining methodology seems to me adequate to the objectives defined above.

Response 4: Thank you for your advice. There are two reasons why we have not included social vitality and social resilience in the indicator system:(1) Compared with the environment and economic system, the comparability and representability of social vitality and resilience are low, and there is a lack of appropriate and sufficient indicators at present. (2) County is the most basic administrative unit in China. The availability of data is far lower than the national, provincial, municipal and other scales, which further leads to the lack of indicators.Therefore, we supplement the deficiencies of the current research and look forward to the related research content in the article. We hope to enrich and enrich the existing indicator system when future indicators and data are available. Thank you again for your advice.Thank you.

The evaluation index system constructed in this paper has reference significance for promoting the health level of the county ecosystem in Sichuan Province. However, limited by factors such as the difficulty of collecting county data, we need to further improve the indicator system. In the follow-up research, we suggest that the National Bureau of Statistics accelerate the construction of a county-level urban ecosystem health monitoring system, and further refine the statistical caliber of county-level related data. Strengthen the monitoring and statistics of indicators such as ecology, social vitality, and social resilience factors at the county scale, and support comprehensive research on the health of county-level urban ecosystems.

 

Point 5：Line 242 – The information that was used in the ArcGIS program should appear in the topic materials and methods and not at this stage.

Response 5: Thank you for your advice. As you said, the information used in the ArcGIS program should appear in the subject materials and methods, so we deleted the content of line 242 and added it to chapter 2.2.3. Thank you again for your advice.

 

Point 6：The results are presented clearly and do not raise relevant doubts. However, the discussion seems a little poor to me. Authors should compare the results obtained with other similar studies, in order to validate or highlight the main originalities. DOI: 10.3390/land11081201

Response 6: Thank you for your advice. The research in this paper has reference significance for improving the health level of the County Ecosystem in Sichuan Province. The article we submitted last time did not explain these problems well in the discussion part. According to your suggestions, we made corrections and rewritten the conclusion and discussion part. Thank you again for your advice.

• The county ecosystems in Sichuan Province are generally at the sub-health level. The ecosystem health levels differ little among the counties and have significant spatial distribution characteristics. The healthy and sub-healthy counties are mainly distributed in the southeast of Sichuan, and the unhealthy counties in the northwest Sichuan. When improving the health of county-level urban ecosystems, Sichuan Province needs to pay special attention to the urban vitality of county-level cities, and take measures to expedite the economic and ecological vitality of county-level cities. In particular, in the southeastern region, the government should strive to improve the ecological vitality and environmental resilience of county-level cities and make up for the shortcomings of the healthy development of urban ecosystems. In the northwest, while maintaining environmental quality, the government should strive to increase the economic vitality required for the health of the urban ecosystem, continuously improve the quality of life of the people, and optimize the social and economic structure of the county seat.

(b) The ecosystem health level and the four criterion indicators have strong agglomeration in the spatial distribution, the correlation between counties is strong, and the global Moran's I index is positive and all > 0.4. Analysis of the LISA index showed that the local correlation between the health levels of ecosystems in each county in Sichuan was obvious, the H-H agglomeration area was distributed in the Chengdu–Mianyang area, and the L-L agglomeration area in the northwest Sichuan area. Almost all the criteria layer indicators showed different degrees of H-H agglomeration in the Chengdu plain and L-L in the northwestern Sichuan region. It is necessary to seize the opportunities for coordinated regional development such as the construction of the Chengdu-Chongqing economic circle, strengthen the radiation and driving effect of counties with relatively healthy ecosystems such as Chengdu–Mianyang, and generate positive spillover effects with the help of spatial autocorrelation.

(c)The analysis of obstacles shows that economic development is still a shortcoming for the healthy development of ecosystems in Sichuan counties, and economic vitality, economic resilience, and quality of life are the largest obstacles. The ecological environment quality of most county units is out of sync with the social and economic quality. The counties with relatively developed social economies often lack consideration of environmental protection while developing the economy. Governments at all levels should actively take measures to effectively narrow the development gap between the ecological environment and social economy in each county, promote the decoupling of economic growth and environmental costs, explore differentiated and characteristic development paths according to local conditions, strengthen resource complementarity and functional integration, and achieve the organic unity of ecological benefits.

(d)The handicap results discussed in this article also help indicate where counties should work in the future. Counties with low levels of ecosystem health such as Xiangtang, Shiqu, Seda, and Meigu should focus on indicators with higher barriers, improve the treatment level of urban sewage and domestic waste, and increase the per capita disposable income of residents, to promote the resilience and service function of the urban ecosystem. Counties need to take action to improve performance on indicators with higher barriers. For example, Wuhou District should reduce the level of pollution emissions, increase the density of vegetation coverage and biological abundance, and effectively improve the ecological vitality of the region.

Point 7：The formatting of bibliographic references must be changed according to the norms of the Journal Sustainability. For this I suggest that authors use an automatic referencing program such as Mendeley or Zotero.

Response 7:Thank you for your advice. We installed and used Zotero according to your suggestion, and uniformly modified and adjusted the references in this article. Thank you again for your suggestions

 

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have made larger improvements. There is one issue that still needs to be addressed:

More studies have measured the value of ecosystem services using land use data, which seem to be useful for the evaluation of ecosystem health. If ecological factors are missing in this paper, then it seems that the topic should be adjusted to environmental sustainability evaluation rather than ecosystem health.

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 1 Comments

Point： The authors have made larger improvements. There is one issue that still needs to be addressed:More studies have measured the value of ecosystem services using land use data, which seem to be useful for the evaluation of ecosystem health. If ecological factors are missing in this paper, then it seems that the topic should be adjusted to environmental sustainability evaluation rather than ecosystem health.

Response: Thank you for your advice. As you said, it is very necessary to use land use data to measure the value of ecosystem services for ecosystem health assessment, which has been confirmed by many scholars. However, the object of ecosystem health evaluation is the natural ecosystem, and the focus of this paper is urban ecosystem health evaluation on the county scale, and the evaluation object is an urban ecosystem. The current research has not reached a unified consensus on the indicators that should be included in the health evaluation of urban ecosystems, but the core is the coordinated development of the environment, economy, and social ecosystems, which has been recognized by many scholars. In this paper, the evaluation method of the natural ecosystem is extended to the urban ecosystem. In order to better fit the evaluation object, the ecosystem service function is changed to the service function. Sorry for misleading you with our description, but this is emphasized more in the introduction and research methodology, see below. Of course, ecosystem services are an important part of urban ecosystems. If there are opportunities in the future, we hope to optimize our indicator system based on this. Thank you again for your valuable suggestions.

1. Introduction

Urban ecosystem health is a major requisite for human survival and development, the basis for regional sustainable development, and necessary for human health [1]. In recent years, the continuous increase in the urbanization level and the accelerated development of urban construction have had a certain impact on the health of urban ecosystems and even threatened human health. Scholars are paying more attention to the health of urban ecosystems [2,3].

The county seat is the main body of urban development in China [4], the most basic administrative unit in China, and the basic platform for national governance [5,6], and its ecosystem health level is directly related to the sustainable development of a region [7]. In addition to its characteristics of complexity, vulnerability, and vulnerability to external interference, each county's ecosystem is also affected by a series of problems such as air pollution and water pollution caused by rapid economic and social development. The deterioration of health status directly reduces the welfare level brought by the ecological services enjoyed by residents [7]. Therefore, scientifically evaluating the health level of county ecosystems and exploring the healthy development path of differentiated ecosystems suitable for each county have important theoretical and practical significance for promoting coordinated regional development and implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

......

3. 3. Materials and Methods

3.1. The construction method of the index system

......This study extends the ecosystem health model to urban ecosystem health evaluation, enriches and expands the "Vitality-Organizational structure-Resilience" model, and constructs a "Vitality-Organizational structure-Resilience-Service function" assessment framework centered on the coordinated development of the environmental, the economic, and the social system. Compared with other models, the VORS model can better characterize the operation mechanism and the entire operation process of the urban ecosystem.

......

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors read and accepted all the submitted suggestions, which significantly improved the quality of the article. The authors answered all questions correctly.

Author Response

Thank you for your valuable suggestions for this paper.

Round 3

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for the author's reply. I have no further questions.