Land Use Change and Disappearance of Hedgerows in a Tuscan Rural Landscape: A Discussion on Policy Tools to Revert This Trend

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

General comments:

The paper focuses on the loss of hedgerows and isolated trees in a Tuscan rural landscape and analyses the chances of being restored. In the discussion authors refer that landscape design is complex and dependent on several agents. The paper is supported by a vast list of references but the main text still needs some work.

Other comments:

Material and Methods:

Considering the relevant role of hedgerows as a habitat for wildlife, remarks can be included on the conservation value of hedgerows

Discussion:

The discussion would benefit from a wider (European) approach in some paragraphs rather than a discussion centered on the Tuscan case-study

Conclusions:

In conclusions the limits of the (re)introduction or maintenance of hedgerows and isolated trees are listed. The paper summarizes benefits in general from the presence of hedgerows and trees but does not discuss these benefits in detail (e.g. cultural, aesthetic, environmental...). In this sense the paper seems too long and should be reduced in length

Author Response

We would like to thank all the reviewers for their constructive comments that we hope have allowed us to improve the initial text of our paper

Specific answers to each reviewer comments follow.

 

Answers to Reviewer 1

General comments:

The paper focuses on the loss of hedgerows and isolated trees in a Tuscan rural landscape and analyses the chances of being restored. In the discussion authors refer to the fact that landscape design is complex and dependent on several agents. The paper is supported by a vast list of references, but the main text still needs some work.

Other comments:

Material and Methods:

Considering the relevant role of hedgerows as a habitat for wildlife, remarks can be included on the conservation value of hedgerows

We tried to better explain the focus of the paper and to give references to literature about the assessment of the values provided by hedgerow ESs

Discussion:

The discussion would benefit from a wider (European) approach in some paragraphs rather than a discussion centered on the Tuscan case-study

We have eliminated some of the too specific references to the Tuscany Region situation and to give the discussion a wider significance at European level

Conclusions:

In conclusions the limits of the (re)introduction or maintenance of hedgerows and isolated trees are listed. The paper summarizes benefits in general from the presence of hedgerows and trees but does not discuss these benefits in detail (e.g. cultural, aesthetic, environmental...). In this sense the paper seems too long and should be reduced in length

We stressed in the methodology that the focus of the paper is on land use change, economic drivers of change at farm level and policy aiming to counteract it. Discussing in detail all the benefits provided by hedgerows was outside the aim of the paper and this analysis was restricted to references. We tried to improve paper organization and shorten it by eliminating a few parts/paragraphs.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This study analyses the land cover of the territory of an inland and hilly municipality in Tuscany (Italy) in the years 1954, 1978 and 2016 and assesses the loss of hedgerows and isolated trees that intervened in the 1954-2016 period in a municipality sub-area with the photointerpretation based on Q-GIS. the paper also discusses the direct and indirect costs of reintroducing hedgerows and the opportunities and drawbacks of available policy and planning tools. The research is paramount to manage the agroecological system. However, the paper is confusing, not concise, lacking logical coherence, not focusing on the key issues. Some of the specific suggestions and comments are shown below:

1. The abstract lacks the research results of the manuscript.

2. The introduction section does not concisely highlight the issues that need to be studied.

3. Both Figure 1 and Figure 2 are missing cartographic elements, such as the compass and scale, and the legend is not clear.

4. The logical relationship between the data in Table 1 or Table 2 is not clear.

5. The manuscript has a large number of direct quotations from the original sentences of the literature, which are suggested to be revised.

6. The discussion section is suggested to be simplified and address the results of the manuscript.

7. The sentence structure of the manuscript is monotonous and obscure; deep revision is recommended.

Author Response

Manuscript ID: sustainability-1908156

Land use change and disappearance of hedgerows in a Tuscan rural landscape. A discussion on policy tools to revert this trend.

We would like to thank all the reviewers for their constructive comments that we hope have allowed us to improve the initial text of our paper

Specific answers to each reviewer comments follow.

Answers to Reviewer 2

This study analyses the land cover of the territory of an inland and hilly municipality in Tuscany (Italy) in the years 1954, 1978 and 2016 and assesses the loss of hedgerows and isolated trees that intervened in the 1954-2016 period in a municipality sub-area with the photointerpretation based on Q-GIS. the paper also discusses the direct and indirect costs of reintroducing hedgerows and the opportunities and drawbacks of available policy and planning tools. The research is paramount to manage the agroecological system. However, the paper is confusing, not concise, lacking logical coherence, not focusing on the key issues. Some of the specific suggestions and comments are shown below:

1. The abstract lacks the research results of the manuscript.

We have deeply restructured the abstract to include results and make it more tailored on paper content.

2. The introduction section does not concisely highlight the issues that need to be studied.

We have restructured the introduction section to make it more explicative

3. Both Figure 1 and Figure 2 are missing cartographic elements, such as the compass and scale, and the legend is not clear.

We have added compass and scale in all figures except in the figure 1. We tried to improve legend or its understanding

4. The logical relationship between the data in Table 1 or Table 2 is not clear.

We apologize for the caption of table 2, that was copied by table 1 without changing it to adapt caption to table content. The caption has been changed and we hope that the new caption and the text discussion make the relationship between data in Table 1 and Table 2 clear

5. The manuscript has a large number of direct quotations from the original sentences of the literature, which are suggested to be revised.

We have eliminated all the quotations of original sentences

6. The discussion section is suggested to be simplified and address the results of the manuscript.

We have reorganized the discussion section

7. The sentence structure of the manuscript is monotonous and obscure; deep revision is recommended.

We went through the manuscript revising the paragraphs whose interpretation was, in our opinion, more difficult

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors,

I have excitedly read your submission about the change and disappearance of hedgerows in a Tuscan 2 rural landscape. The topic will be one of the important trigger sustainability of biodiversity in rural areas. By the way, I noticed there are some typos in the text. In my opinion, the submission should be published as is.

Author Response

Manuscript ID: sustainability-1908156

Land use change and disappearance of hedgerows in a Tuscan rural landscape. A discussion on policy tools to revert this trend.

We would like to thank all the reviewers for their constructive comments that we hope have allowed us to improve the initial text of our paper

Specific answers to each reviewer comments follow.

Answers to Reviewer 3

Dear Authors,

I have excitedly read your submission about the change and disappearance of hedgerows in a Tuscan 2 rural landscape. The topic will be one of the important trigger sustainability of biodiversity in rural areas. By the way, I noticed there are some typos in the text. In my opinion, the submission should be published as is

Thank you very much for your appreciation. We detected some typos in the text, and we have corrected them.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf