Spatiotemporal Variations in Shrimp Aquaculture in China and Their Influencing Factors

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

1 Why the study chooses the shrimp aquaculture industry as the research object is unclear. It is necessary to add the importance of studying the shrimp aquaculture industry.

2 The first word in column 111 is wrong.

3 In addition to the factors selected in the text, the shrimp aquaculture industry is strongly influenced by market and traffic conditions, and the impact of both needs to be considered. Add one table to describe the statistics of influencing factors.

4 The authors put the description and explanation of the regional variation characteristics and influencing factors of the shrimp aquaculture industry, which should have been placed in the results section, in the discussion section, and suggest a reorganization.

5 It is mentioned in the article that "There are now studies on the spatial layout of the shrimp aquaculture industry" and "Chinese schools have also made progress in studying the spatial layout of the fishing industry", so, this study should explain the difference between the shrimp aquaculture industry and the fishing industry in the discussions sector.

6 The recommendations are too general, and there are no targeted recommendations based on the research findings and results of the article.

7 Converting units of measure to international units, such as mu.

8 In the spatial distribution figure, show the nine-dashed line in the small map completely.

Author Response

Dear Editor and Reviewers,

Manuscript Number: sustainability-1938278   

Title: Spatiotemporal variations in shrimp aquaculture in China and their influencing factors

Thank you for your comments concerning our manuscript. Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. We are very sorry for some negligence and error that we made in this manuscript. We have studied comments carefully and have made all the corrections according to the Reviewers’ comments. Now, we assure the reviewers that everything has been corrected in the revised manuscript.

Please find here attached the main corrections in the paper and the response to your comments item by item. We appreciate the time and effort that the Editor and the reviewers have dedicated to providing their valuable feedback on our manuscript. We are grateful to the reviewers for their insightful comments on our paper. We hope the changes we have incorporated meet with approval.

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript analyzes spatiotemporal variation in aquaculture in China using standard deviational ellipse and geographical detector methods. It is well written, although at times it appears not to have followed the authors' guidelines. The manuscript has some details that need to be addressed before it can be considered for publication. Several minor comments/changes need to be addressed before it can be considered for publication.

General comments

C1. The main concern is that the novelty of the research is not fully clear. If such novelty is not clearly highlighted, the risk is that the manuscript looks more a simple case study rather than a research paper.

C2. What are the advantages and disadvantages of this study?

C3. Authors could also emphasize particular strengths of the study for potential applications of their method in other regions.

C4. What are the new findings differing from previous studies? should be carefully mentioned in the discussion section.

C5. Please, look at your Discussion, is there a real comparisons to other researchers of your results?. It is necessary to carry out a thorough comparison, I recommend to include some relevant references, in order to improve the discussion on the novelty of your study, comparing to the others.

*The answer to these questions should be reflected in the manuscript.*

Specific comments

Line 33-35: Only agricultural production? mention some other activities.

Line 35-36: It is important to give order to the ideas, start with the global perspective at the beginning of the introduction, and then continue with the development of national economies.

Line 55: Scientific names should be in italics.

Line 81: Delete space.

Line 81: Change "fgishing" to "fishing".

Line 84: Change “[22,23,24,25,27]” to “[22-25,27]”. Revise the guide for authors.

Line 87: What are these studies? List with references.

Line 89: Support the sentence with a reference.

Line 101: Why were Hong Kong and Macau excluded?

Line 111: Change "TThe" to "The".

Line 230: Edit the figure. The borders or divisions of the provinces are not equal, coordinate system grid should be added. Also, it is important to improve the quality of the figure.

Line 234: Provide day, month, year of access and software website link.

Line 234: Which tool or function was used within the "ArcGis" program?

Line 245: Improve figure, add coordinate system grid.

Line 296: Check.

Line 304-305: Change "hectares" to "ha".

Line 312: Scientific names should be in italics.

Line 314: Scientific names should be in italics.

Line 316: Scientific names should be in italics.

Author Response

Dear Editor and Reviewers,

Manuscript Number: sustainability-1938278   

Title: Spatiotemporal variations in shrimp aquaculture in China and their influencing factors

Thank you for your comments concerning our manuscript. Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. We are very sorry for some negligence and error that we made in this manuscript. We have studied comments carefully and have made all the corrections according to the Reviewers’ comments. Now, we assure the reviewers that everything has been corrected in the revised manuscript.

Please find here attached the main corrections in the paper and the response to your comments item by item. We appreciate the time and effort that the Editor and the reviewers have dedicated to providing their valuable feedback on our manuscript. We are grateful to the reviewers for their insightful comments on our paper. We hope the changes we have incorporated meet with approval.

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

1 The name of model is Geodetector(Reference URL: http://www.geodetector.org/).

2 The Geodetector needs to categorize the continuous variables, and the categorization method and the number of categories need to be described in the article.

3 The significance and value of this study is fully described in the introduction.

4 Add a comparison of this study with existing studies in the discussion section to enhance reliability.

Author Response

Dear Editor and Reviewers,

Manuscript Number: sustainability-1938278   

Title: Spatiotemporal variations in shrimp aquaculture in China and their influencing factors

Thank you for your comments concerning our manuscript revised at this second round. Now, we assure the Editor and reviewers that everything has been corrected in the revised manuscript.

We hope it meets with approval.

The main corrections in the paper and the response to your comments item by item are as follows:

Reviewer 1

1. The name of model is Geodetector (Reference URL: http://www.geodetector.org/).

Our response: We are sorry for this mistake and we would like to thank the reviewers for raising this question. In the revised manuscript, we have corrected this mistake.

2. The Geodetector needs to categorize the continuous variables, and the categorization method and the number of categories need to be described in the article.

Our response: We thank the reviewers for these insightful comments and suggestions that helped improve the manuscript. In the revised manuscript, we have supplemented the contents in the 3.2.1 calculation results part as follows:

        Since the independent variable X entered by the Geodetector should be a type quantity, it is necessary to discretize the numerical quantity in advance [29]. The Natural Breaks (Jenks) in ArcGIS was used to grade the evaluation indexes. The aquaculture area, number of aquatic technical extension personnel, total fisheries economic output, number of aquaculture workers, total population at the end of the year, and per capita disposable income were divided into three categories.

3. The significance and value of this study is fully described in the introduction.

Our response: We are grateful to the reviewers for their recognition of this part of our manuscript. At the same time, we further supplement the significance and value of this study in the introduction part of the manuscript, which makes this part of the content more sufficient. The supplementary content is as follows:

        An in-depth analysis of the yield and spatial distribution of shrimp culture production in China, and a clear understanding of the main factors affecting the change of shrimp aquaculture production distribution are essential for formulating targeted production policies of shrimp aquaculture, optimizing the regional layout of shrimp aquaculture and guiding the sustainable and healthy development of shrimp aquaculture industry.

4. Add a comparison of this study with existing studies in the discussion section to enhance reliability.

Our response: We thank the reviewers for these insightful comments and suggestions that helped improve the manuscript.  In the revised manuscript. We have rewritten and added the relevant content in the discussion section as follows:

        Compared with the research on the spatial layout of agricultural industry, the research on the spatial layout of fishery industry is less [22,46]. In the study of the spatial layout of the fishery industry, scholars have studied the overall spatial layout characteristics of the fishery industry and discussed the influencing factors of its spatial distribution. The study also mentioned the characteristics of the spatial layout of algae, shellfish, fish and shrimp and crab industries [22,24], but lacked the spatial layout of fishery subdivision industries. Some scholars have studied the spatial distribution of shrimp farming industry [11], but just like most scholars who study the spatial distribution of fishery industry, they only conducted qualitative analysis instead of quantitative analysis when studying the influencing factors of the spatial distribution of the industry [11,23,25-27]. In summary, the existing literature has important reference significance for this study, but there is still some room for expansion: First, the existing literature mostly studies the spatial layout of the agricultural industry and the overall spatial layout of the fishery industry, and lacks the spatial layout of the fishery subdivision industry. Second, the existing literature more qualitative analysis of industrial spatial distribution factors, the lack of quantitative analysis. This may cause the research conclusion not to accurately reflect the influence of various influencing factors on the spatial distribution of the industry. Third, the existing literature is mostly based on the previous research and the particularity of the research object when selecting the influencing factors, and the research on the selection of indicators from the perspective of economic theory is relatively scarce. The main contributions of this study are as follows: First, it provides reference for the study of spatial distribution and evolution of fishery subdivision industry, and also provides reasonable policy recommendations for optimizing the development of shrimp aquaculture industry. Second, different from other scholars, the Geodetector is introduced in the study to quantitatively analyze the influencing factors of the spatial distribution of shrimp aquaculture industry from the perspective of space, quantify the size of influencing factors and analyze the interaction between different influencing factors. Third, the relevant influencing factors are selected from the perspective of supply and demand of economic theory.

We appreciate once again the time and effort that the Editor and the reviewers have dedicated to providing their valuable feedback on our manuscript. We are grateful to the reviewers for their insightful comments on our paper. We hope the changes we have incorporated meet with approval.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx