Participatory Historical Village Landscape Analysis Using a Virtual Globe-Based 3D PGIS: Guizhou, China
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
1. How did they select the respondents? Was there any preliminary interview to ascertain their level of knowledge of the landscape and their experiences?
2. Did the authors validate the results? How was the validation carried out?
3. The discussion section needs references. The authors need to explain the results in the context of the existing literature.
4. The manuscript needs copy-editing to correct some errors.
Author Response
Dear reviewer:
Thank you very much for your comments and valuable recommendations. We have carefully revised the manuscript according to your suggestions. Please see our responses to your comments in the attached doc file.
Please see the attachment.
Sincerely yours,
Linjun Yu, Xiaodong Zhang, Feng he
2022.10.06
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The article describes a specific and interesting approach to the reconstruction of the historic countryside landscape, but to me it seems somehow incomplete or unfinished. Neither the work nor the results are clearly presented nor the final conclusions are consistent with the purpose and scope of the journal. In my opinion, this article needs to be reorganized and expanded. Detailed comments are listed below:
1. Line 91 - I believe that despite doing so in the abstract, the abbreviation "3D PGIS" should be expanded the first time it is used in the article.
2. Chapter "3. Methods" is too short and does not describe the work done. Meanwhile, the main description of the methods can be found in chapter “4. Results". Therefore "4.1. Study Area" should be 3.1and present tekst of Chapter 3 should be the new 3.2. Also "4.2. Historical Landscape Data Collection" should be rewrited as 3.3 but without 4.2.1, 4.2.2, 4.2.3 and 4.2.4.
3. In the new 3 Authors should also provide at least a brief explanation of the indicators and measures used to further characterize the land use structure and landscape layout, etc. I believe that for the sake of clarity of presentation, at least the basic formulas and a very short explanation of the calculations should be included, rather than just a reference to the source articles (as there is an article in Chinese as a source).
4. 4.2.1 as 4.1 etc along with "4.3Analysis of landscape evolution characteristics" should constitute the new "4. Results and discussion".
5. Figures 3, 4, 5 and 6 should be provided in better quality and each one should be divided into two figures. As the 3D PGIS presentation in XYPGIS is considered to be the main advantage, the "left part" of the actual figures should be presented as a larger figure with better resolution. Also "right part" of current figures should be presented separately (as a classic planar view of situation) but with clearly visible markings on the map/plan and legend in english.
6. Section "correlation analysis" is just a discussion on landscape changes there is no correlation analysis between any of indicators/factors/metrics. I suggest to rewrite it as just a summary of discussion on the evolution of landscape.
7. The conclsions are rather general. Why was the "Analysis of landscape evolution characteristics" done since there are no conclusions about landscape changes? How this article and (work done) contributes to sustainability? There is only one general sentence in lines 358-359: "The analysis of the evolution characteristics of the village historical landscape is the basic work of making village landscape planning and sustainable development strategies." Without this sentence (but also with it), this article could well be published in Land or Geographies or Geomatics, to which it would be more thematically relevant.
Best regards.
Author Response
Dear reviewer:
Thank you very much for your comments and valuable recommendations. We have carefully revised the manuscript according to your suggestions. Please see our responses to your comments in the attached doc file.
Please see the attachment.
Sincerely yours,
Linjun Yu, Xiaodong Zhang, Feng he
2022.10.06
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
Thank you for the opportunity to review your manuscript reporting a novel methodology drawing on participatory data collection by local villagers paired with 3D GIS visualization. The paper reports an important advance in recording changing landscape characteristics over time alongside historical periods of human land use and dwelling patterns. My comments are based mostly on aspects of written expression for clarity, but I also have a few queries about the presentation of the PGIS data in figures.
Abstract
Lines 19-20. Singular-plural mismatch. “…using a virtual…systems”
Introduction
Lines 41-42. “a series of problems such as the village hollow and fragmentation and disorder development of village landscape”. What is ‘the village hollow’ and how is this a problem? Also, do you mean "fragmentation and disordered development of the village" landscape?
Line 51. “…or understanding the development law of human and natural interaction in villages”. What do you mean by understanding ‘the development law’? Do you mean human-nature interaction? Otherwise, what do mean here by "human interaction" and "natural interaction"?
Line 67. No title case required for public
Line 75. Avoid gender-biased expression. ‘human-land relationship’
Line 97. ‘just’ is redundant
Line 138. Insert the name/s of the developer/s - necessary to complete the sentence.
Line 159. “The altitude of its most area is about”. The altitude of most of the village area is about…
Line 172. ‘were invited’ – past tense
Line 194. ‘There was a primary school’
Line 226. “…was larger than that in 2015 due in part to woodlands in the southwestern region of the village in 1995 changed to agricultural land in 2015.” Either ‘being changed’ or ‘changing’
Figure 4 & Figure 5. Aside from the change in perspective (Figure 4 view more directly from above), I don't see any difference between Figure 4 and Figure 5 landscape or number of buildings.
Lines 232-233. “The number of houses in 1980 was much lower than that in 1995.” I copied/pasted Fig 4 & Fig 5 for a side-by-side comparison and couldn’t determine any difference between the two in terms of the number of houses. Are you sure these two are the correct figures for the respective time periods?
Table 2. Each column sums to 33.67, which would mean a total village land use capacity of 33.67 hectares - would have been useful to have this included in the description of the village in section 4.1 Study Area.
Table 3. There are some inconsistencies in spacing for numbers in the thousands.
Check reference list entries 7 & 50 for formatting.
Author Response
Dear reviewer:
Thank you very much for your comments and valuable recommendations. We have carefully revised the manuscript according to your suggestions. Please see our responses to your comments in the attached doc file.
Please see the attachment.
Sincerely yours,
Linjun Yu, Xiaodong Zhang, Feng he
2022.10.06
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 4 Report
Participatory historical village landscape data collection and evolution characteristics analysis using a virtual globe-based 3D PGIS
· The title is a bit long and too explanatory.
Suggested title:
Participatory historical village landscape analysis using a virtual globe-based 3D PGIS: Guizhou, China
· The manuscript discuss an important issue in relation o historic urban regeneration and its rural revitalisation. The literature review and introductory sections position this work among related previous scholarly literature. However, this should also include the social value of sustainability as the main aim of this manuscript is to sustain and strengthen the social and environmental aspects of the landscape in question.
· More information on similar projects or work would also help.
· The methods section should include further and clearer information for example instead of (“XYPGIS”, developed by [42] is..) we could write (“XYPGIS”, developed by Yu, L.J., et al. in 2020 is..) or we could just state the outcomes of that study.
· More information on why the study area was selected would be helpful.
· The results are great and impressive and shows a lot of on-site work and brilliant participation. But this should be strengthen by explanation the methods and positioning this work in its scholarly context. This could also be good to be highlighted in the conclusion and emphasise the importance of this work and how it differs from previous work. The limitations are also critical to be highlighted.
Author Response
Dear reviewer:
Thank you very much for your comments and valuable recommendations. We have carefully revised the manuscript according to your suggestions. Please see our responses to your comments in the attached doc file.
Please see the attachment.
Sincerely yours,
Linjun Yu, Xiaodong Zhang, Feng he
2022.10.06
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Thanks to the authors for taking into account all my remarks. Now this work is much clearer and complete. However, I still have a few comments, which are listed below:
1. Line 94: There is "=", which shouldn't be there.
2. As maps/plans are the best form of visualization of the current state of landscape and its changes, and the basis for planning activities, I suggest placing figures from 2 to 5 in better quality/resolution also in the pdf version of this article (this version is often used later by readers) . I also suggest placing part "b" of these figures under part "a" and not next to it (then you will be able to enlarge these drawings a bit and show them in better quality).
3. Figures from 2 to 5 in part "b" contain indicators eg. "E1", "E2", "R1", "S2" etc., which are poorly visible and their meaning in the legend is not explained. This needs to be changed.
4. Section "correlation analysis" is just a discussion on landscape changes there is no correlation analysis between any of indicators/factors/metrics in the mathematical way/sense. I suggest not to use strictly mathematical/statistical terminology. It will be better to change "correlation" (in section and Figure 6 captions) into "trend of changes..." or "analysis of the dependence of changes ..." or something similar.
Best regards.
Author Response
Dear reviewer:
Thank you very much for your comments and valuable recommendations. We have carefully revised the manuscript according to your suggestions. Please see our responses to your comments in the attached doc file.
Please see the attachment.
Sincerely yours,
Linjun Yu, Xiaodong Zhang, Feng he
2022.10.16
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Round 3
Reviewer 2 Report
Thank you for incorporating the changes I suggested to the article. I have just one more issue that I leave for the Authors to consider:
Figures from 2 to 5 are much better now, but the view has changed. Therefore, it would be important to include the orientation according to the directions of the world to both parts of the figures.
And the second one is that figure 5 still does not have part (a) and (b) marked.
Best regards.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer:
Thank you very much for your comments and valuable recommendations. We have carefully revised the manuscript according to your suggestions.
Our responses to your comments are listed below:
Point 1: 1. Thank you for incorporating the changes I suggested to the article. I have just one more issue that I leave for the Authors to consider:
Figures from 2 to 5 are much better now, but the view has changed. Therefore, it would be important to include the orientation according to the directions of the world to both parts of the figures.
And the second one is that figure 5 still does not have part (a) and (b) marked.
Best regards.
Response 1:
Thank you for this suggestion. We have modified the manuscript according to your suggestion.
Figures 2-5 have been regenerated from the same direction of the world as the plane map and we have added marks of "(a)" and "(b)" to Figure 5. please see the revised manuscript.
Thanks again.
