Spatiotemporal Evolution of Chinese Botanical Gardens over the Last 5000 Years

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors!

The attached article " Spatiotemporal evolution of Chinese botanical gardens over the

last 5,000 years" by Li et  et al. Proposed evaluation the role of botanical garden in the ex situ biodiversity conservation. This article is very importance. I recommend it be published in the journal after addressing the following minor suggestions.  

-Abstract: The abstract logic of the expression for the target of the botanical gardens and its role in the conservations must be highlighted along with the aim of this article. It does not show a proper link with the methodology and highlights the significance finding of the article even without linking it to the heading.

-Introduction: The flow of the aforementioned parts need to modified more. And must include  aim and objectives.

-Why Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden not included??

-Must highlights the role of  botanical gardens for conservation and protected area.

-Discussion:  The discussion needs to be more detailed. Why do you think to address  manuscript have the role of botanical gardens in conservation?  and what are the  significant outcomes? And what future planning need to addressed? This should be summarised in depth.

_Need to cite more recent paper from MDPI.

Author Response

The authors would like to thank the reviewer for your comments. Your feedback is very important. We have carefully addressed each of your suggestions and given the corresponding answers.

1. Abstract: The abstract logic of the expression for the target of the botanical gardens and its role in the conservations must be highlighted along with the aim of this article. It does not show a proper link with the methodology and highlights the significance finding of the article even without linking it to the heading.

Response 1: Thank you for your valuable advice. We highlighted the aim of our study in the abstract and emphasized the importance of our findings (Page 1, Lines 17-18, 29-30). We also added the important of botanical gardens regarding the plant’s conservation (Page 1, Line39-40).

2. Introduction: The flow of the aforementioned parts need to modified more. And must include aim and objectives.

Response 2: Thank you for your valuable advice. We have introduced the aims and objectives on the last paragraph of Introduction section (Page 2, Lines 75-83).

3. Why Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden not included?

Response 3: Thank you for your question. Xishuangbanna tropical botanical garden is included in our study. We didn’t list in the tables because Table 1 shows the ancient botanical gardens and Table 2 shows the recent botanical gardens in China.

4. Must highlights the role of botanical gardens for conservation and protected area.

Response 4: Thank you for your valuable advice. We have emphasized the important role of botanical gardens for plant diversity in the introduction (Page 2, Lines 54-57).

Discussion: The discussion needs to be more detailed.

5. Why do you think to address manuscript have the role of botanical gardens in conservation?

Response 5: Thank you for your question. Botanical gardens have a rich tradition of leading plant research and conservation programs, and gardens can take full advantage of their extensive collections and expertise to build large-scale programs to combat effects of climate change on global plant biodiversity. As the most important ex situ conservation places, botanical gardens act as a back-up for certain segments of plant diversity that might otherwise be lost in nature and in human-dominated ecosystems. We described the importance of the role of botanical gardens in conservation in the introduction and highlighted in the discussion again. (Page 1, Lines 38-40; Page 2 Lines 54-57; Page 14 373-386). Please see the references below:

• Sun, Q.; Lai, L.; Zhou, J.; Yi, S.; Liu, X.; Guo, J.; Zheng, Y. Differences in Ecological Traits between Plants Grown In Situ and Ex Situ and Implications for Conservation. Sustain. 2022, 14, doi:10.3390/su14095199.
• Chen, G.; Sun, W. The role of botanical gardens in scientific research, conservation, and citizen science. Plant Divers. 2018, 40, 181–188, doi:10.1016/j.pld.2018.07.006.
• Hongwen, H.; Zheng, Z. Current status and prospects of ex situ cultivation and conservation of plants in China (in Chinese). Biodivers. Sci. 2013, 20, 559–571, doi:10.3724/sp.j.1003.2012.13124.
• Xiaoxiang, S. Third Topic: The Significant Relationship between the Establishment of Biodiversity Ex-situ Conservational Botanical Garden & the Sustainable Development of the Ecological Living Environment of Human Being. Landsc. Archit. 2006, 12–15, doi:10.14085/j.fjyl.2006.01.004.
• Mounce, R.; Smith, P.; Brockington, S. Ex situ conservation of plant diversity in the world’s botanic gardens. Nat. Plants 2017, 3, 795–802, doi:10.1038/s41477-017-0019-3.

6. And what are the significant outcomes?

Response 6: Thank you for your valuable advice. We reserved the discussion and conclusion section for section 4, and listed there most important findings in the 4.2 conclusion section (Page 17-18, Lines 434-449).

7. And what future planning need to addressed? This should be summarised in depth.

Response 7: Thank you for your questions. The size of Chinese botanical gardens, their global influence and how to enhance the construction of a robust botanical gardens network for China were discussed in 4.1 section, which shows the future development of Chinese botanical gardens.

8. Need to cite more recent paper from MDPI.

Response 8: Thank for you advice. We have cited more related papers from MDPI in the introduction section. We also revised the format of citation according to the requirement of our journal throughout the manuscript. Please find the list below:

• Zhao, R.; Chu, X.; He, Q.; Tang, Y.; Song, M.; Zhu, Z. Modeling current and future potential geographical distribution of Carpinus tientaiensis, a critically endangered species from China. Forests 2020, 11, doi:10.3390/F11070774.
• Sun, Q.; Lai, L.; Zhou, J.; Yi, S.; Liu, X.; Guo, J.; Zheng, Y. Differences in Ecological Traits between Plants Grown In Situ and Ex Situ and Implications for Conservation. Sustain. 2022, 14, doi:10.3390/su14095199.
• Zheng, J.; Bai, X.; Na, L.; Wang, H. Tourists’ Spatial–Temporal Behavior Patterns Analysis Based on Multi-Source Data for Smart Scenic Spots: Case Study of Zhongshan Botanical Garden, China. Processes 2022, 10, doi:10.3390/pr10020181.
• Sun, Q.; Lai, L.; Zhou, J.; Liu, X.; Zheng, Y. Ecophysiological Leaf Traits of Forty-Seven Woody Species under Long-Term Acclimation in a Botanical Garden. Plants 2022, 11, 1–17, doi:10.3390/plants11060725.
• 48. Pecundo, M.H.; Dela Cruz, T.E.E.; Chen, T.; Notarte, K.I.; Ren, H.; Li, N. Diversity, phylogeny and antagonistic activity of fungal endophytes associated with endemic species of cycas (Cycadales) in china. J. Fungi 2021, 7, 1–25, doi:10.3390/jof7070572.

Reviewer 2 Report

Interesting article, focusing on the history of Botanical Gardens (henceforth BGs) in China which go back almost 5,000 years. Indeed, China was the ancient civilization where BG firstly appeared, presently holding the largest number of BGs in a single nation. It seems some aditional information could be very useful to add (please see my general comments), and some corrections and clarifications may also enhance the manuscript’s readability (please see my specific comments):

General comments

1.      Both in the abstract and in Section 2 you mention that the ensemble of the Chinese BGs are responsible for the ‘preservation of 515,000 species of living plants’. This number needs to be clarified: although the total number of [vascular] plant species is not consensual, the most repeated numbers do not reach 400,000 plant species (see, for instance, The World Flora Online –http://www.worldfloraonline.org/,  were the total number of  accepted species presently amounts to 381,959 [vascular] plant species). Thus, if this number refers to total plant species, it is probably lower; it may also happen that the number refers to the sum of plant specimens held by the listed gardens, without eliminating repetitions (or list ‘overlaps’) from garden to garden. In this case, it would be preferable to say that ‘Chinese botanical gardens are responsible for the preservation of 515,000 specimens of living plants in their collections’. Lastly, there may also be problems with plant name synonyms, which needs to be handled before the summed numbers of total plant diversity preserved in Chinese BGs is calculated. In either case, please clarify which case is this, or if a more accurate number can be provided;

2.      In my oppinion, the starting section of chapter 2 should close this same chapter, thus be moved to section 2.4, summing up the data presented before. Consequently, the opening of chapter 2 should be a paragraph indicating the method though which the literature review was conducted. What were the sources consulted? Were there any keywords guiding the documentation selection? Are these mostly journal articles, ‘classic literature’ texts or other types of ‘grey literature’? In total, how many documents were reviewed and where are the review results summarized?;

3.      Although you mention that Chinese BGs ‘account for more than 12% of the global total of 3,757 Botanical Gardens [in the world]’, not all the 456 Chinese BGs are listed in BGCI databases, according to the ‘GardenSearch’ search engine (see https://tools.bgci.org/garden_advanced_search.php). Also, in 2018, the IABG list of World BGs lists only 162 BGs in China (see http://iabg.iubs.net/notice/201801/t20180131_395283.html). Please clarify how many Chinese BGs are registered in the BGCI ‘GardenSearch’ database (and discuss how this affects the percentage estimation presented) and verify also these numbers in the Conclusion (sub-)section (note: Maybe a supplemental data annex (table) listing the existing BGs in China at the present moment could be a useful adition to the article);

4.      There should be some information on the ‘social impact’ of Chinese BGs, that is, it would be very helpful to know if all botanical gardens are open for general public visitation and if there are total numbers of visits-per-year to botanical gardens in China (see Chang, L.S., Bisgrove, R.J., Liao, M.Y., 2008. Improving educational functions in botanic gardens by employing landscape narratives. Landsc. Urban Plan. 86, 233–247 for global numbers of visits-per-year in BGs, worldwide);

5.      Finnaly, Sections in Chapter 4 (Conclusions and Discussion) should be presented in reverse order, that is, firstly present the [very interesting] discussion on the relevance of Chinese Botanical Gardens (reflections on the size of Chinese BGs, their global influence and how to enhance the construction of a robust BGs network for China), and only after this should the conclusions be presented. This may imply some ‘reconfiguration’ of the text, to fit the new structure, but I feel it will make much more sense to have the Discussion before the Conclusion.

Specific comments

6.      Carefully review the list of references, please. Some of the cited literature does not integrate the list of references (e.g. IABG, 1963) and some author names need small corrections (e.g. Blackmore, S. 2007 instead of Stephen Blackmore. 2007). Likewise, citations to Hu, 2005 need to clarify if they refer to “Hu W., 2005” or “Hu Y., 2005”. Finally, a few references seem to be missing citations in the text (e.g. Ren Hai, Wen Xiangying, Liao Jingping, et al. 2022. On The Functional change of the Botanical Garden and the Construction of the National Botanical Garden System of China [J / OL]. Biodiversity Science);

7.      In page 6 the sentence “Table 1 shows how the ideological origin of Chinese botanical gardens includes three key aspects:” could be clearer… my proposal would be to rephrase into “Table 1 shows distinct typologies underlying the origin of Chinese botanical gardens, mainly based on three key aims:”. Nevertheless, authors are free to propose alternative versions to this sentence, for the sake of clarity;

8.      Figure 7 could have the number of BGs presently existing added as a label, over each Province. This is also valid for Figure 11, where each section of the ‘colored circular graph’ could include overlaying labels with the exact number of BGs in each class;

9.      Not intending to distort or induce historical misinterpretations, there should be a diferent word (or adjective, if you prefer) to separate BGs from stage 2 (1860-1949) from stage 3 (1950-2022) BGs. This would mean that, for instance, you could use the expression “colonial BGs” for the period identified in stage 2 (and that would emply changing the name of section 2.2 from “The colonial exploration stage for modern botanical gardens (1860-1949)” to “The exploration stage in colonial botanical gardens (1860-1949)”, thus avoiding to use the expression “modern botanical gardens” in both stages 2 and 3. Again, this is just a suggestion;

10.   Finally, in line with general comment nr. 5, maybe some text rearrangement could produce a better final comment to your conclusions, such as using the final comment in section 4.2 (starting from “Of china’s 456 botanical gardens, there are only eleven…”), in order the finish the section with a stong concluding remark.

Thank you to the authors for a very interesting and educative reading! Hope the notes produced here are of use and help to improve and clarify the submitted manuscript.

Best regards.

Author Response

The authors would like to thank the reviewer for your comments. Your feedback is very important. We have carefully addressed each of your suggestions and given the corresponding answers.

General comments

1. Both in the abstract and in Section 2 you mention that the ensemble of the Chinese BGs are responsible for the ‘preservation of 515,000 species of living plants’. This number needs to be clarified: although the total number of [vascular] plant species is not consensual, the most repeated numbers do not reach 400,000 plant species (see, for instance, The World Flora Online –http://www.worldfloraonline.org/,  were the total number of  accepted species presently amounts to 381,959 [vascular] plant species). Thus, if this number refers to total plant species, it is probably lower; it may also happen that the number refers to the sum of plant specimensheld by the listed gardens, without eliminating repetitions (or list ‘overlaps’) from garden to garden. In this case, it would be preferable to say that ‘Chinese botanical gardens are responsible for the preservation of 515,000 specimens of living plants in their collections’. Lastly, there may also be problems with plant name synonyms, which needs to be handled before the summed numbers of total plant diversity preserved in Chinese BGs is calculated. In either case, please clarify which case is this, or if a more accurate number can be provided;

Response 1: Thank you for your valuable advice. 515,000 is the accumulated total number of plant specimens. We revised the sentence to “With the websites review, data query and interviews, there are 456 botanical gar-dens in China were collected by 2022, which cover a total area of 115,000 hectares and preserving accumulated total number of 515,000 living plant specimens across all 34 provinces, autonomous regions, municipalities, and special administrative regions in China” (Page 2-3, Lines 97-100; Page 17, Lines 443-444).

2. In my oppinion, the starting section of chapter 2 should close this same chapter, thus be moved to section 2.4, summing up the data presented before. Consequently, the opening of chapter 2 should be a paragraph indicating the method though which the literature review was conducted. What were the sources consulted? Were there any keywords guiding the documentation selection? Are these mostly journal articles, ‘classic literature’ texts or other types of ‘grey literature’? In total, how many documents were reviewed and where are the review results summarized?;

Response 2: We appreciate your valuable advice. We intended to clarify the whole process of Chinese botanical garden can be divided into three stages first, and then described three period in detail. Furthermore, as the last paragraph in introduction explains the method we used in this study, we would keep the flow of section 2. And we added extra text to describe the three main ways to collect the information (name, location, total number of plants) of all Chinese botanical gardens. (Page 2, Lines 97-99).

3. Although you mention that Chinese BGs ‘account for more than 12% of the global total of 3,757 Botanical Gardens[in the world]’, not all the 456 Chinese BGs are listed in BGCI databases, according to the ‘GardenSearch’ search engine (see https://tools.bgci.org/garden_advanced_search.php). Also, in 2018, the IABG list of World BGs lists only 162 BGs in China (see http://iabg.iubs.net/notice/201801/t20180131_395283.html). Please clarify how many Chinese BGs are registered in the BGCI ‘GardenSearch’ database (and discuss how this affects the percentage estimation presented) and verify also these numbers in the Conclusion (sub-)section (note: Maybe a supplemental data annex (table) listing the existing BGs in China at the present moment could be a useful adition to the article);

Response 3: We appreciate your valuable advice. Based on the BGCI databases, we also reviewed the available Chinese local websites as well as combined with data query and interviews. We finally collected total number of 456 botanical gardens by 2022. This study first leads a comprehensive review and spatiotemporal analysis of Chinese botanical gardens, which updated the results of Chinese botanical gardens. We have highlighted the significance of our findings in the abstract and introduction (Page 2, Line 82). For the detail information of collected 456 botanical gardens, we have listed most important botanical gardens in Table 1 and Table 2, also demonstrate their numbers by province in Figure 8.

4. There should be some information on the ‘social impact’ of Chinese BGs, that is, it would be very helpful to know if all botanical gardens are open for general public visitation and if there are total numbers of visits-per-year to botanical gardens in China (see Chang, L.S., Bisgrove, R.J., Liao, M.Y., 2008. Improving educational functions in botanic gardens by employing landscape narratives. Landsc. Urban Plan. 86, 233–247 for global numbers of visits-per-year in BGs, worldwide);

Response 4: Thank you for your valuable advice. We totally agreed that the social impact of Chinese BGs is important. We also considered in our study; we classified all 456 BGs into six types according to their multiple functions. More specifically, the teaching BGs, landscape-style BGs and tourism-focused BGs were defined according to their creation, tourism and nature education for public and citizens. We also cited several related literatures in throughout our manuscript.

5. Finnaly, Sections in Chapter 4 (Conclusions and Discussion) should be presented in reverse order, that is, firstly present the [very interesting] discussion on the relevance of Chinese Botanical Gardens (reflections on the size of Chinese BGs, their global influence and how to enhance the construction of a robust BGs network for China), and only after this should the conclusions be presented. This may imply some ‘reconfiguration’ of the text, to fit the new structure, but I feel it will make much more sense to have the Discussion before the Conclusion.

Response 5: Thank you for your valuable advice. We moved the discussion section before the conclusion and restructured some sentences in discussion and conclusion (Page 14, Lines 371-386).

Specific comments

6. Carefully review the list of references, please. Some of the cited literature does not integrate the list of references (e.g. IABG, 1963) and some author names need small corrections (e.g. Blackmore, S. 2007 instead of Stephen Blackmore. 2007). Likewise, citations to Hu, 2005 need to clarify if they refer to “Hu W., 2005” or “Hu Y., 2005”. Finally, a few references seem to be missing citations in the text (e.g. Ren Hai, Wen Xiangying, Liao Jingping, et al. 2022. On The Functional change of the Botanical Garden and the Construction of the National Botanical Garden System of China [J / OL]. Biodiversity Science).

Response 6: Thank you for your valuable advice. We reviewed the references and changed the citation format of Sustainability throughout the manuscript. Please see the Reference section.

7. In page 6 the sentence “Table 1 shows how the ideological origin of Chinese botanical gardens includes three key aspects:” could be clearer… my proposal would be to rephrase into “Table 1 shows distinct typologies underlying the origin of Chinese botanical gardens, mainly based on three key aims:”. Nevertheless, authors are free to propose alternative versions to this sentence, for the sake of clarity;

Response 7: Thank you for your valuable advice. We reshaped the sentence “Table 1 shows how the ideological origin of Chinese botanical gardens includes three key aspects:” to “Table 1 shows distinct typologies underlying the origin of Chinese botanical gardens, mainly based on three key aims:” (Page 6, Lines 131-132).

8. Figure 7 could have the number of BGs presently existing added as a label, over each Province. This is also valid for Figure 11, where each section of the ‘colored circular graph’ could include overlaying labels with the exact number of BGs in each class;

Response 8: Thank you for your valuable advice. Figure 8 in our manuscript shows the number of existing botanical gardens in each province in China and Figure 7 shows the spatial evolution of botanical garden cross China, so we would keep Figure 7. We revised Figure 11 and added the exact number and percentage in each class (Page 16, Lines 406-407).  

9. Not intending to distort or induce historical misinterpretations, there should be a diferent word (or adjective, if you prefer) to separate BGs from stage 2 (1860-1949) from stage 3 (1950-2022) BGs. This would mean that, for instance, you could use the expression “colonial BGs” for the period identified in stage 2 (and that would emply changing the name of section 2.2 from “The colonial exploration stage for modern botanical gardens (1860-1949)” to “The exploration stage in colonial botanical gardens (1860-1949)”, thus avoiding to use the expression “modern botanical gardens” in both stages 2 and 3. Again, this is just a suggestion;

Response 9: Thank you for your valuable advice. We changed to the term “modern botanical gardens” in stage 2 to “recent botanical gardens” according to its Chinese meaning. The name of section 2.2 “The colonial exploration stage for modern botanical gardens (1860-1949)” changed to “The colonial exploration stage for recent botanical gardens (1860-1949)” (Page 7, Line 171). We also changed the legend in Figure 1 and Figure 2 (Page 3, Lines 103-106).

10. Finally, in line with general comment nr. 5, maybe some text rearrangement could produce a better final comment to your conclusions, such as using the final comment in section 4.2 (starting from “Of china’s 456 botanical gardens, there are only eleven…”), in order the finish the section with a stong concluding remark.

Response 10: Thank you for your valuable advice. We followed the comments 5, moved the discussion section before the conclusion and restructured some sentences in discussion and conclusion (Page 14, Lines 371-386). For the second point in discussion section, we classified the six types of Chinese botanical gardens first and analyze the proportion of various types, so we would keep the current flow.

Reviewer 3 Report

Title: Spatiotemporal evolution of Chinese botanical gardens over the last 5,000 years

Author(s): Li et al. (2022);                            MS#: Sustainability_2015703

This is a valuable and interesting study in which the authors investigated the evolution of botanical gardens in China over temporal and spatial scale . The contents of the MS are presented in a nice and informative way. However, I would like to suggest a few minor amendments which might improve the basic understanding linked to targeted subject.

 1.      The authors mentioned that all the botanical gardens in China are hosting about 515,000 plant species at the moment. Please clarify? A latest (2016) report (published by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, United Kingdom) communicated that there are about 391,000 known plant species in the world including about 369,000 species (or 94 percent) are flowering plants. This ambiguity might create confusion among the readers.

2.      How the authors reach on this conclusion that there are 515,000 plant species flourishing in the botanical gardens of China alone? No reference is quoted with this number.

3.      Sometimes, excessive use of synonyms along with accepted species binomials create such confusing and incorrect richness estimates (please see: Khan, A.M., Qureshi, R., Qaseem, M.F., Ahmad, W., Saqib, Z., Habib, T., 2016. Status of basic taxonomic skills in botanical articles related to Azad Jammu and Kashmir. Pakistan: A Review. J. Bioresour. Manag. 3 (3), 22–54. https://doi.org/10.35691/JBM.6102.0059). And, if this number represent all the phyto-taxa (representing say accepted species, subspecies, varieties etc.) please convey accordingly, but again, in this case, we can’t say that there are 515,000 plant species.

4.      In figure 2, please elaborate that what do you meant by administrative boundary? China boundary? Or botanical gardens boundary?

5.      In figure 3 legend, please add time span in parenthesis (as quoted in figure 1) to make it full explanatory if read in isolation.

Author Response

The authors would like to thank the reviewer for your comments. Your feedback is very important. We have carefully addressed each of your suggestions and given the corresponding answers.

 

1. The authors mentioned that all the botanical gardens in China are hosting about 515,000 plant species at the moment. Please clarify? A latest (2016) report (published by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, United Kingdom) communicated that there are about 391,000 known plant species in the world including about 369,000 species (or 94 percent) are flowering plants. This ambiguity might create confusion among the readers.

Response 1: Thank you for your valuable advice. 515,000 is the accumulated total number of plant specimens. We revised the sentence to “With the websites review, data query and interviews, there are 456 botanical gar-dens in China were collected by 2022, which cover a total area of 115,000 hectares and preserving accumulated total number of 515,000 living plant specimens across all 34 provinces, autonomous regions, municipalities, and special administrative regions in China” (Page 2-3, Lines 97-100; Page 17, Lines 443-444).

2. How the authors reach on this conclusion that there are 515,000 plant species flourishing in the botanical gardens of China alone? No reference is quoted with this number.

Response 2: We appreciate your valuable advice. Based on the information from BGCI databases, we also reviewed the available Chinese local websites as well as combined with data query and interviews. We finally collected total number of 456 botanical gardens by 2022. This study first leads a comprehensive review and spatiotemporal analysis of Chinese botanical gardens, which updated the results of Chinese botanical gardens. We reshaped the sentences to make it more clearly (Page 2, Lines 98-100). We have highlighted the significance of our findings in the abstract and introduction (Page 2, Line 82).

3. Sometimes, excessive use of synonyms along with accepted species binomials create such confusing and incorrect richness estimates (please see: Khan, A.M., Qureshi, R., Qaseem, M.F., Ahmad, W., Saqib, Z., Habib, T., 2016. Status of basic taxonomic skills in botanical articles related to Azad Jammu and Kashmir. Pakistan: A Review. J. Bioresour. Manag. 3 (3), 22–54. https://doi.org/10.35691/JBM.6102.0059). And, if this number represent all the phyto-taxa (representing say accepted species, subspecies, varieties etc.) please convey accordingly, but again, in this case, we can’t say that there are 515,000 plant species.

Response 3: Thank you for your valuable advice. Please also see the same response in comment 1. In our study, 515,000 is the accumulated total number of plant specimens in all 456 botanical gardens. We also used the “specimens” instead of “species”. We revised the sentence to “With the websites review, data query and interviews, there are 456 botanical gar-dens in China were collected by 2022, which cover a total area of 115,000 hectares and preserving accumulated total number of 515,000 living plant specimens across all 34 provinces, autonomous regions, municipalities, and special administrative regions in China” (Page 2-3, Lines 97-100; Page 17, Lines 443-444).

4. In figure 2, please elaborate that what do you meant by administrative boundary? China boundary? Or botanical gardens boundary?

Response 4: Thank you for your valuable advice. It refers to the administrative boundary of province. We revised the legend in Figure 2 and Figure 4 (Page 2, Lines 105-106; Page 6, Lines 131-132).

5. In figure 3 legend, please add time span in parenthesis (as quoted in figure 1) to make it full explanatory if read in isolation.

Response 5: Thank you for your valuable advice. We added the time span in Figure 3 (Page 4, Lines 107-109).

Reviewer 4 Report

Dear Editorial Manager

I go through the manuscript, it is a well written paper and accepted for publishing as present form.

Regards

Author Response

The authors would like to thank the reviewer for your kind comments. We have revised some details of whole manuscript to make it more clear and readable. We also changed the format of citations according to the requirements of journal.

Best Regards,

Chang Wang

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Thanks to the authors for taking into consideration my revision notes.

In my opinion the manuscript was greatly improved and little or no issues subsist.

I am happy to recommend the acceptance of the manuscript in its present form.

Best Regards