Effects of Agricultural Land and Urban Expansion on Peri-Urban Forest Degradation and Implications on Sustainable Environmental Management in Southern Ethiopia

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper aims to assess the effect of cultivated land and urban expansion LULCC dynamics rate on peri-urban forest degradation and implications on sustainable environment management there by identifying the derivers of LULCC. The topic is fine, however, it still has some crucial issues to be further improved.

1. There are still formatting errors in the paper, for instance: the new paragraph added to Page 2/61 is not aligned with the other paragraphs; the flow boxes in Figure 2 are not aligned; and all the figures are fuzzy; the formula font size is not uniform.

2. What is the specific image classification method used? It is not mentioned in the paper. Besides, the paper mentions that the accuracy assessment is based on 200 points, so how can you prove that the accuracy of these 200 points can represent the whole image?

3. The research data in the paper includes only three years (2002, 2010, 2018) , I don't believe that the results of this study can predict land cover status to 2040 as mentioned in the paper.

Author Response

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Please check the manuscript for spelling and correct English words, and fix sentences starting with lowercase letters. Figure 1 possibly has spelling errors in it (like "bondary").

line 100-105, 150-157 and elsewhere. LULC - spelling?

line 161. Please explain "Remote Sending". Could it be Remote sensing instead?

lines 165 - 167. Please explain, maybe some words were mixed up, or to me it is hard to understand.

line 169. Google Earth? as in software or a data source?

line 179. What is algorism?

Fig 2. "Detail pre-image processing"? Please explain this step, could it be image pre-processing? What do You mean "detail"? Are the bullet points needed?

line 223, 228, 233. LULC C - spelling?

Fig 3. Please change the equation to a scalebar. I don't think it is possible to ensure the article printed and shown on monitors scale 1:1, so I believe, that 1cm is confusing the readers and should be replaced with graphical item. Wondogent is lowercase. Digits around the axis are not readable, because of quality and density. What are the units? Meters? What coordinate system is used there?

Fig 5. Should not have the interface of Google Earth, just an image of Earth's surface.

Fig 7. The caption seems odd. "Photo filed observation". Could You rephrase it? Also, I don't think that images prove or deny a point. Could You explain it?

 

 

Author Response

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors,

The title of your manuscript is really too long. You can shorten in the form: "Effects of agricultural and urban expansion on peri-urban forest degradation and implications of sustainable environmental management in Southern Ethiopia". The quality and resolution of the figures can be improved. Thus, the text in the Fig. 2, must be centered and harmonized (the bullets are not necessary). It is not necessary to put coordinates on the maps in Fig. 3, just the graphical scale (instead of 1cm = 3 km). Please check the source of satellite imagery in the fig. 5. Reconsider the scheme in Fig. 6. Some of the references are not necessary so please check it in details. Also, try to correct the language with English native speaker or with Grammarly. Also, you have minor technical errors in the text and syntaxes. 

 

Author Response

Reviewer #3

Dear Reviewer, thank you for your constructive comments. It helps to improve the quality of the paper. Below are the major responses for your concerns

• The theoretical background and empirical results are clearly presented
• We believe the references are relevant to this research
• The findings and discussion are balanced each other
• The results are clearly presented separately from discussion section
• We believe that we have use many relevant references as listed about 76 in number
• The title of the manuscript is rephrased as you propose "Effects of agricultural and urban expansion on peri-urban forest degradation and implications of sustainable environmental management in Southern Ethiopia" to make it short and precise.
• The texts in figure 2 are centered and bullets are removed
• The coordinated are removed in figure 3 and the scale is changed to bar scale
• We have thoroughly edited the language and revised it

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The quality and  novelty of this manuscript is limited, and the authors made very limited changes.

Author Response

Responses to Reviewer #1

We thank you for your concern and we have tried to address the comments as stated below

•  We have increased the field samples from 200 to 300 as the reviewer recommends 200 points is not enough
• With regard to the issue raised by the reviewer taking three different years is not sufficient to predict the future LULCC. Of course as opposed by the reviewer, no one may not be sure about the future but it is possible to predict about the future. The LULC prediction for the future based on past data is possible as done by Gomes et al (2021).  In addition to reduce the frustration of the reviewer we have reduced the future perdition time from 2040 to 2025 which about only 7 years ahead from the last LULCC assessment of this research time.
• We have redrawn fig.2 as commented by the reviewer not to take much space.
• We have made the background of fig.3 white as stated by the editor
• We have read thoroughly and tried to get errors and corrected them to improve the English language.