A Comparative Study on the Difference in Meteorological Monitoring between Constructed Green Land and Natural Sandy Land

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Review of the manuscript "A comparative study on the difference in meteorological monitoring between constructed green land and natural sandy land" by W. Huo et al., re-submitted to the Sustainability

The re-submitted manuscript presents a study of meteorological properties in an artificially created oasis (called “artificial green vegetation land” by the authors) inside a large arid area (the Taklimakan desert). Its aim is to provide a basis for the evaluation of the stability of ecological greening projects, provide scientific and theoretical data support for the sustainable development of constructed green land in desert areas, and provide a reference for the study of the interaction between land and atmosphere over desert and oasis areas.

I find that in the resubmitted version, the aim is clearly defined and that all the issues I pointed out in the review of the original manuscript were successfully addressed. The quality of the language and the consistency of the manuscript have greatly improved as well, therefore I recommend the publication of the manuscript in Sustainability.

One small comment, I suggest the authors to change the caption to Figure 1 from

Schematic diagram of test points

to

Map of the constructed green land under study in the Taklimakan desert with indicated test points A-D, where environmental and meteorological data was recorded.

Author Response

Cover letter

WenHuo and co-authors

(01/13/2021)

Overall comments：

Thank you very much for the hard work of all reviewer’s and editors. It's our pleasure.

Our manuscript (SUSTAINABILITY_1564023) has become good and can be published in SUSTAINABILITY.

Overall Reply:

We believe that the further revised manuscript adequately addresses all the reviewers' comments and suggestions. The reviewers can be convinced by our careful revisions. We also followed very carefully to the suggestions of the SUSTAINABILITY editor and asked an English editorial officer to help us improve the English presentation in the revised manuscript. Our detailed responses as follow：

Question 1：

One small comment, I suggest the authors to change the caption to Figure 1 from

Schematic diagram of test points

Responses 1：

Revised already

It is Figure 1 Map of the CGL under study in the Taklimakan desert with indicated test points A-E, where environmental and meteorological data was recorded.

Many thanks for the detailed corrections of the English presentations in our original submission. During the revision, we have corrected all the errors the reviewer has kindly pointed out to us, together with many other revisions as reflected in the PDF file which tracks the changes we have made in the revision.We truly believe the quality of the manuscript is significantly improved for its publication after the help from the reviewer and an English editorial officer who helped us r refining the English presentation.

Finally, we sincerely thank the reviewers and editors for helping us achieve the goal.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The article was resubmitted after noticeable changes as it is seen from its text. Several significant improvements were done. In particular, a description of the observational site and realized measurements is inserted in section 2.1, which is very useful to understand the presented material. The list of references has been supplemented that also forms a more complete picture of the microclimate in oases. Moreover, the discussion and conclusions have been corrected. In the manuscript, there are also many local improvements comparing with the previous version. The text was professionally edited, which allowed to eliminate various grammatical errors.

Despite the large amount of work realized, several remarks from the first review may be repeated, and some new comments appeared during the reading of the current variant. Respective details are included in the attached file. The more significant ones are highlighted in bold, but all of them are not critical to the content of the article. Therefore, in my opinion, the necessary changes can be characterized as minor revision. Nonetheless, I would advise to think about reducing the description of temperature variations in the sections 3.1 and 3.2. Several corrections are needed to make the manuscript more comprehensible to readers (see, e.g., the comments on L. 133 and L. 435). List of references should be further checked.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Cover letter

WenHuo and co-authors

(01/13/2021)

Overall comments：

Thank you very much for the hard work of all reviewer’s and editors. It's our pleasure.

Our manuscript (SUSTAINABILITY_1564023) has become good and can be published in SUSTAINABILITY.

Overall Reply:

We believe that the further revised manuscript adequately addresses all the reviewers' comments and suggestions. The reviewers can be convinced by our careful revisions. We also followed very carefully to the suggestions of the SUSTAINABILITY editor and asked an English editorial officer to help us improve the English presentation in the revised manuscript. Our detailed responses as follow：

Question 1：

Despite the large amount of work realized, several remarks from the first review may be repeated, and some new comments appeared during the reading of the current variant. Respective details are included in the attached file. The more significant ones are highlighted in bold, but all of them are not critical to the content of the article. Therefore, in my opinion, the necessary changes can be characterized as minor revision. Nonetheless, I would advise to think about reducing the description of temperature variations in the sections 3.1 and 3.2. Several corrections are needed to make the manuscript more comprehensible to readers (see, e.g., the comments on L. 133 and L. 435). List of references should be further checked

Responses 1：

Thank the expert（reviewer） for his advice and care！ We have revised it according to the opinions

Particular comments

It is important to note that by following the reviewer’s comments, we revised the manuscript in many details. The quality of resubmitted manuscript has been greatly improved. We believe that the further revised manuscript adequately addresses all the reviewers' comments and suggestions. Therefore, the line numbers of the re-submitted manuscript may not correspond to the original version and our detailed responses as follow:

 

“Below are some (not all) corrections in English.

‘Corresponding authors’– should be‘Corresponding author’ (singular form) because only one corresponding author is indicated.

A: Revised already

 

34. 34.‘The decreasing rates of the wind speed at the boundary and center of the CGL were 35% and 68%’–it is difficult to say from this fragment what decreasing is described and even whether spatial or time variability is considered.

A: It has been revised.

 

53. 53.‘researchers began to think rationally about desert climate and carried out research [6-15]’– it seems that the work [7] (‘Characteristics of mineral elements in shoots of three annual halophytes in asaline desert, Northern Xinjiang’) does not directly describe climate, and this citation can be eliminated.

A: It has been revised.

 

23. 23. “at the” should be instead of “atthe”. A careful reading of the text is necessary to correct analogous errors. I will not point out most of them because they are numerous.

A: It has been revised.

 

66. 66.‘research on the local microclimate of the Taklimakan Desert has also been carried out [15-26]’–many references are presented here simultaneously, and the works [20], [21], [24] concern soil microorganisms. Are these three citations needed when the desert microclimate is studied?

A: It has been revised.

 

71. 70-71.‘about the surface energy, temperature, humidity and wind of the ground’– what do‘surface energy’ and‘of ground’ mean in this phrase?

 A: It has been revised.

 

85. 85.‘high frequency zones with sandstorms’– possibly,‘high-frequency sandstorm zones’ or‘zones with high frequency of sandstorms’.energy’ and‘of ground’ mean in this phrase? A: It has been revised.

 

89. 89.‘EN -- SW’– a usual representation is‘NE– SW’.

A: It has been revised.

 

95. 95. Blank line between the caption to Fig. 1 and the following text is necessary. Similar situations are also for some of the following figures.

A: It has been revised.

 

96. 96. Here coordinates are indicated with angular minutes and seconds but in Fig. 1 parts of degrees are used. Unified notation is more suitable for readers.

A: It has been revised.

 

Table 1.‘Press’– should be‘Pressure’ (in several cases).

A: It has been revised.

 

141. 141. “onlong-term” – “on long-term” should be.

A: It has been revised.

 

133. 133. The lowest curve for September day seems incorrect, because it does not resemble the corresponding night curve. In fact, this daily curve is very similar to the April one.

A：The original data and charts have been carefully checked and there is no problem. Thank you for your query and care.

 

143. 142-143.‘lags 2 h’– should be‘lags by 2 h’.

A: It has been revised.

 

191. 191.‘in January of winter’– in my opinion, this supplementary‘of winter’ is unnecessary. Similarconstructions are used many times without any additional information.

A: It has been revised.

 

203. 191-203. A predominant part of the text can be excluded because it repeats Table 2, which is more convenient for readers.

A: It has been revised. Unnecessary text has been deleted

 

217. 216-217. It is worth increasing the font size on the plots.‘Sping’ should be replaced by‘Spring’ in all legends; see also Fig. 8 (east), Fig. 10, 11. More distinctive curves are desired for spring and autumn on the upper left plot of Fig. 4.

A: It has been revised.

 

280. 224-280. In my opinion, no necessity is to write down all these details about temperature changes. If this information seems absolutely needful, it can be presented in tables (analogously to Fig. 2) with only main conclusions in the text.

 A: It has been revised.

 

228. 227-228.‘negative temperature variation rate was from 18:00 to 19:00, and the maximum of negative temperature variation was -2.3℃/h’– possibly, the word‘rate’ is necessary in the second case (‘… rate was–2.3℃/h’), not in the first case

A: It has been revised.This part has been deleted.

267. 267.‘9:00 to 15:00 of 9 h’– of course, the time range from 9:00 to 15:00 is not 9 h.

A: It has been revised. This part has been deleted.

 

272. 272.‘Among them, winter, spring, and summer were shorter than 1 h, and autumn was the same’– areader can be very surprised to see the sentence about the seasons shorter than 1 hour.

A: It has been revised.

 

275. 275.‘the maximum warming rate was 4.9 h’– it is unclear why the warming rate is measured in hours(see also the next lines).

A: It has been revised.

 

306. 303-306. Font size in Fig. 5 is too small (see Fig. 10, 11 as well).

A: We have revised the presentation.

 

345. 345.‘The’ is written in a smaller font size in comparison with the following text.

A: It has been revised.

 

435. 435.‘Δq was positive’– it is necessary to clearly define whatΔq is.

A: It has been revised.

 

456. 452-456.‘Height’ (or‘Altitude’) should be instead of‘High’ as a label on the ordinate axis on every plot.

A: It has been edited.

 

461. 461.‘the specific humidity of July and October’– should be‘the specific humidity in July and September’. October data were not used at all in the article according to a note in L. 116-117.

A: It has been edited.

 

502. 502. In the scheme,‘evapotranspiration’ should be instead of‘evapotraspiration’.

A: It has been edited.

 

576. 576.‘Manuscripts are polished’– plural form suddenly appeared here. I assume that the sentence should relate to this manuscript.

A: It has been edited.

 

601. 601.‘Turulina, G’– a dot is needed after‘G’.

A: It has been edited.

 

612. 612.‘xinjiang’– should be‘Xinjiang’.

A: It has been edited.

 

614. 614.‘mesoscalecirculations’– should be‘mesoscale circulations’.

A: It has been edited.

 

616. 616.‘Chern’– should be‘Chen’.

A: It has been edited.

 

617. 617.‘andsensitivity’– should be‘and sensitivity’.

A: It has been edited.

 

617. 617. doi should be https://doi.org/10.1175/1520-0493(2001)129<0569:CAALSH>2.0.CO;2, see https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/mwre/129/4/1520-0493_2001_129_0569_caalsh_2.0.co_2.xml Besides, part of doi is underlined for some reason (see also L. 620, 622).

A: It has been edited.

 

623. 623.‘TypicalClear’– should be separately.

A: It has been edited.

 

624. 624.‘P. Meterro. Logy’– in my opinion, this is a strange shortened title confusing readers, see also L. 625.

A: It has been edited.

 

625. 625.‘Cl imatic’– should be‘climatic’.

A: It has been edited.

 

639. 639.‘taklimakan’– the first capital letter is required, see also L. 663.

A: It has been edited.

 

655. 655.‘china’– should be‘China’, see also L. 666.

A: It has been edited.

 

656. 656.‘ace-asia’– should be‘ACE-Asia’.

A: It has been edited.

 

656. 656.‘Journal of geophysical research’– titles of journals are sometimes abbreviated, but in other cases (as here) they are presented fully. This representation should be unified.

A: It has been edited.

 

672. 672.‘Andrey, S.’– should be‘Sogachev, A.’; probably, the name‘Andrey’ was too unusual for the authors.

A: It has been edited.

 

Particular responses

Many thanks for the detailed corrections of the English presentations in our original submission. During the revision, we have corrected all the errors the reviewer has kindly pointed out to us, together with many other revisions as reflected in the PDF file which tracks the changes we have made in the revision.We truly believe the quality of the manuscript is significantly improved for its publication after the help from the reviewer and an English editorial officer who helped us r refining the English presentation.

Finally, we sincerely thank the reviewers and editors for helping us achieve the goal.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Review of the manuscript "A comparative study on the difference in meteorological monitoring between artificial green vegetation land and natural sandy land in artificial green vegetation land" by W. Huo et al., submitted to the Sustainability

The manuscript presents a study of meteorological properties in an artificially created oasis (called “artificial green vegetation land” by the authors) inside a large arid area (the Taklimakan desert). Such a study is important to understand the impact of the land use (in this case, desert greening), especially in the light of climate change (growth of arid areas) and exploitation of natural resources in such areas. The topic is important and definitely worth presenting in Sustainability. Despite this, I find the manuscript does not meet the required standards for publication and I therefore advise its rejection, but would require its resubmission after a thorough rewrite. More detailed comments and suggestions are as follows:

 

Aim of the paper and contribution to science

The paper has no well defined scientific aim. The authors present meteorological observables related to AVGL and their temporal dynamics, but the conclusions (which are the added value to research performed, based on the set aim) are missing. What do we learn from this work and what are the author’s suggestions regarding their aim? These points need to be presented clearly in the introduction (aim) and conclusions, which is not the case. The authors should perhaps check some examples published in Sustainability (for example Sustainability 2021, 13, 10153. https://doi.org/10.3390/su131810153 and Sustainability 2021, 13, 8583. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13158583) which deal with similar problems.

 

Data and its presentation

The authors state that the data they use is from the Tazhong National Benchmark Climatological Station, and that the instruments comply to international standards. This is not enough. The authors need to list the instruments they used and state their accuracy, and consequently that of the datasets they use. When averaging atmospheric parameters over longer periods of time (as the authors do for example for seasons) and elsewhere error bars showing the data variability need to be included. In section 2, the authors need to clearly list the datasets used (wind, temperature, etc.) and the time intervals of these datasets, which is not the case now. The presentation of the data in the plots is also inadequate, the plots are as a rule too small and to crowded. Figure captions in all figures need to be more descriptive.

 

Citations

According to the instructions provided to the authors by Sustainability journal, https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability/instructions, “In the text, reference numbers should be placed in square brackets [ ], and placed before the punctuation; for example [1], [1–3] or [1,3]. For embedded citations in the text with pagination, use both parentheses and brackets to indicate the reference number and page numbers; for example [5] (p. 10). or [6] (pp. 101–105). The reference list should include the full title, as recommended by the ACS style guide.” The authors should observe them.

 

Typos and language

The manuscript is very hard to read and review due to numerous problems with the syntax rules, which use is random and not systematic. For example, there need to be “ “ between words, after commas - “, “ and not “,”, before and after brackets, which should not touch adjacent words. There should be punctuation marks at the ends of sentences. A thorough proofreading and debugging is needed. Moreover, the manuscript would greatly benefit editing from an English native speaker, as the non-adequate wording often fogs what the authors intended to say. For example, what is a “mobile desert” (L600) or “the nature of the local underlying surface” (L601)? Perhaps the authors wanted to say “changing desert” or “growing desert” and “the properties of localized desert surface areas”? Furthermore, in section 2.1 please note that climate is the long-term pattern of weather in an area, typically averaged over a period of 30 years.

 

Typology

I would advise the authors to make references and citations clickable via hyperlinks.

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper presents a comparative study on the difference in meteorological monitoring. The methodological contribution is unclear and the paper is too long (too much text). I strongly recommend the authors to rewrite the paper and to be clear about the proposed methodology (what is the novelty wrt prior art ?).
Further, please address the following points :
- The Abstract section is a little too lengthy, please cut it down.
- Please respect the use of spaces, examples include:
      land(hereafter, AGVL) ==>  land (hereafter, AGVL).
      theTazhong ==> the Tazhong
- Please expand the acronyms at first mention (e.g., AGVL in the Abstract).
- many of the references are a bit old, please make sure to include recent literature.

Reviewer 3 Report

The article presents results of the analysis of climate characteristics in Taklimakan Desert with a comparison between sandy areas and areas with artificial vegetation. A series of meteorological parameters is analyzed, including temperature, wind speed and specific humidity. Such works should be practically useful for many desert regions which are partially covered by natural or artificial vegetation. Some results are valuable because they are not a priori obvious, that relates, e.g., to temperature diurnal variations in the areas with different underlying surfaces or to temporal changes in temperature inversion.

In my opinion, various corrections should be done in the current version of the article. There are various technical mistakes, but several more principal items should be noted as well. The respective comments are included in the attached file with key points in bold. In particular, I assume that several parts of the text could be shortened to make the manuscript more readable. Some items should be explained in more detail as the geographical location of the areas considered or causes to select the 2013 data. Comments on the data quality are very desirable as well. List of references should be checked with its possible expanding.

I assume that the paper may be published in Sustainability after the proposed changes and text editing (including insertion of the lost spaces between words in many cases).

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf