Identifying a Period of Spatial Land Use Conflicts and Their Driving Forces in the Pearl River Delta
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
It is a complex work that highlights evident conflicts between decision makers and simple users in areas of strong economic development.The authors Used a landscape ecological risk assessment model combined with K-means clustering analysis to characterized SLUCs in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) urban agglomeration. Spatiotemporal evolution of SLUCs was explored and comprehensive conflict intensity was determined.
Author Response
It is a complex work that highlights evident conflicts between decision makers and simple users in areas of strong economic development.
The authors Used a landscape ecological risk assessment model combined with K-means clustering analysis to characterized SLUCs in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) urban agglomeration. Spatiotemporal evolution of SLUCs was explored and comprehensive conflict intensity was determined.
Response: Thank you very much for your kind comments on our manuscript. Our manuscript focuses on the current situation of the rapid expansion of the PRD urban agglomeration, the reduction of ecological land area in the region, the fierce competition for various types of land, the imbalance of land use structure, and the prominence and seriousness of land use conflicts, analyzing the comprehensive intensity of land use in the study area and exploring and identifying the dominant factors affecting the spatial differentiation of land use conflicts and their interactions. The study is expected to provide scientific and theoretical guidance for alleviating human-land relations and conflicts, optimizing land use pattern, and promoting ecological protection and coordinated economic and social development. At the same time, We have also made many modifications to the article according to the opinions of editors and reviewers, so that it can meet the publication requirements of Sustainability.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
I think this study is meaningful regarding the land sustainability of SULCs (Spatial land use conflicts). The overall research flow is well-organized and valuable as a study using long-term data from 30 years from 1990 to 2020. It is judged that there is no abnormality in the large flow of the study, but I would like to ask only two questions in the small part, and it needs to be corrected.
1. Table 1 shows various indexes used, and I wonder how you worked on data standardization. Data standardization is necessary because the units for each factor are different.
2. In this study, K-means clustering was used, and it was stated that the k values were only set at 6, 8, and 10. So I wonder why the k values were set like that. In general, it is known that when determining the k value, many types of research are used methods such as elbow or silhouette.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear authors,
There are different studies related to land use conflict in the world. You can support thesis using counter arguments and ecological assessment of LULC ( For example: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12524-018-0801-3)
Congrulations,
Author Response
Dear authors, There are different studies related to land use conflict in the world. You can support thesis using counter arguments and ecological assessment of LULC (For example: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12524-018-0801-3).
Response: Thanks very much for your beneficial comments. We have revised the introduction of the manuscript, and further added the effectiveness of landscape pattern metrics for analyzing and understanding landscape-process in the elaboration of the landscape pattern analysis model. This change certainly increased the credibility of landscape pattern analysis model in measuring conflict (Line57-60). Also, we have cited the relevant references you suggested (References 25 and 26).
The specific modifications are as follows:
The sentence has been revised. We have modified “Among quantitative analysis methods, landscape pattern analysis models mainly use area-weighted mean patch fractal dimension (AWMPFD) and patch density (PD) to measure SLUCs.” to “Among quantitative analysis methods, landscape pattern analysis models mainly use landscape indicators (area-weighted mean patch fractal dimension (AWMPFD) and patch density (PD)), which are effective tools to understand and analyze the pat-tern-process relationship[25,26], to measure SLUCs.” (Line57-60)
Reviewer 4 Report
Interesting manuscript with only minor English corrections required.
Author Response
Interesting manuscript with only minor English corrections required.
Response: Thanks very much for your suggestion. We have read the article carefully twice and found and corrected the following two errors:
- Change landscape type I (km2) to landscape type i (km2) (Line210).
- Change q to qSLUCs (Line261).
