The Green Lung: National Parks and Air Quality in Italian Municipalities

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The present study investigates the national parks effects on air quality using econometric analysis utilizing dataset of 119 Italian municipalities during the period 2017-2020. The submitted manuscript discussed a worthy topic by empirical analysis but required improvements as given below. The scope of research presented in this manuscript is interesting and will be the value addition in the scientific literature. In order to make the paper more convincing, some problems raised below should be treated carefully.

Major Points:

1.     In the introduction, you need to connect the state of the art to your paper goals with logical manner. Please follow the latest literature review by a clear and concise state of the art analysis. This should clearly show the knowledge gaps identified and link them to your paper goals. Clearly discuss what the previous studies that you are referring to and I found missing the reference with latest papers.

2.     Improve the Research Gaps/Contributions (line 109-118) and provide support of review/latest article. Also clearly state how you did air pollution and health impacts – test or analysis type.

3.     The CAMS dataset is based on “air quality forecasts” as stated in line 140 – Why you did not use actual values instead of forecasted concentration of air pollutants? Provide the data description with appropriate links and proper reference and/or acknowledgement.

4.     Why park area don’t have positive effect on Ozone, discuss it properly. In literature there is reported negative effect of plants i.e., https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.16290 discussed plants can increase methane and nitrous oxide. How you justify that with your study.

5.     Need to discuss impact of parks on all pollutants. For example in line 232 to 239 one can’t find SO2, CO and O3 information and effects of variables. Recommended to add Pearson’s correlation or other correlation of variables.

6.     Conclusion also need revision; it does not provide the main findings (particularly quantitative results). Limitation of work should be discussed in context of solutions and possible future studies prospective.

7.     What is effect / relationship of COVID-19 and plants on air pollutants and people. Recommended to provide one paragraph in appropriate position.

Minor points:

·       Need to provide software usage to carry the study

·       Improve Logical flow and spelling mistakes (for example, line 189, 265, etc.)

·       Can’t follow few sentences, need to revise complex sentences (for example, line 141, 158, 179, 271-273)

·       Please consult the journal's reference style for the exact appearance of these elements, and use of punctuation and capitalization.

·       Correct figure numbers and improve Six pollutants levels in park vs non-park municipalities

Author Response

Dear Reviewer

 

We are really grateful for the comments and suggestions received which contributed to improve our manuscript.

 

Please find our replies to each comment raised in the file attached.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

While the study is very interesting, the overall writing needs to be improved. Throughout the text, present form has been used while the work you are reporting has been completed. For a non-Italian person, it is very difficult to understand how many municipalities are in Italy and how many of them contain national parks. Also it is unclear how much area was covered in this study (I found this detail in the very last part). A brief description of these details is needed before describing your experiment. The figure need renumbering with more self-descriptive titles. The tables also need revision as their titles are not descriptive. If the supplementary data files will not be published as as appendices as mentioned in the document, then why refer to them again and again. Overall clarity is lacking in the entire manuscript.  I have added some comments in the manuscript document as well for the authors to consider.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewer

 

We are really grateful for the comments and suggestions received which contributed to improve our manuscript.

 

Please find our replies to each comment raised in the file attached.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The point of view the authors took to determine the relationship of air quality in cities that have or are near a national park with population mortality is interesting. It's the first time I've seen it.   One of the important pieces of information that I think they need is to relate the registered deaths with the environmental contaminants in the studied areas.   The subject is current and of great international importance, the references were adequate and suitable, however they are not from the last 5 years.   The tables are difficult to interpret.

The results would be difficult to reproduce.

 

Lines 4 and 5 are missing the name of the affiliation author 3

in lines 98, 99 and 100 the references have a different font than the full text.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer

 

We are really grateful for the comments and suggestions received which contributed to improve our manuscript.

 

Please find our replies to each comment raised in the file attached.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

I have read with great enthusiasm the manuscript entitled "The green lung: National parks and air quality in Italian municipalities". I consider that the work is well structured and interesting. These days the study of ecosystem services is important. Being able to highlight the importance of green areas to fully understand their importance in urban areas is an analysis of high social and environmental impact. I congratulate the authors for the manuscript and leave some minor suggestions.
*In the keywords, add Copernicus programme databases
*In the Data description section, units of concentration of each pollutant should be added. 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer

 

We are really grateful for the comments and suggestions received which contributed to improve our manuscript.

 

Please find our replies to each comment raised in the file attached.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

 

1.     I would suggest revising and restructuring the lines 185-187. There are various types of equipment available to measure air quality. Many of these devices employ motorized and laser counting mechanisms. Nevertheless, the standard method of testing remains in situ, and model studies are also reliant on actual measurements obtained through this method.

2.     Provide citation and proper acknowledgement of exact dataset used as per C3S policy

3.     In hourly data availability, why you used only specific 4 hours data as mentioned in line 173-174.

4.     For ozone part discussion I recommend to read and add information from below article 10.1016/j.envpol.2018.08.049

5.               Reduce the conclusion or shift some part to discussion also don’t use full forms after abbreviations. i.e., NO2 and CO

 

Author Response

Dear reviewer

We are really grateful for the comments and suggestions received which contributed to improve our manuscript.

Please find our replies to each comment raised bin the attached file

Our best regards

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper is now more presentable and easy to understand. 

Author Response

Dear reviewer

 

thanks a lot for having accepted our revisions

 

Our best regards