Assessment of Land Degradation at the Local Level in Response to SDG 15.3: A Case Study of the Inner Mongolia Region from 2000 to 2020
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This paper explores the assessment of land degradation neutrality in a provincial region based on a local perspective, which is more tailored to the local context as well as a more integrated perspective. This paper is of interest to relevant studies in other regions. I recommend a minor revision for publication
1. line 139-, The source of the basic data should be given as a concrete website or cited in the references.
2. line 322, please give the criteria for weighting.
3. line 349-375, This section could be substantially condensed and direct references could be given to existing tools or formulas.
4. line 383, the paper uses natural breaks for grading the occurrence and intensity of land degradation, which I feel needs to be deliberate. Is it possible to use threshold with scientific connotation as the basis?
5. In the discussion section, the author's extensive citations of policy as an explanation for land degradation neutrality are not sufficient. It needs to be explained in terms of climate change and human intervention.
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Thank you for this opportunity.
Best regards
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Overall, the research can be considered well structured and coherent between the different parts. There are some unclear issues that could be improved and make the work more understandable:
problem in fig.1 the range of the Digital Elevation Model starts from -1198m, correct its visualisation and start from 0m considering that the research concerns terrestrial environments and to make the coastline stand out making the image qualitatively superior from a graphic point of view
it is not clear how the values of Eq 3, 4, 5 and 6 are considered or enter into the counting of Eq 1 and 2, in general the proposed methodology is very complex and requires numerous sequential steps, in these cases a flowchart that graphically describes the procedure and helps the understanding of the methodology is useful
in the part from row 286 to row 306 it is not clear what score is given in the land use change. For example as Table 3 seems to indicate does going from Forest to Artificial have the same importance as going from Grassland to Artificial? better explain that part
Fig2 invert colour scale so strong degradation in red should show up with greater impact on maps
Fig3 incomprehensible due to scale and overabundance of information, 4 separate maps with a higher scale ratio and using more comprehensible graphics for the variables depicted would be a solution
Fig6 same problem as Fig3
Fig9 Infographics totally incomprehensible and therefore useless because they are unable to communicate information
In describing the results, considering that Morans is used to estimate the spatial autocorrelation a scaterplot would be useful to visualise the trend
the bibliography of the Standard Deviation Ellipse and its application in previous studies is somewhat scarce, some examples are suggested:
Chew, Victor. "Confidence, prediction, and tolerance regions for the multivariate normal distribution." Journal of the American Statistical Association 61.315 (1966): 605-617.
Fisher, N. I., T. Lewis, and B. J. J. Embleton. Statistical Analysis of Spherical Data. 1st ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Cambridge Books Online. Web. 26 April 2016.
Levine, Ned. "CrimeStat III: a spatial statistics program for the analysis of crime incident locations (version 3.0)." Houston (TX): Ned Levine & Associates/Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice (2004).
Wang, Bin, Wenzhong Shi, and Zelang Miao. (2015) Confidence Analysis of Standard Deviational Ellipse and Its Extension into Higher Dimensional Euclidean Space. PLoS ONE 10(3), e0118537.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
Overall the manuscript is well structured. The manuscript can be accepted after fixation of minor glitches with English.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer:
Thank you for your comment concerning our manuscript entitled " Provincial-level Localized Land Degradation Assessment for SDG15.3: A Case Study of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region from 2000 to 2020" (sustainability-2208523). We have studied the comment carefully and have made corrections which we hope meet with approval. Revised portions are marked in red in the paper. The main corrections in the paper and the responses to the reviewer's comment are as follows.
Point：Overall the manuscript is well structured. The manuscript can be accepted after fixation of minor glitches with English.
Response: Thanks for the reviewer's questions. We have checked and corrected the errors in English of this manuscript, and the details can be seen in the revised manuscript.
Again, the authors really appreciate the reviewers' time and value the professional and pertinent comments and suggestions, from which we really learned quite a lot. The comment is very important for the improvement of the quality of our manuscript. We hope that our revisions will satisfy reviewers.
Sincerely,
Zhanxing Li, Yanhui Wang, Junwu Dong, Xiaoyue Luo, Hao wu, Yuan Wan
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Title: All your text focus on SDG15.3. So, in the title, change the SDG15.3.1 to SDG15.3
Abstract
Page 13: replace "provincial level" with "local level" if that is what you mean.
The abstract should be rewritten concisely. Please add which data you are using.
Line 14 “Policy characteristics” are used for argumentation?
Introduction
Lines 80-81: “Therefore, a new indicator reflecting the core requirements of SDG 15.3 should be established to replace SDG 15.3.1” …. Replace? Using “complete SDG15.31” is better.
Lines 129-130: Specify the year of reference (………7.68 billion kg….)
Lines 140: 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015, and 2020 are the best. I think
Line 142 changes the position of the Fractional Vegetation Cover (FVC)
Materials and Methods
Line 139 Basic Data: Table 1 adds each data collected date.
Table 3 replaces the Final and original classes by the respective years.
Conclusion
622-623: you repeat this sentence many times. Summary directly the study’s shortcomings
Others remarks
There are two tables 1. Review.
Improve the figure such as numbers 3, 8, etc. add the chart title
Title: All your text focus on SDG15.3. So, in the title, change the SDG15.3.1 to SDG15.3
Abstract
Page 13: replace "provincial level" with "local level" if that is what you mean.
The abstract should be rewritten concisely. Please add which data you are using.
Line 14 “Policy characteristics” are used for argumentation?
Introduction
Lines 80-81: “Therefore, a new indicator reflecting the core requirements of SDG 15.3 should be established to replace SDG 15.3.1” …. Replace? Using “complete SDG15.31” is better.
Lines 129-130: Specify the year of reference (………7.68 billion kg….)
Lines 140: 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015, and 2020 are the best. I think
Line 142 changes the position of the Fractional Vegetation Cover (FVC)
Materials and Methods
Line 139 Basic Data: Table 1 adds each data collected date.
Table 3 replaces the Final and original classes by the respective years.
Conclusion
622-623: you repeat this sentence many times. Summary directly the study’s shortcomings
Others remarks
There are two tables 1. Review.
Improve the figure such as numbers 3, 8, etc. add the chart title
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
no additional changes required, the changes made to the document fully meet the requirements
Author Response
Dear Reviewer:
Thank you for the reviewer's affirmation. Your previous comments have greatly improved our paper.
Sincerely,
Zhanxing L, Yanhui Wang, Junwu Dong, Xiaoyue Luo, Hao Wu, Yuan Wan
Round 3
Reviewer 2 Report
The abstract should be improved such as line 13 …….” reform” of SDG15.3.1…This word is not appropriate.
Thank you for giving me this opportunity.
