Spatiotemporal Modeling of Rural Agricultural Land Use Change and Area Forecasts in Historical Time Series after COVID-19 Pandemic, Using Google Earth Engine in Peru

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

(1) What are the innovations or highlights of this study on remote sensing image interpretation of rural agricultural land use change based on GEE platform? Higher precision?

(2) What are the main influence factors on agricultural land use change for different types of areas? The authors could try to deepen this part of the analysis.

(3) What is the purpose of the comparative analysis of the three different regions? What are the policy implications of this comparative analysis? Could the authors please try to explain this as clearly as possible?

(4) In this study, the projection of future growth changes based on the land use area in the historical period will have some deviation from reality, especially it will be affected by individual events. It is recommended that land use area projections should take into account the Influencing factors and driving forces, as well as the probability of land use type conversion in the historical period. For example, a Markov chain model, or a geographic metacellular automata models with spatial prediction capabilities. The latter can predict changes in the location of the spatial distribution of land use types.

(5) The number of decimal places for the land use area data should be the same in all tables. Figure3-5: The horizontal axis of the chart is labeled with statistical area units(km2).

Author Response

Dear Reviewer Reviewer #1:

We appreciate your suggestions and insightful comments, as well as the valuable time you have devoted to this work. We have now implemented the suggested modifications, all of which have been included in our revised manuscript submission.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This article is based on the Google Earth engine, selecting nine representative agricultural and rural zones as study areas, conducting spatiotemporal analysis of the agricultural land cover status in these areas, and evaluating the performance of prediction models using various methods. Finally, the Quadratic model is selected to predict the agricultural land use in the study area for the next five years. Overall, the novelty of the article is limited, the workload is slightly insufficient, and there is still room for improvement in terms of graphic expression and writing logic.

The specific comments are as follows:

1. When presenting dynamic land cover data in a table, there are missing values internally. It is necessary to indicate whether the land cover type does not exist or if the data is missing？

2. The focus of the article is on agricultural land use change, but the proportion of agricultural land in some research areas is relatively low, and the research necessity is not sufficient. Therefore, it is considered to select the main agricultural production areas for research.

3. Research on agricultural land does not require a detailed introduction to the coverage of other land types. If necessary, a land use transfer matrix can be introduced to clarify the transformation relationship between agricultural land and different land types, which can help explore the reasons for agricultural land change.

4. The role of COVID-19 in the actual research content has not been reflected, and the role of the epidemic in the agricultural land change and prediction process is only as background and does not need to be reflected in the title.

5. The analysis of the relationship between the increase and decrease of agricultural land was mainly focused on, and the spatial distribution in each study area was not further discussed and explained, and the unit was not indicated in the bar chart.

6. The prediction of agricultural land change is influenced by various factors, and models can be set up from economic, social, ecological, and other perspectives for scenario simulation, providing prediction results under different development trends.

7. The article did not elaborate on the existing shortcomings, marginal contributions to the research field, and issues that need further exploration.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Minor editing of English language required.

Author Response

We appreciate your suggestions and insightful comments, as well as the valuable time you have devoted to this work. We have now implemented the suggested modifications, all of which have been included in our revised manuscript submission.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The Google Earth Engine platform made it possible to quantify areas of different land cover types. This research analyzes the connotation of spatiotemporal level trends of eight different land cover types in nine rural districts representative of the three natural regions (coast, highlands, and jungle) of Peru. However, there are several limitations that need to be addressed for further improvement.

1. Line 145: "(2)" should be "(1)".

2. Section 2.3: A Quadratic model built with only 6 years of data may have significant errors. How to ensure the predicted results?

3. Table 6, Table 8: Why are some of the values in Table 6 and Table 8 empty? For example, row 6, column 3 of Table 6.

4. Section 4: I think it is necessary for the authors to use quantitative analysis methods to reveal the reasons for LULC.

5. Section 5: The conclusion section should be further supplemented. For example, what is the scientific or practical value of this paper's research, and what are the shortcomings of this study.

6. The innovation of this paper needs further elaboration. For example, what scientific law does this paper reveal.

Author Response

We appreciate your suggestions and insightful comments, as well as the valuable time you have devoted to this work. We have now implemented the suggested modifications, all of which have been included in our revised manuscript submission.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript was revised to make the research goals of this paper more clear.

It is recommended that the discussion section be further deepened to explore the implications of this study for local agricultural management and for achieving the SDGs 2030 goals.

Author Response

We appreciate your suggestions and insightful comments, as well as the valuable time you have devoted to this work. We have now implemented the suggested modifications, all of which have been included in our revised manuscript submission.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

"Covid-19" or "COVID-19", are two formats in one paragraph, and the entire manuscript needs to be unified.

The first abbreviation of "GEE" needs to display its full name.

It is suggested to add subheadings to the discussion section to provide a logical breakdown. The current discussion logic is still a bit confusing, and it is recommended to revise it carefully.

There are many reference issues that need to be taken seriously by the author, it is recommended to make serious revisions. (1) The titles, journal names, contents, formats, etc. of references such as 1, 2, 15, 18, 20, 21, 23, and 25 (not all listed) need to be searched and verified one by one. (2) References 11, 13, 26, 27, 28, 30, 38, 40, 42, 47, 48, 49, 51, 52, 54, etc. do not have page numbers and require the author to revise them seriously.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Moderate editing of English language required.

Author Response

We appreciate your suggestions and insightful comments, as well as the valuable time you have devoted to this work. We have now implemented the suggested modifications, all of which have been included in our revised manuscript submission.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

(1) Formulas 3, 4, and 5 should be aligned to the right.

(2) The annotation of the horizontal axis of the bottom three subgraphs in Figure 6 needs to be modified.

Author Response

We appreciate your suggestions and insightful comments, as well as the valuable time you have devoted to this work. We have now implemented the suggested modifications, all of which have been included in our revised manuscript submission.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The author has carefully revised the manuscript according to my comments.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The term 'VillaRica' in the abstract '(VillaRica, 2022)' does not appear in the main text of the manuscript, except in the abstract itself. Moreover, it is worth noting that the content of the abstract should be consistent with the main body of the manuscript, especially the explanation of the research results in the abstract should be consistent with the actual research results in the main body of the manuscript. Please take the author seriously.

In the discussion section, it is suggested to use several subheadings to make the logic clearer. This means that not only should there be subheadings, but the content after the subheadings should also conform to the main idea of the title. Suggest carefully sorting it out again.

There are still some words in the main text that have more than one space between them, and the author needs to carefully check.

The manuscript has been revised twice, but the overall readability of the article is still poor, especially in the abstract and introduction sections. The overall language logic of the article still needs to be enhanced.

Author Response

We appreciate your suggestions and insightful comments, as well as the valuable time you have devoted to this work. We have now implemented the suggested modifications, all of which have been included in our revised manuscript submission.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 4

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Lines 75: "In this sense, Remote sensing data helps rural agricultural development agencies fill information gaps." The first letter of the word "Remote" needs to be lowercase!

Lines 76 and 79: There is an additional period before the identification of citations [14] and [16]. Please carefully review your article as there are many minor errors in the details.

Lines 144-146: "Artificial areas (AA); Agriculture (A); Forest (B); Water bodies (CA): Burned areas (ZQ); Forest plantations (PF); Herbaceous (H); Bare soil (SD)." The colon in "Water bodies (CA):" in this sentence should be a semicolon!

Lines 323 and 329: There is an extra space in the description of "2017- 2022", and other areas also need to be checked.

The page numbers of references 11, 26, 27, etc. are misspelled by the author in the revised version. The author needs to verify the original text, and it is worth noting that the author did not even comply with the most basic academic norms, which is also considered a form of academic fraud. There are also many errors in references 32, 35, 38, 39, 42, 62, etc., which need to be taken seriously.

The "Discussion" section is still very poor, without highlighting the value of the research topic, lacking logic, and the author did not carefully revise it according to the review comments!

Comments on the Quality of English Language

 Minor editing of English language required.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer #2:

We appreciate your suggestions and insightful comments, as well as the valuable time you have devoted to this work. We have now implemented the suggested modifications, all of which have been included in our revised manuscript submission.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf