Environmental Assessment and Restoration of the Hunjiang River Basin Based on the DPSIR Framework

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This paper mainly discusses the environmental assessment and restoration of Hunjiang River basin based on DPSIR framework. The article analyzes the environmental status of the watershed from 2016 to 2020, identifies key restoration factors, and examines actual restoration projects. The study found that among the eight sections, the pollution in the Xicun section was the most serious, mainly because of industrial and domestic emissions in Baishan City. The concentration of ammonia nitrogen in the Zian section also deteriorated. This paper uses the DPSIR framework to clarify the relationship between environmental and Socio-economic issues. The entropy weight method and correlation coefficient weighting method were used to evaluate urban water resources carrying capacity. For the interaction between ecological environment and social factors, feasible restoration measures are proposed to provide a basis for environmental assessment and restoration.

 Line22  The full English name of supplementary “ COD” in the abstract.

 Line183  “COD” appears for the first time in the article, supplementing its full English name.

  Line253  "COD" has appeared in "Materials and Methods", and "COD" can be used to express "chemical oxygen demand" in the following paper.

 Line275-276  Lack of reference support.

 Are there any references in the results and discussion? If so, please add, because there is no reference to support the results and discussion.

 References [31] and [32] are not found in the article, please check carefully whether they are missing.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Needs minor editing for English

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

“Environmental Assessment and Restoration of the Hunjiang River Basin Based on the DPSIR Framework.” is an interesting topic on revealing the interplay between the ecological environment and social factors, proposes practical restoration measures, and clarifying project effects and providing reliable decision-making schemes for policymakers. However, there are some important points that need to be improved before further processing.  

Firstly, the author's tracking of relevant research progress in recent years is insufficient. This present study lacks tracking of the latest relevant research progress in the past three years. Only 2 relevant literatures in 2023 are shown, other literatures are too outdated, and no one in 2024. In Web of Science, I have retrieved52 papers about the relationship of Environmental Assessment and DPSIR Framework from 2022-2024.

Secondly, in the manuscript, the authors did not explain why the research time scale was chosen from 2016 to 2020.

Thirdly, in Figure 1, the image can be enlarged to look clearer.

Moreover, in Table 3, does the short horizontal line drawn below the second line have any special meaning?

Finally, in Results and Discussion of the manuscript, the authors merely explained the  results based on these research data, and lacked comparative analysis and discussion with relevant research results at home and abroad.

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

 

Manuscript. General comments.

 

“Environmental Assessment and Restorarion of the Hunjiang River Basin on the DPSIR Framework” manuscript fits into the aim and scope of the journal's guidelines with an interesting subject.

I recommend this MS for publication in Sustainability journal following some major revisions.

I provide some comments below:

 Introduction:

I suggest carefully reviewing the introduction and reducing the description of the references included, because they make for heavy reading.

 

Overview of the Basin:

I suggest the authors insert references in this section to make it more scientifically robust

 

Materials and Methodology:

Line 172: “GDP “please enter the meaning of the acronym

Line 183: “COD” please enter the meaning of the acronym

Line 201: please enter letters “i” and “j” in italics

 

Results and Discussion:

Section 4.1; 4.2; 4.3; 4.4; 4.5: I suggest discussing the results and how they can be interpreted in perspective of previous studies and of the working hypotheses.

Line 249: If the authors have investigated the five major pollutants, they must include the description of the protocol with details in the ‘material and methods’ section.

 

Conclusions:

The conclusions are concisely written and clearly summarise the work done.

 

Figure:

Lines 423-424: I suggest creating the graphs with a higher resolution to better understand their representativeness.

References:

I suggest checking the bibliography. Some numbers in the bibliography do not correspond to in-text citations. In addition, I suggest checking the journal guidelines for writing the bibliography (the journal name should be entered in its abbreviated form).

Supplementary materials:

I suggest transforming table S1 into a graph for a more immediate reading of the data.

In table S2, I suggest inserting the formula used to calculate the average and putting the units of measurement next to the indicators to make the reading clearer. If possible, transform the excel file into a graph with a table for an easier reading of the data.

 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Accept in present form

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors followed the recommendations of the referee and made improvements to the work, which is now complete and scientifically ready for publication in the journal Sustainability.