Land Use/Land Cover Changes in a Mediterranean Summer Tourism Destination in Turkey

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 1)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The resubmitted paper has been improved, literature review strengthened, and errors corrected. Secondary literature has been added to the conclusions. 

The figures are tiny and difficult to interpret, but the topic is relevant. The article is not exactly state of the art, but I recommend the publication of the paper.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 3)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for the corrections made. The article is suitable for acceptance.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

First of all, I would like to congratulate the authors on their great work. The paper successfully emphasizes the hazards posed by unplanned tourism and city development on natural and cultural areas, posing potential threats to the sustainability of tourism in the region. The proposed planning suggestions aimed at decision-makers, including coordination efforts for sustainable and responsible tourism development, demonstrate a proactive approach to addressing these challenges.

The methodology is well elaborated and thoroughly described, and the presentation of results, discussion, and conclusion is commendable.

Overall, the paper represents a commendable contribution to the field, offering valuable insights and recommendations for managing the environmental impacts of tourism in the study area and similar coastal regions.

I have just minor suggestions:

The manuscript template appears to lack line numbers. Could you kindly incorporate line numbers into the document? This addition would greatly facilitate the review process. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Equation 1 has been inserted incorrectly (at the end of page 5).

On page 9, there is a reference to Table 4; however, it is followed by Table 3. Please correct this discrepancy.

In the description of Figure 4 is missing "a." : "Figure 4. Temporal LST in study area. for 1995, b for 2003, c for 2020."  Please, correct.  At the same time, this figure is a little bit hard to read as well as Figure 6.

References form should adhere to the template/journal standards.

 

 

 

 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The paper contains some grammatical errors for example: "socioeconomic" should be socio-economic.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you very much for the opportunity to review this article. It deals with a current and relevant topic; the research gap is well-founded. Research methods are tested and used many times in similar articles. The cited literature is appropriate and extensive enough to present the area under study. Here are some suggestions on how to improve the article:

The article has many typographical, grammatical, and other errors, so it needs thorough proofreading. For example:

Is the sentence in lines 118-119 “The prevailing wind direction is West in daytime and East.” finished?

Line 130: (domestica and international)

 

Line 159: Images represent each study year were computed […]

At the conclusion, you could reference the results with secondary literature, add the limitations of the research method and possible errors in the interpretation of the results, as well as give priorities for further research. 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Throughout the manuscript, it is evident the misunderstanding and wrong use of hyphens. The hyphen is confused with dashes (en dash – and em dash — and others), which are longer, or with the minus sign −, which is also longer. Using hyphens is called hyphenation; son-in-law is an example of a hyphenated word. So, Tourism – driven (in the title), sector – based, land – rent, sea – filled, tourism – dependent etc. uses of dashes are erroneous.

And please decide which form of writing the LULC you will adopt and I suggest using it consistently: “land use/cover” or “land-use/land-cover” or “land use and landcover”, or “land use and land cover”, as all of these variations appear in the manuscript. In the scientific literature of recent years, we mostly encounter the “land use/land cover” way of writing...

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for the opportunity to review the paper “Tourism – driven Land Use/Cover Changes in Turkey’s Famous Summer Tourism Destination”.

Please see below my comments on this manuscript.

Introduction

The aim of this research was to monitor the spatial and temporal LULC changes in Fethiye district between 1995 and 2020 in relation with tourism development (by considering the impact of LULCCs and NDVI on land surface temperature LST) and the impacts of tourism- driven changes on environment. However, the authors did not emphasize the importance of this study. Does it fill a gap in the literature? What has been studied in this field so far?

Literature review section is lacking in this study.  The authors did not define/conceptualize the main concepts used in this study, for example, land-use/land cover changes (LULCCs), LST and NDVI.

Tables 2,3: the authors did not indicate the reference used for the data.

The method and formulas are very superficially presented and very hard to understand by the readers who are not familiar with this method. Did the authors presented a model/framework? Did the authors use the high-resolution surface  data for spatial analysis as a method of analysis?Please explicate.

Theoretical and managerial/practical  implications of this study as well as limitations and directions for future reserach are missing.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I would very much like to ask you to correct the entire article according to the editorial requirements of the journal - citing literature items.

 

The introduction is very poor and does not give them, in my opinion, a good background to the interesting topic of land use/land cover (LULCC) caused by tourism development. 

 

Please separate the results and discussion sections into two separate chapters. Please expand the discussion with new literature references to compare the results of your study with other studies, by other authors. 

 

In the conclusion, please refer to the most relevant content from your research. Information on limitations can be transferred to the discussion. 

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Comments on the text:

- not clear title of the paper “Tourism – driven Land Use/Cover Changes in Turkey’s Famous Summer Tourism Destination”. Please use a proper name of the study area,

- the goal is not clear “The study evaluates land-use/land cover changes (LULCCs) driven by tourism development as a case considering the past (1995 – 2020) and future environmental impacts in the area”. The authors focused primarily on analysis of surface temperature.

- very superficial description of the research area. There is no justification why this region was selected for analysis,

- section "introduction" is too long, it should be divided into introduction and literature review or theoretical framework with some subsections,

- the literature review is rather poor,

- the analyzes are very simple, there are no explanations why something has changed in the research area.

- there is no discussion of the results with other scientific studies,

- conclusion section should be reorganised. “It is expected that the results of the present study will be effective for decision makers and planners to perceive the relationship between the changes in LULC, LST and NDVI which may contribute to the planned urban development or obeying the plan decisions in especially the protected areas” – it’s rather recommendation, not conclusion.

- table 1 - "Tourism rank of three most famous region of Turkey" is useless, especially that Authors describe the research area in detail,

- lack of sources of tables and figures

- each map should have a scale and legend,

- Table 3 - title not clear, when? where?

- lines 165-167 - impossible to view graphics,

- figure 3, 4, 6, 7 - too small, illegible, impossible to interpret.