A Novel Approach to Detecting the Salinization of the Yellow River Delta Using a Kernel Normalized Difference Vegetation Index and a Feature Space Model

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The fonts in Figure 1-7 are too small; I can't see them clearly.

The entire manuscript is written in passive voice. Too strange. This passive voice style of writing has almost been eliminated now because the expression is too rigid. You can take a closer look at the writing style of Science and Nature. You need to know who conducted the study. This is done jointly by several of you authors, so when writing, you should confidently say "We used... methods to analyze..."; "Our results show...". Good luck.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The entire manuscript is written in passive voice. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This study established five feature space monitoring index of salinization, and offered an approach to detect the salinization information of the Yellow River Delta using the KNDVI and feature space model. The research design and methods are not clearly stated, and the results are also not clearly presented. The following is the specific suggestions.

Major issues:

1. The study does not give the criterion or threshold values for dividing different levels of soil salinization, and these parameters are important for the study.

2. Line 183-184, the field survey results are mentioned repeatedly in the article, but there are no details about the field survey data, such as specific values. The field survey data should be described in detail.

3. Line 166-167, “The farther the distance from point O was, the more serious the salinization was”. The meaning of this sentence is in contradiction with Figure 3. This negligence is not matching with the level of Sustainability journal.

4. Sections 3.1 and 3.2.1 are not results, and may be methods.

Minor issues:

1. There is no complete spelling of DMI in the article.

2. Figure 6, there are no title about X and Y coordinate axes. Figure 3, there is no title about Y coordinate axis.

3. Section 3.5, Paragraph 2, Line 280-281, how to get the value 73%? In order to clear expression, one table may be added to this paragraph.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Moderate editing of English language required

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The reviewed article addresses an important problem from both a theoretical and practical point of view, but the presented results are very disappointing.

Firstly, the article is very carelessly prepared from the editorial point of view. Many comments regarding these shortcomings have been added to the text of the article in the attached PDF file.

Secondly, several key elements of the methodology used were not sufficiently described or were completely omitted. This applies primarily to: (1) the temporal representativeness of the analyzed satellite images, (2) the methodology of field, validation and soil salinity measurements.

Thirdly, the final conclusions are, due to the above-mentioned shortcomings in the description of the methodology, completely unreliable. Since the authors only have three randomly selected satellite images for the analyzed twenty-year period, the temporal representativeness of which they have not confirmed in any way, writing about any "trends" is a gross misuse. You can only compare the images with each other, but there is no certainty that they present real long-term trends.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Comments regarding linguistic errors are included in the text of the reviewed article in the attached PDF file.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This version works to me.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

This version works to me.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors The paper has been revised according to my suggestions. Comments on the Quality of English Language

Minor editing of English language required

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I must state that the assurances contained in the authors' response to my review that appropriate corrections will be made are not true. The corrections are either secondary or superficial. The basic shortcomings remain. Detailed comments are included in the attached PDF file.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors have introduced a number of rather minor changes after the previous review. However, this does not apply to all of my comments. Some were ignored or misunderstood. However, in fundamental matters regarding the relationship of remote sensing data to the results of field measurements, the introduced additions did not clarify much, and new doubts appeared. Detailed comments have been included with the text in the attached PDF file.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf