Impacts of Transportation Networks on the Landscape Patterns—A Case Study of Shanghai
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript is clearly improved.
Author Response
Reviewer #1:
- The manuscript is clearly improved.
Response: Thank you very much for your recognition of the work done in this paper.
Reviewer 2 Report
1.The paper is a routine analysis of the impact of roads on the ecological environment.
The author fails to explain the innovation of the paper and the key problems to be solved in this study. And the data used is outdated. The paper is not suitable for publication in this journal.
2.Detail information of the Landsat images should be added, e.g., date, cloud cover, and if they are in the same season for the five period. And if they are not cloudless, how to preprocess of the Landsat data?
3.The data sources of the road network were not supplied either, and which year is the road network, or the road networks were the same periods with the Landsat images? But from the Fig.3, I may tell the data of road maybe for certain year, not multi-period. As we know, Shanghai has experienced fast urbanization during the study period, the same as its roads. So, whether the data of road network will impact the study outcomes. This should be discussed in the paper.
Author Response
Reviewer #2:
- The author fails to explain the innovation of the paper
Response: We appreciate your valuable suggestions and kind advice very much.
This study presents an approach that can be applied to quantitatively describe the impacts of transportation routes on landscape patterns and has the potential to facilitate route network planning.
- The author fails to explain the key problems to be solved in this study.
Response: The key problem to be solved in this study is that the expansion of the urban road network will have a profound impact on the urban landscape pattern, and how to guide the construction and planning of the future urban road network according to the degree of impact.
- The data used is outdated.
Response: This study uses data from 1995 to 2010. On the one hand, during this period, China's road construction developed rapidly, and its impact on the contemporary is more obvious; On the other hand, due to the difficulty in obtaining data, we have not obtained the data in recent years, which is also the limitation of this paper. In the future, we will use the data in recent years to do some more in-depth research.
- Detail information of the Landsat images should be added, e.g., date, cloud cover, and if they are in the same season for the five period. And if they are not cloudless, how to preprocess of the Landsat data?
Response: We added detailed information of Landsat images used in the test, including Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) information as Table 1 as image information as Table 2.In order to ensure the accuracy of the test results, we first carried out geometric correction and radiometric correction on the images, and then screened the data to ensure that the selected data are close in date and consistent in cloud cover and other characteristics.
Table 1. Introduction of Landsat Thematic Mapper(TM)
|
Band |
Wavelength range (um) |
Resolution (m) |
|
1 |
0.45~0.52 |
30 |
|
2 |
0.52~0.60 |
30 |
|
3 |
0.63~0.69 |
30 |
|
4 |
0.76~0.90 |
30 |
|
5 |
1.55~1.75 |
30 |
|
7 |
2.08~2.35 |
30 |
Table 2. Introduction of data information
|
Year |
Date |
Cloudiness |
|
1995 |
07-04 |
1.26% |
|
2000 |
07-06 |
2.33% |
|
2005 |
07-08 |
3.42% |
|
2010 |
07-03 |
2.27% |
- The data sources of the road network were not supplied either, and which year is the road network, or the road networks were the same periods with the Landsat images? But from the Fig.3, I may tell the data of road maybe for certain year, not multi-period. As we know, Shanghai has experienced fast urbanization during the study period, the same as its roads. So, whether the data of road network will impact the study outcomes. This should be discussed in the paper.
Response: We have revised the relevant contents. The transportation roads were clipped from the 2010 digital traffic data (1:100000 scale) in Shanghai. The digital traffic data was obtained from OpenStreetMap, and digital traffic data for the period correspond to Landsat data. In addition, only the Shanghai traffic network data in 2010 is used as the absolute reference of the other three periods, which will also interfere with the experimental results of this paper to a certain extent. This is the limitation of this paper. In the future, we will make fuller analysis based on the data in recent years.
Reviewer 3 Report
|
Author Response
Reviewer #3:
- Name of study area should be included in title
Response: We appreciate your valuable suggestions and kind advice very much.
We revised the title of the paper. The new title of paper is “Impacts of transportation networks on the landscape patterns— A case study of Shanghai”.
- For all figures: Resolutions of the graphics are crude. It is recommended to have 600dpi for each figure or at least follow the guideline of the Journal.
Response: We draw according to the requirements of the journal for the figures of the paper. In order to make the image clearer, we have enlarged the relevant images.
- The introduction carries relevant and sufficient information about the previous study findings. Related Literature is old and should be rewritten and improved Thus, please provide several solid literature reviews (discussion and argument). Prefer to be updated with recent studies.
Response: We revised the introduction of the paper and added two articles.
Arif et.al chose the road traffic network in the suburbs of Burdwan, India as the research object, aiming to analyze the impact of road traffic network changes on the economic, ecological and social development of the suburban areas(Arif et.al,2020). The research results show that the road traffic network is the most important driving force in the development process of the suburban area. By intervening in the development of the road traffic network, the interaction of economy, ecology and society in different areas of the suburban area can be further simplified, so that the development of the suburban area will be orderly. At the same time, Arif et.al also mentioned that developing countries are currently facing unprecedented urbanization development, the impact of such rapid urbanization development will have huge consequences, and the urbanization development process should be further evaluated through specific indicators , to provide the necessary planning for the sustainable development of urbanization(Arif et.al,2020).
Arif M, Gupta K. Application of graph-based model for the quantification of transport network in peri-urban interface of Burdwan City, India[J]. Spatial Information Research, 2020, 28(4): 447-457.
Arif M, Gupta K. Spatial development planning in peri-urban space of Burdwan City, West Bengal, India: statutory infrastructure as mediating factors[J]. SN Applied Sciences, 2020, 2(11): 1-19.
- Study area map should be prepared according to the international system.
Response: We have drawn relevant regional maps according to the international system.
- Please provide more detailed description of methodology so that broad readers could understand your research.
Response: Thank you very much for your advice. We have revised the method part of this article to introduce this article to the readers in more detail.
Furthermore, landscape metrics are beneficial for evaluating the impacts that transportation routes exert on landscapes. Therefore, we selected four additional metrics Patch density (PD) indicates the number of patches within a unit area. A high PD value indicates severe landscape fragmentation caused by the separation of, cultivated land, water, construction land and grass land patches after the roads were built. ED is defined as the edge length between patches of heterogeneous landscape elements in a unit area, and the value represents the complexity and succession of features around a road district. The SHDI is a Shannon index widely used in ecology. It is usually used to describe the richness and uniformity of landscape types. Because the index can reflect the heterogeneity of the landscape and is particularly sensitive to the uneven distribution of various patch types in the landscape, it is often used to evaluate the diversity and heterogeneity of different landscapes or the same landscape in different periods. In this study, the increase of SHDI is mainly due to the frequent conversion of unused land to other patch types, or simply due to the further separation of land, arable land, water, construction land and grassland patches in a certain area due to road expansion, which further leads to the increase of patch types in this area or the balanced distribution of patch types in the overall landscape pattern. The decline may reflect that the study area is usually dominated by a single category. In addition, the intersection juxtaposition index (IJI) chosen to describe the contagion and interspersion between patches. The greater the IJI is, the higher the degree of proximity between the landscapes is, signifying that the features were planned artificially under urbanization.
- The use of Landscape Metric Analysis has become so common nowadays that researchers need to think of some out-of-the-box approaches. There needs to be some novelty added in this work, such as application of graph theory results that provide network accessibility and connectivity.
Response: As you said, the novelty of our paper is not enough attractive. Although the use of landscape measurement analysis has become so common today, it is still difficult to achieve more in-depth analysis based on graph theory of network accessibility and connectivity due to data and tools. This is also the limitation of this paper and must be explored in the future.
- It would be better to mention limitations of this study in this section or in a Discussion section.
Response: We revised the conclusion of this paper and discussed some problems in this paper. Although this study revealed that changes in Shanghai's transportation network have a large impact on the urban landscape pattern, there are several limitations. First, due to the influence of data, this paper only analyzes the changes of Shanghai traffic network landscape pattern from 1995 to 2010, and does not conduct a more in-depth study on the data in recent years. In addition, only the Shanghai traffic network data in 2010 is used as the absolute reference of the other three periods, which will also interfere with the experimental results of this paper to a certain extent. In the future, we will make fuller analysis based on the data in recent years. Second, this paper does not consider the ecological significance of the landscape pattern index more. In the research process, only the landscape pattern indicators of the transportation network are considered, and the influence of other specific factors in the research field is not considered. In the future, a comprehensive analysis of the distribution of settlements and buildings will be carried out. Third, this paper focuses on China's urban expansion, transportation network, land use change and its consequences, without more discussion on other developing countries. In the future, we will give more consideration to the impact of urbanization development of other developing countries on the landscape pattern in order to find common laws in the process of urbanization development of developing countries.
- Introduction section is short that need to add some information with Suitable information considering add it on below.
Response: Thank you very much for your recommendation. We have carefully read the relevant literature and added it in the introduction.
Arif et.al chose the road traffic network in the suburbs of Burdwan, India as the research object, aiming to analyze the impact of road traffic network changes on the economic, ecological and social development of the suburban areas(Arif et.al,2020). The research results show that the road traffic network is the most important driving force in the development process of the suburban area. By intervening in the development of the road traffic network, the interaction of economy, ecology and society in different areas of the suburban area can be further simplified, so that the development of the suburban area will be orderly. At the same time, Arif et.al also mentioned that developing countries are currently facing unprecedented urbanization development, the impact of such rapid urbanization development will have huge consequences, and the urbanization development process should be further evaluated through specific indicators , to provide the necessary planning for the sustainable development of urbanization(Arif et.al,2020).
Arif M, Gupta K. Application of graph-based model for the quantification of transport network in peri-urban interface of Burdwan City, India[J]. Spatial Information Research, 2020, 28(4): 447-457.
Arif M, Gupta K. Spatial development planning in peri-urban space of Burdwan City, West Bengal, India: statutory infrastructure as mediating factors[J]. SN Applied Sciences, 2020, 2(11): 1-19.
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Though this paper has been greatly improved. I still think the data used is outdated.
Reviewer 3 Report
Thank you for incorporating all suggestions
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
The manuscript investigates the impact of transportation networks on the eco-environment.
The paper is fine but needs a major modification essentially in the introduction.
The first paragraph is good. It provides a background knowledge about transportation networks and their impacts. In the second paragraph the problem statement should be presented here. Why authors did this study? And why this type of case studies? Then, in the third paragraph examples of the previous studies should be provided. Then, you need to explain why this research important? What kind of new development will be achieved?
In the method section, authors used Google Earth to validate the classification results. Was Google Earth used for all time periods (1995, 2000, 2005 and 2010)?
Also, it is not clear what is the sampling method that has been used. Is it stratified random sampling or just random sampling?
Were the 2000-point samples same for all periods?
Also, check the figures' resolution.
In the second paragraph in the introduction, you may change the phrase “At present” and using another better phrase such as “in recent years” or “recently” or another relative phrase.
You also need to revise the paper and correct the typing mistakes and will be better to correct for English mistakes.
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper is a routine analysis of the impact of roads on the ecological environment.
The author fails to conduct a sufficient analysis of the research status in this field. The research purposes are not clear. The paper lacks innovation, and the data used is outdated. The paper is not suitable for publication in this journal.
Reviewer 3 Report
The purpose of using landscape pattern metrics to analyze the impact of road network on ecological environment is not clear. The significance of the study of the problem is not well presented in the Introduction section. Specifically, there are some questions and suggestions below.
1. What do you mean by the word “eco-environment” in the title? The conception should be clear.
2. The general meaning of landscape pattern index and its meaning in this paper need to be clarified.
3. It is difficult to obtain more meaningful information by using only landscape patterns metrics, especially in the context of this paper, which requires a more rational and logical analysis framework. Ecological significance of the landscape patterns metrics should be related to the specific factors in the research field, based on which more understandable and applicable conclusion could be drawn.
