Study on the Landscape Space of Typical Mining Areas in Xuzhou City from 2000 to 2020 and Optimization Strategies for Carbon Sink Enhancement
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Based on the ecological spatial network, this paper studies the issues of increasing the carbon sink capacity of mining cities and how to achieve sustainable development.The whole research draws a interesting topic, and the whole research has certain value and contributions. The manuscript is within the journal scope. Only a couple of suggestions are acknowledged for its improvement:
1. The language of the manuscript must be improved. I recommend that the authors invite a native English speaker to edit the language.
2. The literature review is too weak.The authors need to introduce the existing research of ecological spatial network. And explain the reasons for the method chosen in this paper.It is recommended that the author add more international literatures to improve this part.
3. In the Introduction section, the authors need to explain clearly what is the significance of this research? And what are the main contributions and research purposes of this paper?
4. There are a lot of acronyms in the article. When they first appear in the article, the authors need to give their full names.
5. In the Introduction section, the authors point out carbon neutral strategies for mining cities require further attention(L.61). Please add relevant explanations, especially the specificity or typicality of the carbon emissions of mining cities.
6. Lines 127 to 139, the authors introduce an ecological restoration project in Xuzhou, what is its role in the manuscript?
7. When identifying ecological sources, the authors considered four types of forests, shrubs and grasslands, wetlands and lakes. Is the green landscape in the city covered? The data scale is 4 square kilometers, is it too large?
8. When identifying ecological corridors, the authors considered 8 factors as resistance factors. What is the basis for selection?
9. When constructing the ecological space network, the authors introduced the theory of complex adaptive systems. Please simplify the introduction of the theoretical content and supplement the applicability of the theory in the ecological space network.
10. The result section and discussion section are too simple and now look more like a display of calculation results without in-depth analysis and discussion.
11. The conclusion part needs to be further improved. In addition to the need to summarize and analyze the results of this study, it is necessary to make a certain outlook on the future research direction.
The paper addresses an important problem. However, the presentation must be improved.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 1 Comments：
Thank you for your careful reading of the manuscript and for these very valuable suggestions. We have made detailed changes to the manuscript based on your suggestions. The line numbers refer to the revised manuscript. The red font in the manuscript is the part that has been revised. We have responded to each of your suggestions below.
Point 1: The language of the manuscript must be improved. I recommend that the authors invite a native English speaker to edit the language.
Response：Thanks to the expert teachers for your comments! We have substantially revised the content of the article and embellished some of the content.
Point 2: The literature review is too weak.The authors need to introduce the existing research of ecological spatial network. And explain the reasons for the method chosen in this paper.It is recommended that the author add more international literatures to improve this part.
Response：Thanks to the experts for their comments. Ecological spatial networks are different from ecological networks, so the theory is still in its initial stage. We add the current state of research on ecological spatial networks in the introduction and 5.4 Advantages of building a time-series ecological spatial network. Also we add the reasons for the chosen approach in the fourth paragraph of the introduction.
Point 3: In the Introduction section, the authors need to explain clearly what is the significance of this research? And what are the main contributions and research purposes of this paper?
Response：Thanks to the experts for their comments. We add the significance, purpose, and contribution of the study in the last paragraph of the introduction.
“The purpose of this paper is to study the changes of landscape spatial structure and function in typical mining areas in Xuzhou City during 2000-2020 and the strategies to enhance carbon sinks. Through the ecological construction of the country, the original ecological space is restored, and theoretical and methodological support is provided for future ecological restoration projects in mining cities.”
Point 4: There are a lot of acronyms in the article. When they first appear in the article, the authors need to give their full names.
Response：Thanks to the experts for their comments. We have made changes in the article.
“minimum cumulative resistance model (MCR)”
“a synergistic enhancement of ecological functions and carbon sinks optimization model(SEEC)”
"Integral Index of Connectivity(dIIC)"
"Remote Sensing Ecological Index(RSEI) "
Point 5: In the Introduction section, the authors point out carbon neutral strategies for mining cities require further attention(L.61). Please add relevant explanations, especially the specificity or typicality of the carbon emissions of mining cities.
Response：Thanks to the experts for their comments. We have added the specificity and typicality of carbon emissions from mining cities in the second paragraph of the introduction and in the discussion section.
Point 6: Lines 127 to 139, the authors introduce an ecological restoration project in Xuzhou, what is its role in the manuscript?
Response：Thanks to the experts for their comments. The original article describes Xuzhou's ecological restoration policy. We wrote this paragraph to show that the article is relevant. We eventually removed this introductory paragraph.
Point 7: When identifying ecological sources, the authors considered four types of forests, shrubs and grasslands, wetlands and lakes. Is the green landscape in the city covered? The data scale is 4 square kilometers, is it too large?
Response：The green landscape of the city is included. To highlight the mining area, we narrowed the study area and constructed a time-series ecological-spatial network. In addition, we screened the data scale of 0.2 km as the ecological sources.
Point 8: When identifying ecological corridors, the authors considered 8 factors as resistance factors. What is the basis for selection?
Response：Thanks to the experts for their comments. We follow the eight resistance factors identified by several scholars' studies：
Fang, Minzhe, Guoxin Si, Qiang Yu, et al. 2021. 'Study on the Relationship between Topological Characteristics of Vegetation Ecospatial Network and Carbon Sequestration Capacity in the Yellow River Basin, China', Remote Sensing, 13: 4926.
Liu, Hongjun, Teng Niu, Qiang Yu, et al. 2022. 'Spatial and temporal variations in the relationship between the topological structure of eco-spatial network and biodiversity maintenance function in China', Ecological Indicators, 139: 108919.
Point 9: When constructing the ecological space network, the authors introduced the theory of complex adaptive systems. Please simplify the introduction of the theoretical content and supplement the applicability of the theory in the ecological space network.
Response：Thanks to the experts for their comments. We simplify the introduction of the theoretical content and complement the applicability of the theory to ecological space networks in 3.1 Construction of ecological space network.
Point 10：The result section and discussion section are too simple and now look more like a display of calculation results without in-depth analysis and discussion.
Response：Thanks to the experts for their comments. We deepen the results and discussion sections. The discussion section was divided into five subsections.
“5.1 Topological properties of the ecological spatial network in 2020”
“5.2 Dynamic variability of landscape patterns”
“5.3 Advantages of SEEC model for urban ecological optimization in mining areas”
“5.4 Advantages of building a time-series ecological spatial network”
“5.5 Limitations and Prospects”
Point 11：The conclusion part needs to be further improved. In addition to the need to summarize and analyze the results of this study, it is necessary to make a certain outlook on the future research direction.
Response：Thanks to the experts for their comments. We have added a look into the future to the results.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript with the title after Restoration and Renewal of Ecological Spatial Network in Mining Cities for the Purpose of Enhancing Carbon Sinks: The Case of Xuzhou,China after Major Revision.
In my opinion, the subject of this work is very relevant and suitable for the Journal of Remote Sensing MDPI.
The topic of the paper is very interesting, important, and scientifically relevant for potential publication. The Journal of Remote Sensing wants papers with excellent scientific background.
First before all the paper has the next section and sub-section (.i.e. Abstract, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Study area, Data sources and processing, Methods, Construction of ecological space network, Ecological sources identification based on MSPA analysis, Ecological corridor construction based on modified MCR model, Ecological stepping stones, Topological indicators of the ecological spatial network, Degree, Average path length, Clustering coefficient, Closness centrality, Betweeness centrality, Eigenvector centrality, Modularity, dIIC, Remote Sensing-based ecological index (RSEI), SEEC optimization model, Verification of robustness and carbon sink before and after optimization, Verification of Robustness, Verification of carbon sinks, Result, Construction and Analysis of Ecological Spatial Network in Xuzhou City, Screening of ecological sources, Minimum cumulative ecological resistance surface analysis, Xuzhou Ecological Spatial Network, Analysis of the results of the various indicators, Analysis of results for network topology metrics, The results analysis of the coupling between RSEI and dIIC models, Carbon sink correlation analysis, Analysis of the effects of the SEEC optimisation model, Robustness comparison analysis, Discussion, Optimization and improvement of original methods, Limitations and future perspective, Optimized ecological spatial network in relation with urban landscape, Conclusion, etc.).
First before all of the comments
The title must shorter the text is overall long
In the section of Abstract the authors must add more sentences about Ecological Spatial Networks.
The section Introduction
Between lines 54 and 68 the authors must add more references that reflect deforestation not only in China. Also, in this part the authors must explain the connection between ecological spatial networks and mining cities and cite appropriate references.
Generally, this section is poorly written because it is not enough reflecting Remote Sensing Methodology and Techniques in the hope to connect with this topic. The first part of the introduction must include sentences on Remote Sensing. This section is good to be extended it is overall short.
Figure 1 is very interesting but the resolution must be significantly improved. Is this map belonging to the authors it would be very good to state how the authors made this Figure and which type of data was used (open source or…)?
The lines 147 and 148, the authors stated NDVI (difference vegetation index) and MDWI (Modified Normalized Difference Water Index). Because the authors used these indexes I strongly recommend to make the new section which be named as section of Abbreviation.
The line 154 and 155 The authors used Open street maps. Can the authors explain why they used this type of map? There is plenty other type of maps. The authors sued Google Earth Engine GEE and this method good connected with the all types of Google maps.
Figure 2. The authors used a different methods and algorithms approved by GIS software. Can the authors more explain about procedure and techniques of these maps.
I strongly recommend that all maps combine into one Figure 2, must be labeled by Capital Letters.
The water network density map and map of slope is bad presented. Because of that I recommend two valuable references to be cited. In these papers (research) the authors can find good presentation of maps. The references are:
-Valjarević, A, Filipović, D, Valjarević, D, Milanović, M., Milošević, S., Živić, N., Lukić, T., 2020. GIS and remote sensing techniques for the estimation of dew volume in the Republic of Serbia. Meteorol Appl. 227:e1930. https://doi.org/10.1002/met.1930.
(2001) Spatial patterns of NDVI in response to precipitation and temperature in the central Great Plains, International Journal of Remote Sensing, 22:18, 3827-3844, DOI: 10.1080/01431160010007033.
The section Methods
The methods DEM,SLOPE,NDVI,MNDWI,LUCC,Population density,Water Network Density, Must be explained one by one and placed in the text.
Figure 3 (Flowchart) must be drawn with the larger letters.
The Formula 3 must be again proved. The circle must always have the ratio (length). Please explain?
3.3.1 Degree
This sub-section must be better explained and extended.
3.3.2 The same as for 3.3.1
3.3.7 the same as for 3.3.1
Figure 4, is the same as the Figure 3.
The Results
For my opinion it is not usual to have in the Results section, the subsections. This section must be rewritten again and it must include only the main results of this research.
Figure 6. This Figure is very difficult to understand. The authors must use different colors not white.
Figure 8 must be divided on two separate Figures.
Many parts of the section Results must be moved to the section of Discussion. Especially after 562 line.
Please in the section of Conclusion not usual to put any references. Place these references in the other parts of the manuscript.
In this section the authors must answered on the next questions?
1. Why did the authors use this topic for the research?
2. How the authors can this research made to be practically applied?
3. There are similar researches, please add some of them.
The last sentence in line 728 must be deleted or combined with other sentences.
In the end, I want to say that this research has the strong potential to be published.
In the end, I recommend Major Revision.
Good luck to the authors
The Reviewer#1
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 2 Comments：
Point 1：First before all of the comments
The title must shorter the text is overall long
In the section of Abstract the authors must add more sentences about Ecological Spatial Networks.
Response：Thanks to the experts for their comments. To reflect the typicality of the mining area, we narrowed the study area and constructed a time-series ecological-spatial network. We have added ecological spatial networks to the abstract.
Point 2：Between lines 54 and 68 the authors must add more references that reflect deforestation not only in China. Also, in this part the authors must explain the connection between ecological spatial networks and mining cities and cite appropriate references.
Generally, this section is poorly written because it is not enough reflecting Remote Sensing Methodology and Techniques in the hope to connect with this topic. The first part of the introduction must include sentences on Remote Sensing. This section is good to be extended it is overall short.
Response：Thanks to the experts for their comments. We have added more references. In addition, we have added the connections between mining cities and ecological spatial networks.
“For mining cities with severe landscape fragmentation, their ecological energy and material cycles are severely hindered. Therefore, we can build protective ecological corridors to build a conducive path for energy transfer and connect the fragmented ecological sources to form an organic urban ecosystem. In addition, we can set up a certain number of ecological stepping stones to further enhance the communication and circulation of energy between the sources(Luo et al. 2021; Nie et al. 2021).
In order to protect the landscape space to a greater extent and realize a good way of material and energy transmission, we can construct an ecological spatial network(Liang, Zeng, et al. 2022). Ecological spatial network is an ecological method that combines the original ecological network theory with the complex network theory(Yu et al. 2018).”
We have expanded the first paragraph of the introduction, while adding a connection to remote sensing.
Point 3：Figure 1 is very interesting but the resolution must be significantly improved. Is this map belonging to the authors it would be very good to state how the authors made this Figure and which type of data was used (open source or…)?
Response：I studied landscape design during the undergraduate period. This image was beautified by PS on the current photo of Xuzhou City, and I can provide you with the PSD source file if needed. However, to avoid conflict of interest, we removed the image and made changes.
Point 4：The lines 147 and 148, the authors stated NDVI (difference vegetation index) and MDWI (Modified Normalized Difference Water Index). Because the authors used these indexes I strongly recommend to make the new section which be named as section of Abbreviation.
Response：Thank you for your suggestion. In order to streamline the content of the article, we have put the introduction of NDVI and MNDWI into the supplementary file.
Point 5：The line 154 and 155 The authors used Open street maps. Can the authors explain why they used this type of map? There is plenty other type of maps. The authors sued Google Earth Engine GEE and this method good connected with the all types of Google maps.
Response：Thank you for your suggestion. We referenced an article, so selected Open street maps.
Liu, Hongjun, Teng Niu, Qiang Yu, et al. 2022. 'Spatial and temporal variations in the relationship between the topological structure of eco-spatial network and biodiversity maintenance function in China', Ecological Indicators, 139: 108919.
Point 6：I strongly recommend that all maps combine into one Figure 2, must be labeled by Capital Letters.
The water network density map and map of slope is bad presented. Because of that I recommend two valuable references to be cited. In these papers (research) the authors can find good presentation of maps.
Response：Sorry, we are not quite able to understand the meaning of this paragraph. We have merged Figure 2, added operational steps for data processing and cited the literature. Is it because Word reduces the picture quality of the original figure? We can provide the images separately.
Point 7：The methods DEM,SLOPE,NDVI,MNDWI,LUCC,Population density,Water Network Density, Must be explained one by one and placed in the text.
Response：
Point 8：Figure 3 (Flowchart) must be drawn with the larger letters.
Response：Thank you for your suggestions. We have made changes to Figure 3.
Point 9：The Formula 3 must be again proved. The circle must always have the ratio (length). Please explain?
Response：Thank you for your suggestion. For the screening of stepping stones, we refer to an article.
Wu, Jiansheng, Shengyong Zhang, Yuhang Luo, et al. 2022. 'Assessment of risks to habitat connectivity through the stepping-stone theory: A case study from Shenzhen, China', Urban Forestry & Urban Greening, 71: 127532.
Point 10：3.3.1 Degree
This sub-section must be better explained and extended.
3.3.2 The same as for 3.3.1
3.3.7 the same as for 3.3.1
Figure 4, is the same as the Figure 3.
Response：Thank you for your suggestion. We have revised the section and put the presentation of topology metrics in the supplemental file.
Point 11：For my opinion it is not usual to have in the Results section, the subsections. This section must be rewritten again and it must include only the main results of this research.
Response：Thank you for your suggestion. We have made changes to the conclusion section.
Point 12：Figure 6. This Figure is very difficult to understand. The authors must use different colors not white.
Response：Thank you for your suggestion. We have modified the image as shown in Figure 6 of the modified article.
Point 13：Figure 8 must be divided on two separate Figures.
Response：Thank you for your advice. The content of the original article has been changed and the image has been removed.
Point 14：Many parts of the section Results must be moved to the section of Discussion. Especially after 562 line.
Please in the section of Conclusion not usual to put any references. Place these references in the other parts of the manuscript.
Response：Thank you for your suggestion. We put part of it in 5.1 Topological properties of the ecological spatial network in 2020. we removed the reference in the conclusion section.
Point 15：In this section the authors must answered on the next questions?
- Why did the authors use this topic for the research?
- How the authors can this research made to be practically applied?
- There are similar researches, please add some of them.
The last sentence in line 728 must be deleted or combined with other sentences.
In the end, I want to say that this research has the strong potential to be published.
Response：Thank you for your suggestion.
- First, we believe that excessive carbon emissions have been a key issue with China's economy, policies, and development, and mining cities tend to emit more CO2, so how to improve local carbon sink capacity and reduce CO2 emissions is the focus of the study, so we think this study is more relevant. Secondly, we believe that mining resources extraction is a temporal event, so we construct a temporal ecological spatial network, trying to understand the changes in the spatial structure and function of the landscape as the mining area is extracted. Finally, we believe that many mine restoration strategies only consider the connectivity of ecological source sites, but ignore the carbon sink capacity of ecological source sites, so we improve and supplement the restoration strategies.
- We introduced it in the study material of the original article. The Xuzhou municipal government has made policy demands in response to ecological damage caused by coal mining. The Xuzhou government is seeking strategies to address ecological problems
- We have added references to ecological spatial network studies and ecological restoration studies in mining areas in the introduction and discussion sections
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors have done a good job with my comments, I have no other comments.
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript entitled Satellite Image vs. GIS Data Classified Local Climate Zone, Which Is More Effective to Explain Urban Heat Island Effects: A Case Study of Guangzhou can be accepted. The authors answered all of my comments and corrected all of the mistakes within the text.
In my opinion, this manuscript can be accepted in present form.
Sincerely,
The Reviewer #3
Comments for author File: Comments.docx
