Influence of Climate, Topography, and Hydrology on Vegetation Distribution Patterns—Oasis in the Taklamakan Desert Hinterland

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This draft article titled "Influence of climate, topography, and hydrology on vegetation distribution patterns—Oasis in the Taklamakan Desert hinterland" focused on the relationship between environmental factors and vegetation distribution in desert hinterland oases. It highlights the importance of understanding how desert vegetation responds to natural variability and its impact on desertification processes. The study provides valuable insights for the restoration of riparian vegetation, ecological water transfer, and sustainable development in desert ecosystems. However this article need major revision by considering the following significant comments. Also, the English language requires an excessive improvement.

General Comments:

Abstract act the summary of a research article. Please avoid to write repetitive lines and also mention that what the contents are adding to knowledge instead of repeating the title words separately.

Introduction constructed very poor with just explanation of how vegetation is affected by climate, topography and hydrology. Please mention that literature studies regarding advancement in such topics; drawbacks or limitation of previous studies and motivation to conduct this study and finally mention objectives of this study (in the last part of introduction). Moreover summarize all selected parameters process related to vegetation.

Methodology section constructed better there is need to add some following points:

·       Study area lack information related to climate, topography and surface hydrology. Therefore, it is suggested that please mention; some information about climate lie annual precipitation, temperature, etc.; information about the topography like elevation and information about hydrology like surface and subsurface water resources.

·       Data collection need some improvements by avoiding to add more explanation of methods (move it to method part); sources of meteorological data and topographical data are missed.

·       Methods need relevant citations to support their utilization. There is need to strengthen the utilized methods. Also explain the parameters of equation. Moreover the purpose of Random forest method was what, write that.

Results and analysis: ‘and analysis’ word can be remove from this section. Overall this section requires critical improvements, because most of results are explained in the section of discussion. It is suggested to add the results of climate (Temperature and precipitation) topography, surface and ground water from the section 4 (discussion) in the start of this section Please explain the results based on the figures and maps to make team more reasonable.

Discussion this section can discuss the data, its limitation, adopted methodology and results based on the scientific and logical reasoning; it is suggest add the data limitation that is used to draw the results and also add literature based supportive validation of acquired results. So, please explain the discussion part with logical reasoning instead of repeating the results. Remove the headings of 4.1, 4.2, 4.3 and 4.1(with its Figures) because these can be a part of results section.

Conclusion is described well. Just add the limitation regarding to use the spatial data that is coarse in resolution and mention some conclusion-based recommendation and future directions for researchers.

Specific Comments:

In the title author used “Oasis” and in the text author used “oasis”. Please try make symmetry uniqueness throughout the article.

Line 42: 'ture in the last 30 years is the highest in the last 1400 years, rainfall is further increasing', requires clarity in writing. Rephrase it.

Line 104: Please re-write the heading 2 as "Material and Methods".

Line 107: Please write the coordinates of in correct manner with the description of N and S.

Line 111: Please add the space before " (Figure 1)".

Please mention elevation information of the study area in Figure 1.

Line 118: It is suggested to revise the caption of Figure 1.

Line 152 delete the repeating 'word water body index'.

Figure 2, 3 and 4: It is suggested to add the maps of these figures in landscape or portrait, to ensure the clear resolution and understanding, instead to place them at some angle.

Line 195-295: Remove the text in these lines and add them in the respective sections of methods.

Line 150, 151, 213 and 217: Please use the subscript for "AEWIno" and "ρgreen, ρswir1, ρnir, and ρswir2"

Line 271: Please revise the caption of figure 8 in mentioning the specific word of "trend".

Line 272: delete the word NDVI datasets from the caption of Figure 8. It is just repeating.

Line 283: Revise the caption of figure 9 because there is no need to mention the methods in the figure caption.

Line 408: Please correct the word "pre-cipitation".

 

Figures 12, 13 and 14: The left panels of these figures can be deleted because the data about the topography, surface water and ground water depth have already presented in previous figures. 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Certain corrections are suggested in above comments. 

Author Response

Dear Sir/Madam,

    Thank you so much for your kind encouragement on our manuscript entitled “Influence of climate, topography, and hydrology on vegetation distribution patterns-oasis in Taklamakan Desert hinterland” (remote sensing-2662694) and for sending us the review of our manuscript.

    We greatly appreciate the reviewer for your valuable comments and constructive suggestions. We have carefully addressed these points in our revised manuscript and a point-to-point response to the comments has been detailed in our Cover Letter, in which the comments are written in italics followed by our responses in regular text. In addition, the changes or revision were marked with red text in new version of the manuscript.

    Now, we are resubmitting the latest vision of our manuscript to you.

Best wishes,

Lei Peng

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript shows very good direction of the research domain. However, it needs some modifications which are as follows:

-The abstract needs some numerical presentations.

-Figures of the study are not very clear. These should be redrawn.

-Some latest references of Asia are missing.

-More scientific discussions are needed.

-Conclusion should be the response sheet of the objectives.

Author Response

Dear Sir/Madam,

    Thank you so much for your kind encouragement on our manuscript entitled “Influence of climate, topography, and hydrology on vegetation distribution patterns-oasis in Taklamakan Desert hinterland” (remote sensing-2662694) and for sending us the review on our manuscript.

    We greatly appreciate the reviewer for your valuable comments and constructive suggestions. We have carefully addressed these points in our revised manuscript and a point-to-point response to the comments has been detailed in our Cover Letter, in which the comments are written in italics followed by our responses in regular text. In addition, the changes or revisions were marked with red text in new version of the manuscript.

    Now, we are resubmitting the latest vision of our manuscript to you.

Best wishes,

Lei Peng

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors are aiming to study and analyse desert vegetation response to natural variability using remote sensing.  Although the paper is interesting and is addressing an important problem, the writing is not up to the mark. The authors should include more details across the paper, for example, remote sensing literature, satellite data descriptions, etc. The paper seems to have a lack of details that can confuse the reader. 

 

Abstract

 

Line 18 - “using time-series vegetation indices…” please provide a list of all indices used. If only NDVI is used, I would recommend altering the sentence to “time-series NDVI”

 

Line 21 - What is the meaning of several NDVI datasets? Do you mean NDVI from satellites, airborne, and ground? Or do you mean different satellite NDVI? 

 

1. Introduction

 

This section is well written. However, there is limited background and introduction to remote sensing systems and methodology. Since the work uses satellite multispectral data, there is a need to have some remote sensing literature review and background in this section. 

 

2. Study area, data, and methods

 

2.2.1 Meteorological and topographic data

 

Line 121 - What is the meaning of this sentence? 

 

Line 125 - Where is the data from? Is it from the  Climatic Research Unit (CRU) time series dataset with the climatology dataset of WorldClim? 

 

Data source must be described in detail. 

 

Line 128 - “the results were verified as credible” how?

 

Line 128-129 - “Combining the above remote sensing data with the vegetation index”- what remote sensing data? And what vegetation index? You mean, the 496 independent meteorological observation points are combined with NDVI from satellites? Combined how? There is no clarity in this sentence. It is confusing for the reader at this stage to understand the workflow clearly. 

 

Line 130- “was carried out using Matlab software to obtain the control of meteorological factors on vegetation”- Again, MATLAB is just a tool. What was done to obtain the control of…? 

 

Fig. 2-3 It is hard to read the legend. The quality can be better

 

2.2.2.1 Surface water data

 

Line 150 - “Based on the above analysis” What analysis is this referring to? No analysis has been shown. You mean the description of the problem provided in the previous lines? This is not an analysis. 

 

2.2.3 Vegetation data

 

Line 189 - Landsat what? Was it Landsat 5-8? Or just Landsat 7? Please mention this? 

 

Also, I recommend including a table with details about the Landsat and MODIS platforms. 

 

Line 193 - There are differences inherent because of the spatial resolution differences. It is tough to say that these differences are due to satellite sensors. You cannot compare 30 m pixels with 250 m pixels and conclude that data is different. You could do an upscaling to 30 m resolution images to 250 m images and then compare.

 

Line 195 - Please make it consistent - Landsat vs LANDSAT

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Language is decent. Can still be improved. 

Author Response

Dear Sir/Madam,

    Thank you so much for your kind encouragement on our manuscript entitled “Influence of climate, topography, and hydrology on vegetation distribution patterns-oasis in Taklamakan Desert hinterland” (remote sensing-2662694) and for sending us the review of our manuscript.

    We greatly appreciate the reviewer for your valuable comments and constructive suggestions. We have carefully addressed these points in our revised manuscript and a point-to-point response to the comments has been detailed in our Cover Letter, in which the comments are written in italics followed by our responses in regular text. In addition, the changes or revisions were marked with red text in new version of the manuscript.

    Now, we are resubmitting the latest vision of our manuscript to you.

Best wishes,

Lei Peng

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors,

Thank you for attending to my comments and bringing the manuscript to an acceptable form.

Regards

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The revisions are acceptable and sound.