Spatio-Temporal Heterogeneity and Cumulative Ecological Impacts of Coastal Reclamation in Coastal Waters

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

1. The graphical abstract should be more simplified - it needs to emphasize more on the highlights of this research project.

2.  I appreciate the introduction of the study area in the first section but it seems to be a bit heavy-loaded. I would suggest to make the this part more brief by moving partial text to the section of study area.

3. Please rephrase the sentence "to explain the initiation mechanism of the reclamation intensity and its changes from the points of population, economy, urbanization and industrialization.". This sentence seems to be a bit confusing and also involves with grammar mistakes.

4. Please specify the year and its corresponding image sensor. The second period has an overlap with the individual years you listed. What image sensor do these years data belong to?

5. Authors may need to clarify the reason of using driving factors when constructing a complex relationship between the cumulative reclamation area and them.

6. "The average RCEI values was 2.2 between 1985 and 2018, moderate impact. 22.6% of the area in the Bohai Sea was highly impact area..." This sentence, like many others, seems to be confusing and could be misleading. Authors should double check the English proficiency before submission.

7. In the discussion part, beside the limitation (e.g., uncertainty of RCEI), authors also need to specify the importance of their research, generality of their research, and certain future expectations on those unresolved gaps. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Please see the attached comments.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript focuses on the spatio-temporal change and cumulative ecological impacts of coastal reclamation in Coastal Water. The work is well organized. However, only few remote sensing related technology or method was applied in this study. In general, the environment or ecological involved journal may be more suitable for this manuscript.

 

1. The abstract is supposed to present the methods the authors conducted.

2. The introduction section should supplement more applications of remote sensing in the related research area, and what is the novelty of this study compared with previous ones?

3. Please clarify the relationship between this manuscript and the remote sensing techniques, because Remote Sensing is an international journal associated with the scope of remote sensing.

4. The description of the method for identifying the MWBB (Section 2.3.2) is too simple. How to identify the bedrock, sand, and others from remote sensing images? what is the relationship established in this study (Line 188-190)? It needs adding more details.

5. The authors mentioned that the RCEL model has some limitations in the last conclusion, which was reasonable, please discuss these limitations in the discussion section briefly.

6. The Table S1, Table S2, and Table S3 can’t find in the manuscript. I did not find the supplementary materials.

 

7. The manuscript contains some spelling (e.g., Line 364) and format mistakes. For example, all the variables should be in italics. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

N/A

Author Response

We really appreciate you for your endeavors and valuable suggestions that help us to improve the quality of our manuscript to meet the high-quality standards of Remote Sensing.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors have addressed my comments, I recommend acceptance of this manuscript.