Climate Change, Land Use, and Vegetation Evolution in the Upper Huai River Basin

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Reviewer’s Report on the manuscript entitled:

Climate Change, land use, and Vegetation evolution in the Upper Huai river basin

The authors investigated climate, land use, and vegetation evolution in the Upper Huai river basin using Mann-Kendall test and its Sen’s slope estimator. They also analyzed land use land cover change by transformation matrix and NDVI. The topic and results are interesting, but the presentation and literature review must be improved. Please see below my comments. This manuscript must also be carefully proofread.

 

Line 16. Grammar issue. Should be “influence”

Line 20. What is ITAM? Line 21. Define NDVI. Please define all the abbreviations the first time they appear in the manuscript.

 

I suggest using the abbreviation HRB for Huai River Basin and use it throughout the manuscript.

Line 20. It is “Sen’s slope” with capital S.

Line 24. Please insert a dot after “30 years”.

Line 25. Do you mean “discrete”?

 

The literature review in the Introduction can be improved. For example,

Zaghloul et al. [https://doi.org/10.3390/hydrology9110197] investigated the impact of climate change on river flow and showed that early spring warming increased water flow  due to snowpack melting and gradual glacier melting. They also applied Mann-Kendall trend test and its associated Sen’s slope estimator.

Novillo et al. [https://doi.org/10.3390/ijgi8010043] estimated MODIS NDVI trends for Spain using Mann-Kendall trend analysis. They also studied the land cover change in Spain.

Dastour et al. in [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jag.2022.103044] showed the seasonal cycles of vegetation and climate are generally coherent but with some time delay. They utilized MODIS NDVI and MODIS land cover in their analysis.

 

Figure 1. Please increase the font size of legend and coordinates.

 

Equation (5). What is delta? Please also make a reference to the first article that I suggested above for the Mann-Kendall (MK) and Sen’s slope formulas. Please also mention the limitations of these methods in the discussion section. For example, the presence of seasonality and serial correlation can significantly impact the MK results.

 

Figure 3. Please use parallelograms instead of rectangles for the Inputs and Outputs. The analysis and operations can be inside the rectangles. Please use two or three colors maximum. The inputs and outputs can have one color.

 

Figure 4. What is the legend for the blue line? The orientation of right y-axis label, i.e., Temperature should be from the bottom to top just like the way your wrote precipitation on the left y-axis. The estimated trend and R^2 on the bar charts are not visible. Please move them in the blank space on the top.

 

Line 313. Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) uses blue band not NDVI. Please correct the sentence. Here you only applied NDVI that uses only NIR-Infrared and Red band but not Blue.

Line 323. Just say “NDVI”

 

Figure 5. The correlation is not a good metric here. The coherency using cross-wavelet is much more effective as it can show how the annual and seasonal components are coherent and it also shows the time delay. See the third reference that I mentioned above. You can at least discuss this at the end of the manuscript.

 

Limitations of the study should be mentioned in the Conclusion part.

 

Finally, this manuscript must be very carefully proofread to correct all the grammar/punctuation/style issues.

 

Regards,

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Reviewer 2 Report

Land use/land cover and vegetation are considered to be extremely vulnerable to the impact of climate change, but there is little understanding of the sensitivity and adaptability of the basin to climate change. The authors discussed the climate change, land use and vegetation evolution in the upper reaches of the Huaihe River basin in China.The research is an interesting research topic, and it also has some practical significance. Overall, the structure of the paper respects the journal's format. I can see that the authors gave a significant effort to make the paper well written and compelling. I think this paper can be published once authors make revisions.

1. The abstract is not concise enough to highlight the innovation of research. Further streamlining is needed to enhance the value of the summary. (lines 18-29) 

2.The introduction is not rich enough and must be supplemented. I suggest the author make some necessary additions. The description in this part should directly discuss relevant studies on Climate change and LULC.  

3. I highly recommend modifying and update the first sentence of the introduction with the given studies [1-3] as "Land-Use and Land-Cover Change (LUCC) is the major content of research on world climate and environmental change. It has a huge impact on the resources environment, biodiversity, artificial water environment changes, and economic and social development[1-3]."

 

[1].Application of the Optimal Parameter Geographic Detector Model in the Identification of Influencing Factors of Ecological Quality in Guangzhou, China. Land 11. https://doi.org/10.3390/land11081303

[2].The mark of vegetation change on Earth’s surface energy balance. Nat. Commun. 9. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-02810-8

[3]. Impact of urban expansion on land surface temperature and carbon emissions using machine learning algorithms in Wuhan, China, Urban Climate, 47, 101347. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.uclim.2022.101347

** Authors must have to update the above sentence with provided studies.

4. The figures format of the article is incorrect, please modify it according the requirement of the “atmosphere”.

5.The font size of lines 71-75 is inconsistent with the full text. Please check the full text.

6. Please update some references from the last five years in the article. Especially the latest achievements in machine learning and intelligence on Climate Change, land use！

7.Write the suggestions at the end of the conclusion.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I thank the authors for addressing most of my comments. I have some more comments:

Figure 2. Please insert the labels and/or units for the x-axis and y-axis

Figure 3. Please carefully adjust the arrows. The flowchart needs to be carefully restyled/reformatted.

As I mentioned before, please improve Figure 5. The equation of the estimated line and R2 are written on the green bars that are not visible. Please move them to the blank space above it. Is this line (cyan color) the estimated linear line for the precipitation? If it is, then it is incorrect as it has a high intercept! Please check the figure. In regard to the word "Temperature" on the label, please rotate the text 180 degrees.

The references must be checked one by one to have the format and style of MDPI guideline:

https://www.mdpi.com/journal/atmosphere/instructions#preparation

Please carefully proofread the manuscript. Thank you

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Reviewer 2 Report

This revised article has been significantly improved, but in order to meet the quality requirements of publication, there are still some suggestions for the author to improve it.

1. There are too many contents in the summary. It is better to refine and highlight the key points. Lines 22-42

2. The introduction has been improved, but I think there are too many paragraphs and some can be merged. In addition, I think that the author mentioned (lines 61-63) "These meteorological variables are directly or indirectly and significantly affecting the environment and the living entities, Please be sure to consider adding the following new research results [1-2].

[1].Impact of urban expansion on land surface temperature and carbon emissions using machine learning algorithms in Wuhan, China, Urban Climate, 47, 101347.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.uclim.2022.101347

[2].Assessing Land Use/Land Cover Dynamic and Its Impact in Benin Republic Using Land Change Model and CCI-LC Products.  Earth Syst.  Environ.  2019, 3, 127–137.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.doc