Exploring Spatial–Temporal Patterns of Air Pollution Concentration and Their Relationship with Land Use
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThere are some issues that need to be improved or revised.
(1) In Abstract, the sentence in Line 11-12, “ Land-use was considered...identified clusters”, can be deleted.
(2) Recommending the removal of the round bullet throughout the entire text, such as the ones in line 41 and 43.
(3) In the Introduction, What alternative methodologies exist for examining spatial autocorrelation, and what justifies the selection of Moran's index? These aspects necessitate supplementation in the literature review.
(4) In the Introduction, the research purposes, research ideas and research innovation are not clear. The relationship between land use and air pollution has not been adequately explored, and there has also been a lack of comprehensive research review in this particular field.
(5) Generally speaking, a clear and specific research objective is necessary in the final paragraph of the introduction.
(6) The paper encompasses various research methodologies, thus it is recommended to construct a technical roadmap in order to enhance the coherence and comprehensibility of the content.
(7) The provided Figure 1 lacks a comprehensive introduction to the regional divisions, thus it is advisable to include an additional subfigure. For instance, foreign readers may be unfamiliar with Milan and Cremona mentioned in lines 223-224, therefore their geographical locations should be clarified. Moreover, the text labels within the figure are too small, impeding the identification of boundaries for the Milan metropolitan area and land classification.
(8) A comma in line 79 is redundant, formula 1 also contains an extra comma, and table 1 is missing a left parenthesis. Please conduct a thorough review of the entire text for similar issues and make necessary corrections.
(9) In Line 100-105, the classification of land use types can give rise to misconceptions. What do level 1.2 and level 1.1 signify?
(10) In 2.5 Differences in land use, the inclusion of references is recommended.
(11) In Figure 2-4, the text labels within the figure are too small.
(12) Table 2 necessitates redrawing.
(13) How does this study compare to previous research findings in the same field?
(14) The study's future prospects need to be assessed.
(15) What is the significance of this study? How should management strategies be formulated and whether the land-use based pollution management strategies mentioned in the abstract need to be further elaborated?
Comments on the Quality of English LanguageMinor editing of English language required
Author Response
We thank the reviewer for the time and effort spent in helping us improving our manuscript. We deeem we were able to address and successfully solve all raised issue. Point-by-point responsed are provided in the attached document, while changes in the manuscript are both tracked with review mode and with yellow highlighting. Please, let us know if the new manuscript is compliant with the requests.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsMs. Ref. No.: Atmosphere-3025724
Manuscript titled " Exploring spatial-temporal patterns of air pollution concentra tion and their relationship with land-use".
The introduction needs to be rewritten, the text is confusing, it doesn't contextualize the subject and doesn't include other works in the area. The authors do not explain why they chose the period between 2016 and 2020. In the results, they do not discuss variations over the study period. The relationship with land use is superficial, with many assumptions. They could use other works by local authors to support their results, in order to relate them to local sources. The work provides good results and a good tool, but it needs to be greatly improved.
There are many issues that should be corrected and clarified by the authors to further improve the quality of the manuscript.
Some points that require further explanation are:
-abstract: better explain “ Land-use was considered to inspect the characteristics 12 of identified clusters” and “The temporal decomposition showed that PMs peak seasonally in winter”
- line 40: replace "thanks" and remove sorting
- material: remove sorting
- section 2 needs to be better organized (items 2.1 to 2.2); in addition, the first few paragraphs contain information that could be in other subsections.
- line 129: number the matrix as an equation or remove
- correctly write PM10, PM2.5, O3, NO2, SO2, use PM10, SO2, etc
- line 189 and table 1: explain what the values are and how they were calculated
- the quality of figures 2, 3 and 4 is poor
- the authors must improve the quality of figure 4 and highlight with symbols the important places mentioned in lines 235, 236, 249 and others
- I believe that the formatting of table 2 does not comply with the journal's standards
- lines 274-285: explain the differences according to local sources
- the discussion needs to be better developed with results from other authors
- few references
Comments on the Quality of English LanguageMinor editing of English language required
Author Response
We thank the reviewer for the time and effort spent in helping us improving our manuscript. We deeem we were able to address and successfully solve all raised issue. Point-by-point responsed are provided in the attached document, while changes in the manuscript are both tracked with review mode and with yellow highlighting. Please, let us know if the new manuscript is compliant with the requests.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe author has made commendable modifications and enhancements to the majority of the content in comparison to the previous version.However, we have identified numerous textual errors in the response letter. Despite our attempts to overlook these errors during manuscript review, they proved to be unsuccessful. Therefore, we strongly recommend that the author revise and resubmit the following feedback for us to ascertain if the author's modifications align with our requirements.
(1) You state in your coverletter, [Error! Reference source not found.]
Similar to the preceding comment, In the Introduction, the research purposes, research ideas and research innovation are not clear. The relationship between land use and air pollution has not been adequately explored, and there has also been a lack of comprehensive research review in this particular field.
(2) You state in your coverletter, The whole manuscript was proof-read for typos. There is an extra comma in Line 89. Similar to the preceding comment, Please conduct a thorough review of the entire text for similar issues and make necessary corrections again!
(3) You state in your coverletter, [Error! Reference source not found.]
Similar to the preceding comment, In Line 100-105, the classification of land use types can give rise to misconceptions. What do level 1.2 and level 1.1 signify?
(4) You state in your coverletter, [Error! Reference source not found.]
Similar to the preceding comment, How does this study compare to previous research findings in the same field?
We assert that the occurrence of these textual errors is unacceptable, and the multitude of error prompts has indeed impeded our review process. We respectfully urge the author to treat this matter with due seriousness, enhance academic rigor, and refrain from repeating such mistakes.
Comments on the Quality of English LanguageMinor editing of English language required
Author Response
We sincerely apologize for the incorrect form of the provided file. The missing references are due to the conversion to PDF format, which we guiltily did not revise, as the final assessment (also due to the need to communicate among authors) was performed on the Word file. We completely agree that, in the current form, it was almost impossible to assess the reviewed content. We report in the attachment the required responses with references correctly indicated, along with a corrected version (below) of the first review round.
Once again, we apologize for the waste of time that our oversight caused for the reviewer.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe manuscript has improved, but it could be even better. Lines 54 to 65 added to the introduction could have been part of the methodology. They added references, but didn't discuss their results and compare them with others, they just mentioned that they are similar, or that the subject is much discussed in the literature. I think the authors should still discuss their results and compare them with the literature, this helps to validate the results and show the value of the current study. The figures are much better, but the size of the numbers on the axes of the graphs in figure 3 could be increased.
Author Response
We appreciate the time and effort that the reviewer has dedicated to giving us helpful inputs, and we are thankful for the insightful comments and suggestions that we believe have significantly improved our manuscript.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
