Assessment of Land Use Land Cover Changes and Future Predictions Using CA-ANN Simulation for Selangor, Malaysia

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors, 

The paper is very well documented and written even it is a discussed subject. 

Author Response

Respected Reviewer,

Please see the attachment

Thank you.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The article describes land use land cover changes (LULC) in the Malaysian state and economic hub of Selangor for the periods 1991-2021, and based on those gives the LULC predictions for years 2031, 2041 and 2051. The methodology of using GIS (geographic information systems - satellite images) in conjunction with AI methods yields trustworthy quantitative results.

The study shows that the sudden increase in deforestation because of the agriculture (1991-> 2001, Fig 6) is subsequently dampened. Do authors know if these were influenced by the policy makers? Surely the urban development does not happen at random but in planned fashion. So which studies were influencing the policy makers in 1991, 2001? Or was it the fact that state profited in one way or another? A relevant question (and analysis) to ask would be to what extent was the industrial profit fuelling the further industrial growth and land-use licensing (was the (forrest and agriculture) land nationalised, or private property, to begin with); and then how will the heating of the planet influence the marriage btw tax-based policy makers and industry. This obvioulsy is for some future considerations. All this I say because it seems that the authors have a naive picture of the impact of their study on future policy makers. I mean, how exactly do authors expect that policy makers use this study? By ordering industry to move to the hills? It always amazes me to see the academic naivity of how the (indutrial) world works and can change. How sustainable was your effort for this article (in kWh)? How sustainable, you think, is the journal's? This is some food for thought.

With respect to LULC predictions, they need to contain clearer limitations e.g the accelerating heating of the planet in 2051 is not taken into account.

Other than that, article is well written, methodology being the strength, and contain just a few minor spelling/style errors. Three of them are below.

Style/spelling:

Says:
[11], illustrated the effects of different types of land use on groundwater quality by establishing carcinogenic risks caused by Cr6+ were related to urban lands and exposure to NO3− and Cr6+ related to agricultural lands created non- carcinogenic risks.

Should:
Reformulate - sounds unfinished and confusing. Perhaps: 
Ref. [11] illustrates the effects of different types of land use on groundwater quality by establishing that exposure to Cr6+ in urban lands creates carcinogenic risks, and that exposure to NO3− and Cr6+ in agricultural lands creates non-carcinogenic risks.

Lines 310,336:
Says: [ref]

Should.
References missing.

Author Response

Respected Reviewer,

Please see the attachment

Thank you.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

This is an excellent paper with detailed analysis.  I congratulate the authors for writing on this important topic.  I suggest to accept the paper with the following revisions. 

 

1. Assessment and future scenario simulation on land use and land cover changes is a very important topic and needs more attention.I would like to see some of the higher level statements at the beginning on the importance on the current topic and analysis.  There is a good literature review, but mostly concentrated on modelling part.  I think the importance of the paper goes beyond modelling and linked to the future planning challenges in similar scenario.  This needs to be highlighted and need to draw more attention.
2. Figure 6 is a very good.It will be easier for people to understand if it is changed to percentage, using the data in table 1.
3. While past land cover change is quite common, the key part of the paper is section 3.4, which is future projections.It will be good to understand a bit more on the static and dynamic parameters used for the simulation.  How the climatic change and other anthropogenic factors affect these changes, and what are levels of uncertainties.  These needs additional explanation and discussion.
4. Before the conclusion, I would like to see some discussion highlighting some of the above issues.

 

 

Author Response

Respected Reviewer,

Please see the attachment

Thank you

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 4 Report

1- Please mention the gap of the estudy.How novel/different your study is compared to previous studies?

2- In the introduction, in a paragraph, you need to explain the problem and common and recent approaches/ methods used for land use land cover change detection such as machine learnings techniques, etc.  

3- line 86-93, there are some recent relevant works done in Malaysia that have dealt with land cover land use sing remote sensing, drones, et., which you may find interesting and referred to, as the following:

Al-Najjar HA, Kalantar B, Pradhan B, Saeidi V, Halin AA, Ueda N, Mansor S. Land cover classification from fused DSM and UAV images using convolutional neural networks. Remote Sensing. 2019 Jun 1.  https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11121461

 

Mohammadi A, Shahabi H, Bin Ahmad B. Land-Cover Change Detection in a Part of Cameron Highlands, Malaysia Using ETM+ Satellite Imagery and Support Vector Machine (SVM) Algorithm. EnvironmentAsia. 2019 May 1;12(2). DOI 10.14456/ea.2019.36

4- why did you use CA-ANN?

5- What kind of correction was done on the Landsat images? please mention them.

 

Author Response

Respected Reviewer,

Please see the attachment

Thank you

Author Response File: Author Response.docx