Including Condition into Ecological Maps Changes Everything—A Study of Ecological Condition in the Conterminous United States

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is an interesting manuscript and focuses on a topic of interest for the readership of the Land journal. Nevertheless, it has some unclear issues. Please see the following list of comments:

 

- The title of the manuscript should include the geographical location.

 

- In the introduction section, you should indicate what are the innovative contributions of your manuscript to science.

 

- Please include a methodological framework in the materials and methods section.

 

- The methodology needs more explanations regarding alternative approaches.

 

- The map legend in Figure 2 is illegible. In addition, a scale bar in Figures 2, 3, 4 and 5 is missing

 

- The discussion is fairly written, but how do you think that your methodological approach could be applicable elsewhere?. This will help boost the potential international readership of the manuscript. In addition, you should compare your results with previous studies and explain why your results are similar or different from previous findings.

 

- You should indicate some proposals for future work and indicate the main limitations of your study.

Author Response

1. The title of the manuscript should include geographic location. We agree with the suggestion but are concerned that the title will become too long and awkward. As a result, we have added a subtitle
2. In introduction indicate innovative contributions of this work. Add something about qualitative assessment of conservation areas and private lands. We have added a to the end of the introduction addressing the innovation in this research and the potential contribution to the fields of landscape ecology and conservation.
3. Please include a methodological framework: The intent of Figure 1 and Table 2.1 are to provide such a framework. We have tried to address this comment by adding more description and organizing the sections more clearly.   
4. Alternative approaches? We see this approach of calculating the functional habitat value as an alternative to the commonly used approach that focuses on habitat area without incorporating condition. Our goal was to develop an index that could be updated, so we were constrained to data that was at the CONUS scale and would continue to be collected over time. We also discuss alternative approaches as described in our response to Reviewer 2, below and compared our results to the GAP database, which provides an alternative model. We hope that clarifying these elements demonstrates that we have considered alternatives that meet the study goals.
5. The map legend in Figure 2 is illegible. In addition, a scale bar in Figures 2, 3, 4, and 5 is missing– We have inserted high-resolution copies of these figures and scale bars
6. The discussion is fairly written, but how do you think your methodological approach could be applicable elsewhere? This will help boost the potential international readership of the manuscript. In addition, you should compare your results with previous studies and explain why your results are similar or different from previous findings. One paragraph was included in the discussion to highlight where comparable input data sets are or are not likely to be available.  Where data are available, a similar modeling approach could be developed, as also now stated in the abstract.
7. Compare your results with previous studies and explain why your results are similar or different from previous findings.  The validation approach compares the HCI results with an independent dataset. We also compare the HCI with the GAP status, which is intended to indicate habitat quality through management designation. That comparison receives considerable discussion in the results and discussion because GAP status is used to identify whether designated management reflects habitat condition as indicated by the HCI. As GAP status has been identified globally, this model can be compared against a more biologically based model like the HCI. We have added language in the discussion to this effect.
8. You should indicate some proposals for future work and indicate the main limitations of your study. Proposals for future work. Specific comments in the Discussion include potential for substituting newly available data sets (e.g., LANDFIRE existing vegetation) for the thematically coarse National Land Cover Data. We also now suggest that development of similar models in other geographies would be valuable for both incorporating landscape condition into 30 x 30 planning and evaluating the generality of the HCI results. 

Reviewer 2 Report

The article is interesting and makes an important contribution to the field, it has good research depth, presenting the case study in a manner that permits understanding its contribution to the theoretical advancement of the field, and the novel elements are clearly emphasized. It is written in a manner suitable for a broad international audience. There are only few minor comments.

In detail, my only comments relate to the Discussions, which do a great job in presenting the significance of results, their inner validation against the research hypotheses, and contribution to the theoretical advancement of the field. However, the section would benefit upon presenting in more details the external validation of results, against those of similar studies from other elsewhere, identified in the literature, which perhaps used different approaches. In this regard, it would help to insert a table comparing their novel approach, based on CONUS/HCI, with other similar ones, based on the advantages and disadvantages of each one. A summary of the study limitations and directions for overcoming them in the future research would certainly help too.
With respect to writing up their article, the authors are advised to pay more attention to the Author Guidelines. While most works are cited by their number, as required, there are some citations using the author (and year). It also seems that the authors used a different template, or altered the journal one.

Author Response

1. In Discussion present differences between this study and others, suggest using a table. We actually discuss other approaches that have also incorporated a habitat quality component in the Introduction rather than in the Discussion. For example, we have already included discussion of Australian and other US programs and the GAP results, and identified the contrasting approach of Sanderson et al (2002). While we appreciate the value ofdesire for side-by side comparisons of this model with other related approaches, that is well beyond the scope of this paper. However, we have inserted additional material in the discussion section to further reflect on similarities and differences between the HCI and three other related models that exist for the conterminous United States.  Our focus here was to explain the purpose and methods we deployed and then summarize our results by testing several hypotheses. 
2. We also discuss limitation and directions in the future for improvement and overcoming issues. The Discussion currently includes limitations in these existing data (g., it should not be used to identify small parcels of land for conservation action… and “We had also hoped to reflect the variation of habitat quality across croplands as influenced by adjacent land uses but had insufficient data on which to base a model layer. As land use shifts become necessary for other purposes [69], such data could inform where change should be prioritized and incentivized.”) Directions for future improvement include e.g., the NLCD database could be substituted to better represent the gradient from cultural to ruderal, semi-natural and natural land cover classes as is now depicted by LANDFIRE (https://landfire.cr.usgs.gov). 
3. The authors have not followed Author Guidelines for citations. We apologize for inadvertently deviating from the Guidelines and have corrected citations where they did not follow the specified format.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

Thank you for taking into consideration my remarks. In my opinion, the manuscript can be published.

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors have properly and fully addressed all comments or justified the choice of not addressing some of them, and their manuscript was improved. I recommend its publication in the revised form.