Examining the Spatial Variations of Land Use Change and Its Impact Factors in a Coastal Area in Vietnam

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper examines the land use type changes over 10 years in Vietnam, which is very interesting and important. In addition, the authors investigated what kind of factors will drive this changing trend. I have several comments below:

1.       In the data section, the authors failed to mention what are the data sources for land use information. Please add that information as well. For example, what is the definition of different land use types? Please provide some typical examples for different land use types.

2.       Does the land use type of construction refer to new construction or all structures and infrastructures in urban areas? What kind of algorithms are applied to label different land use types?

3.       This study only analyzes the static variables including population, industry, and other factors. Have the authors examined the dynamics of change in different policies? I think government policy will also change the land use type and categories. In addition, the impact of the international commercial will also impact the urbanization of the coastal areas. It is better to include the impact of both local government policies and international commercial activities.

4.       How is the importance of driving factors ranked in Figure 7? Please provide more information about this ranking algorithm.

5.       For Table 3, it is better to provide more descriptive statistics for continuous variables, such as histograms. In addition, have the authors examined the correlation among those variables? I think some variables are highly correlated.  

6.       The order of Sections 5 and 6 is wrong. It should discuss the results and potential implications. Then, the conclusion should be introduced.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript presented is well written and well structured anyway some revision have to be performed in order to improve the high quality of the work before going ahead. 

Firstly, I suggest you to include a brief discussion in the introduction section talking about the model that deal with spatial variation an relative example. In particular to help you I suggest to consider to incluse all these works:

- https://doi.org/10.3390/ani12081049

- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2014.07.027

- https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-016-1068-2

- https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.1111772?cookieSet=1

I suggest you to add a material section talking about software and tools adopted as well as data (which is partially present in the Data and methods section, that it will be better to rename only methods before or after the material). This will help readers in better understanding your work

Then I suggest you to move the conclusions at the end of the manuscript after the discussions.

 

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx