Spatiotemporal Characteristics and Determinants of Rural Construction Land in China’s Developed Areas: A Case Study of the Yangtze River Delta
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 3)
The authors made a substantial effort to revise the manuscript and it has been improved a lot but there are still some minor revisions that are needed.
The abstract improved better but please make sure that the text is compliant with the journal template and instructions. In my understanding abstract should not exceed more than 200 words and try to reduce the unnecessary sentences and words within this limit.
Please make sure to have an English native speaker review the text, especially for the revised part. Some sentences and parts are hard to understand and read is not smooth enough.
In your comments, I can understand “we moved 4.3 (original) into the conclusions section, and put it at the end with some modifications”. But I cannot understand “We have not moved 4.3 (now 4.4) in order to make the logic more logical” after that sentence. It seems that the original 4.3 has already been moved to the conclusion section but you are saying that it is not moved to and where is 4.4? Are you missing some subsection in the text? Or is it numbered wrongly?
Section 4.1 looks very not related to the discussion section. The previous version for this section (paragraph) would be better. For example, the previous version of this section/paragraph starts with “The relationship between RCL and rural population was not stable during the 491 study period. In 2000 and 2017, the two were positively correlated, whereas they were 492 negatively correlated in 2010.”, and it makes relation to the text.
In addition, consider if Table 6 is really needed in this section as it does not come from the study results but only shows evidence from the literature.
Please try to follow the academic journal structure of the discussion and conclusion section. Currently, the organization of these sections does not look appropriate. In addition, I cannot understand why many previous parts of the discussion section were removed. Again, the discussion section enrichment is needed and make sure you have emphasized the main/new findings. If you feel that separating these sections is difficult consider a combined version of the discussions and conclusions section.
Please make sure to have an English native speaker review the text, especially for the revised part. Some sentences and parts are hard to understand and read is not smooth enough.
Author Response
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Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)
1. When writing an introduction, current research should be elaborated on from both domestic and international perspectives.Pay attention to the papers and studies of scholars from other countries;
2. The map of China lacks a north compass, which should be supplemented.
3. The scale of the legend should be unified
4. There is a greater than sign on line 316. Do not use a symbol and use a different English expression.
5. The three line table needs to be aligned
6. In the first part of the paper, the introduction, the authors must define the scientific problem, mention the objective of the research, the hypothesis from which they start.
7. What are the limitations of this study？
8. The references should be improved.
9. The conclusion is too long.，A lot of the information could be in the Discussion.
10. Compare the research conclusions with the results of other scholars
11. Policy factors are particularly influential in the use of construction land targets, especially in rural areas. Therefore, the indicators related to policy factors were not covered in the study of the determinants of rural construction land, and it is recommended that they be included in the study of their related indicators.
English very difficult to understand/incomprehensible
Author Response
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Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)
The text is written correctly. It meets the formal and substantive requirements set by the publisher. The figures and tables are legible and properly interpreted. The description of the method and the theoretical introduction do not raise my doubts. The discussion could indeed be deepened but, in my opinion, it is sufficient. The final conclusions result from the presented material. In summary, I believe that the article deserves to be published.
Author Response
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Reviewer 4 Report (New Reviewer)
Under the background of rural revitalization and high-quality integrated development of the Yangtze River Delta, it is typical and instructive to study the temporal and spatial characteristics and influencing factors of RCL change in this region. This paper explored spatiotemporal characteristics and determinants of RCL in developed areas taking the Yangtze River Delta as a case area. The findings will be conductive to the establishment of a unified urban and rural
construction land market.
The following are some of the shortcomings:
1. What is the accuracy of the night-time lighting data used?
2. Can the rural resident population be taken into account in the indicators in Table 1? At the same time, can we consider indicators that reflect the livelihood of rural households and the employment of rural migrant workers, such as pure farm income and non-farm income?
3. How are the accessibility indicators in table 1 calculated? At the same time, the choice of urban GDP as a factor is also worth discussing?
4. Is it too big to use the city scale as the evaluation unit?
5. This paper indicates that no significant correlation was found between RCL and local economic development. Why? The research area is a developed area in China. Why is this happening?
Author Response
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Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)
The paper has been revised and improved according to the relevant opinions. The scientific problems are clear, the methods and techniques are feasible, and it has some innovation and practical value.
This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
I appreciate the authors for undertaking a good topic and producing manuscript on it. I have read it carefully and have following observations:
1. Although the authors have made effort in developing good rationale / contextual framework (line 56-72) about the problem undertaken for this study, there is a need to construct and incorporate clear objective for the study along with research query in last part of the introduction section.
2. Title of heading # 2 may be revised as Methodology. Before jumping on study area under heading 2.1, there is a need to give a preamble about the type and composition of methodology employed for this study. Besides, there is a need to add methodological flow diagram to illustrate the various steps involved in the study.
3. In discussion part, there is a need to enrich the content with comparative analysis by adding more citations (atleast 8-10 papers on the subject). There is also a need to discuss results in vis-a-vis objective and research query (after incorporating them).
4. Revisit the conclusion and Abstract after making above changes.
Moderate English editing required.
Author Response
Thanks for your time. Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments
The authors analyzed the spatiotemporal dynamics and determinants of RCL in the YRD. The current version of this manuscript is not suitable to be published on my mind. Detailed comments are as follows.
1. Introduction: The introduction reads weak. First of all, in the introduction section, I missed the necessity of this research. Second, I didn’t find any comparative analysis on RCL between China and other nations. Besides, why do you focus on RCL in China? Why do you focus on RCL in YRD? What methods have been applied to study the RCL in YRD and other regions? What’s the basic conclusion of existing publications? What are the research gaps? The information should be supported from the literatures.
2. Study area: Information in Figure 1 is too limited. Only geographical distribution of cities makes no sense. At least, the socio-economic data mentioned in the content, which helps to understand the different RCL dynamic, should be displayed here.
3. Data: First, you cited Gong et al [37]. However, the 37th citation in your reference list is not consistent with your content. Please check the entire manuscript and make sure your citations are correct. Second, the description of datasets is not suitable. What is the name of the dataset created by Gong et al.? What is the accuracy? What is the website and obtained date of the dataset you used in this research? All the information should be clear in your content. Similar to other datasets you used. Third, information in Lines 125-129 is not clear. How was the urban impervious surface identified based on NDVI, MNDWI, SWIR and other indicators? What are other indicators? Why did you refer it here? Fourth, how did you validate the accuracy of RCL data you obtained by excising urban impervious surface from the total impervious surface? What is the accuracy of the RCL data you obtained? In addition, why urban GDP but not rural GDP was selected?
4. Methods and Results: The two sections read more like an instruction book than a research paper. First, the reason you applied these methods should be explained. Second, the current description lacks of a logic routine. Meantime, sentences shouldn’t be too redundant. Second, the significant findings should be analyzed from the aspects of policies, economic development, and so on. Third, some methods read not convincing. For instance, Formula (1) leads to the growth percentage. The annual growth rate is not defined as Formula (1) in many existing publications. Please find the right citations of this function or supplemented the necessary explanation about why you defined a different annual growth rate. Fourth, some results omit the illustrations of method. For instance, how did you obtain the Gini coefficient? Why did you divide the cities by thresholds of 0%, 5% and 10%? What’s is the theoretical basis for defining Type I, II, III and IV? Besides, the analysis on determinants should be more summarized.
5. Discussion: The discussion section is poor. The findings need to be supported by the literatures. What are your main findings? What are the new findings in your research? The policy implication and limitation of the study needs to be incorporated in the discussion sections.
The description can be simplified and more precise.
Author Response
Please see the attachment for response.
Thank you very much for your constructive comments. We made major revisions accordingly.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
The study analyzed the spatiotemporal dynamics and determinants of RCL over a long period using exploratory spatiotemporal data analysis and multiscale geographically weighted regression on the most developed region in China, the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) taking as an example. Study findings could support optimizing rural land use in the YRD and provide an important reference for science-based land use planning in other relatively underdeveloped regions.
The paper fits the scope of Land and clearly presents relevant sections, methods, and study results. It employed geostatistical methods heavily and made significant results with good visualization.
However, the text needs some corrections and they are as follows.
The title needs some changes in it. The current one is not adequately describing the contents of it. It is hard to see the purpose of the study in it. Why do you conduct this study? In my view, it should reflect such a thing or perhaps a subtitle can be used with “:”.
Abstract revision is needed. Try to include a background bit more and study purpose. In return, methodological and additional explanations of results can be reduced.
The introductions section overally lacks in logic and is not smoothly read. Conduct proofreading and fix a logic flow. Especially give attention to the general background to the methodological part transition in the section.
In line 90, include “multiscale geographically weighted regression” for MGWR as it is first appearing
In lines 149~154, provide references separately in the reference section back.
How did you select determinants for RCL? The literature referenced [22 23 39] are from Chinese studies and I would be curious how determinants were selected from other countries or regions from the other relevant literature. Will it affect the study results and will there be any variables more (or less) that possibly affect the results?
In Table 1, Can you include some references for the factors such as socioeconomic and physical ones? If the current references are for all of these categories it will be better to make separate references for each. Also in the revised version, show Table 1 fully on one page without a cut.
Remove bold fonts for words in lines 204 and 207. They look unnecessary.
Table 2 is hard to understand especially for the Transitions column. Is there any way to improve its readability?
In the discussion section, have you considered and compared the study results over previous studies? It would be interesting if such a part (e.g., how they are similar or different) is included. In addition, the numbering at the beginning of each paragraph looks unnecessary.
Consider moving subsection 4.3 to the 5 conclusions section and put it where appropriate.
Some parts of the text are not smooth and minor grammatical issues have been found. Consider checking the overall text and English proofreading.
Author Response
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We appreciate your consideration and time.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
