Impacts of Land Use and Land Cover Changes on Migration and Food Security of North Central Region, Nigeria

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This article conducted a comprehensive analysis about the impacts of LULC in Nigeria. However, the writing quality needs improvements. Here are some comments.

[1] Extensive language editing is needed for the whole article for the format and text. A further review by authors should be done before submission.

[2] In Abstract “Our household survey, stakeholders’ meeting and the interviews showed that there is a continuous…”, “is” after “there” should be“was”.

[3] In Keywords, I don’t think “remote sensing; household survey; stakeholders’ meetings; FGD; expert interviews;” and “West Africa” are needed.

[4] I think the structure of this paper could be included in Introduction.

[5] Keep the same format for all section titles.

[6] In Page 6, delete “ADP: Agricultural Development Project” “LGA: Local Government Area” before “2.3 Data Analysis” because they have shown in Table 1.

[7] Make Table 1 clear as Table 2.

[8] Align “2.3 Data Analysis” left.

[9] In Page 8, what happens to “3.1   .Accuracy assessment of LULC classification”?

[10] In Page 8, where is “Tables 2a-b”?

[11] In Page 9, why is the page almost blank?

[12] Table 4 could look better in another way. First of all, make it clear. And I think “+” and “-“ could release “Increase” and “Decrease”.

[13] In Page 12-13, where is Figure 5 a-b, Figure 6 a-b and Figure 7 a-b? Where is the text for Figure 2 a-b, Figure 3 a-b and Figure 4 a-b?

[14] I suggest format revisions for the figures and tables which include more than one figure or table. One figure/table title is needed if showing the same thing with different regions or categories. The use “a””b””c”… tec for each region or category.

[15] In Page 17 Table 5, “. Source: Fieldwork 2021” could be shown below the table.

Author Response

English language and writing style of the article have been greatly improved upon.

 

Grammatical blunders in the Abstract have been corrected.

 

Key Words have been rewritten based on the recommendation of the reviewer.

 

Formatting of Figures and Tables has been done based on the recommendation of the reviewer.

 

Alignment of Figures and Tables has been done where necessary based on the recommendation of the reviewer.

 

 

The whole article has been greatly improved upon.

 

 

Thank you.

Reviewer 2 Report

My major comment on this study is that the authors tried to analyze too many variables which made the whole result/conclusion less interpretable/weak. I suggest authors look at a few key parameters. Also, the writing style should be heavily improved for journal publication. See attached comments.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

The English language and writing style have been greatly improved upon.

 

The Abstract have been improved upon for more clarity based on the recommendation of the reviewer

 

More details have been added to the second paragraph of the Introduction for more clarity.

 

The whole article has been greatly improved upon.

 

Thank you.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The second version still doesn’t look ready for publication. The low writing quality can be seen in the whole paper. For example, poor formatting, wrong section numbers, improper titles for figures and tables, lack of necessary texts for the introduction, methodology and results. Some comments are shown below.

 

[1] I still don’t think the title looks good. There are many drivers for migration and food security. However, this paper discussed the impacts of land use and land cover, no other drivers were discussed together. Please choose a specific title for this paper.

[2] In Keywords, why are there three “;” after “farmers”. Deleted “West Africa”. Add “impacts” after “LULC”.

[3] In Abstract, there needs a sentence to connect the LULC analysis and household survey. Why are these two analysis conducted in this paper?

[4] In Introduction “In developing countries, the impact of climate-related disasters on agricultural sectors added up to about one quarter of the total loss and damage caused by climate change. These impacts increase the risks of food insecurity and increase migration around the world [4].”, I don’t think it is needed here. Delete it.

[5] In the third line in Page 2 “Presently, over 800 million people majority of whom are smallholder farmers who depend on agriculture to fend for themselves and their families sleep every night with empty stomach [7].”, this sentence is hard to understand. Make it simple.

[6] In the last paragraph in Introduction, it should be clear in Introduction that 1) what have been done and what haven’t been done in others’ studies, 2) what new idea, new method or results would be shown in this paper, and 3) the structure of this paper.

[7] Keep the same format for every title. For example, delete extra spaces in most section titles and extra “.” In section title for 2.2.1.

[8] In Section 2, please add some texts for the reason of choosing a mixed method approach in this paper.

[9] I suggest adding some more texts for migration data and crop yields.

[10] Where is Table 1?

[11] In the end of Page 7 “Description of the Extent of Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) in the Study Area”, what is this sentence used for?

[12] In the last paragraph in Page 8, I don’t think the titles for Figure 2a-b, Figure 3a-b and Figure 4a-b” look good. Usually we use a general title for a figure and continue with what is shown in Figure “a” and Figure ”b” . The same comment for Figure 5a-c.

[13] Where is the title for Section 3.3 in Page 12?

[14] In Page 15 “3.1.2 Household survey”, I don’t think the section number is correct since Section 3.3.2 has appeared in Page 12.

[15] All results should be shown clearly in Conclusion and continue with related recommendations.

[16] The writing quality needs significant improvements. Current version looks far away for publication.

[17] It is better to show all revisions with different colors for review.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

I recommend for publication

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 3

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors responded quickly to previous comments. But most of the previous comments haven’t been well addressed in the latest revised version. The authors insisted on their original version without any new revisions. Most of the authors’ replies can’t be accepted. Therefore, the quality of this paper is still far away for publication. I would suggest the authors spending some time to learn the writing for scientific papers. Here are some important comments that haven’t been well addressed by the authors.

[1] The title does not look good for this paper. Choose a proper title for this paper.

[2] In Abstract, there needs some texts to connect the LULC analysis and household survey to show the reason why this paper conducted two analysis.

[3] In Introduction “In developing countries, the impact of climate-related disasters on agricultural sectors added up to about one quarter of the total loss and damage caused by climate change. These impacts increase the risks of food insecurity and increase migration around the world [4].”, I don’t think it is needed here. The reason is the beginning of this paper has discussed the relationship of climate change, agriculture and LULC. No need to discuss it for developing countries. If the authors’ insisted to keep it, why was the relationship for developed countries not discussed as well?  

[4] In the third line in Page 2 “Presently, over 800 million people who are majorly smallholder farmers who depend on agriculture as the source of livelihood for themselves and their families sleep every night with empty stomach [7] “, this sentence is still hard to understand. It could be like “over 800 million people who are majorly smallholder farmers and depend on agriculture as the source of livelihood for themselves and their families, sleep every night with empty stomach”.

[5] In the last paragraph in Introduction, it should be clear in Introduction that 1) what have been done and what haven’t been done in others’ studies, 2) what new idea, new method or results would be shown in this paper, and 3) the structure of this paper.

[6] Keep the same format for every title. For example, section 2.2.1 and section 2.2.2 have different formats. The same case for the formats of section 3.3.1 and section 3.3.2. Such cases can be seen in the whole paper.

[7] In Section 2, please add some texts for the reason of choosing a mixed method approach in this paper.

[8] I suggest adding some more texts for migration data and crop yields.

[9] In the end of Page 7 “Description of the Extent of Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) in the Study Area”, what is this sentence used for? Why was it in a separate line? Is it a subtitle?

[10] In the last paragraph in Page 8, I don’t think the titles for Figure 2a-b, Figure 3a-b and Figure 4a-b” look good. Usually we use a general title for a figure and continue with what is shown in Figure “a” and Figure “b”. The same comment for Figure 5a-c.

[11] All results should be shown clearly in Conclusion and continue with related recommendations.

[12] The writing quality needs significant improvements. Current version looks far away for publication.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx