On Farmland and Floodplains—Modeling Urban Growth Impacts Based on Global Population Scenarios in Pune, India

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript proposes a CitySCAPE model for simulating urbanization scenarios in Pune, India. Generally, it describes the approaches and case study clearly and precisely. Nevertheless, it has the potential to be further improved before formal acceptance.

 

Line 31. Please provide the complete spelling of 'ibid'.

 

Section 2.1

It is recommended to modify Figure 1 by adding more details.

 

Section 2.2

Please consider including a table that provides the names and sources of datasets in the case study.

 

Line 188 'At the core of CitySCAPE'

'As the core of CitySCAPE' is more appropriate here.

 

Lines 213-214 'transportation infrastructure (roads, railway, and metro stations)' and 231 'Transportation infrastructure (roads and railway stations)'

Please ensure consistency in the definition of 'transportation infrastructure.'

 

Line 262 'In addition, visual checks guide calibration.'

Please clarify this sentence.

 

Section 4

It is recommended to move the future work section (from Line 494) to the Conclusion Section.

 

Finally, the entire manuscript has three forms of 'CityScape': CitySCAPE, CitySCAPE (in italics, Line 94), and CityScape (Line 410). Please ensure the consistency.

(Already attached in Comments and Suggestions)

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

1.This study highlights the impacts future urban growth on farmland and flood risk. However, in the section of introduction, more attention was put to methodologies on urban growth simulation and population projection, while the impacts future urban growth on farmland and flood risk were rarely introduced. Therefore, I suggest authors to discuss more about the above topic.

2.Existing literature review in the section of introduction is also too weak.

3.I have a major question on future urban growth that whether authors should consider the areas within the blue and red flood lines as excluded areas in the process of suitability estimation. Generally speaking, due to the representativeness of flood risk in study area, urban expansion should be kept away from areas with high disaster risk in the urban land simulation. In this regard, future urban built-up area and residents will be less affected by flood risk. This may be contradictory to the finding in this study (line 424-432). However, flood risk was simply measured with 1-km buffer corridor to compared with simulated future land, rather than considered as important factor in future urban simulation. Please explain it.

4.Authors’ name in references 19, 40, 42 should be checked and revised.

English Language of this paper  is qualified to be published. Minor editing of English language is OK.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

All issues have been cracked. This paper now is appropriate to be published in this journal.

All issues have been cracked. This paper now is appropriate to be published in this journal.