Eco–Environmental Effects of “Production–Living–Ecological” Space Land Use Changes and Recommendations for Ecological Restoration: A Case Study of the Weibei Dryland in Shaanxi Province

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Please correct duplicated tables marked in yellow.  Please, I would like to understand what ecological lands mean, its state of naturalness and integrity. Since author never refer something more detailed like floristic composition in some of the cases.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you very much for your review of my manuscript. According to your valuable suggestions, I have carefully revised them and presented them in revised mode in the manuscript. Now I will explain the specific modification part one by one.

Point 1: Please correct duplicated tables marked in yellow.

Response 1: I'm sorry that I made a careless mistake when using word template for formatting editing. I have corrected this error and edited the correct table 4 in the article, which is reflected in lines 250-252 of the manuscript. Thank you again for pointing out this mistake to me. I should learn from you and learn from your rigorous academic attitude.

Point 2: I would like to understand what ecological lands mean, its state of naturalness and integrity. Since author never refer something more detailed like floristic composition in some of the cases.

Response 2: I'm sorry for the confusion caused by the lack of something more detailed in the article. When classifying different land types, I mainly refer to the current mainstream classification methods, and divide many original land types into 3 categories and 8 subcategories, and also give a brief description of the detailed land types, which are elaborated in Table 1 of Line 129-130 of the manuscript. Ecological lands mainly contain forest ecological land(open woodland, woodland, shrubland, other woodland), pasture ecological land(high, medium and low coverage grassland), water ecological land(canal, lake, reservoir pond, permanent glacier snow, coast, shoaly land) and other ecological land (sandy land, Gobi, saline-alkali land, marsh land, bare land, bare rock gravel). Due to the limited space of this article, I did not refer something more detailed like floristic composition in some of the cases. This suggestion will become the focus and direction of our future research. I hope we can get your understanding and tolerance.

Thank you again for your valuable advice. I wish you all the best.

Reviewer 2 Report

The content of this article is interest. The manuscript may be to publish in the journal.

I have a some remarks. 

Mathematical designations aren't standard. I don't understand the formula (2). If it is matrix that the standard designation is different.

Table 4 is copy of table 3. 

These small mistakes must be corrected.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you very much for your review of my manuscript. According to your valuable suggestions, I have carefully revised them and presented them in revised mode in the manuscript. Now I will explain the specific modification part one by one.

Point 1: Mathematical designations aren't standard. I don't understand the formula (2). If it is matrix that the standard designation is different.

Response 1: Based on the non-standard expression of formula (2), I have modified and improved it. It is indeed the transfer matrix formula, which is presented in lines 144-147 of the manuscript.

Point 2: Table 4 is copy of table 3.

Response 2: I'm sorry that I made a careless mistake when using word template for formatting editing. I have corrected this error and edited the correct table 4 in the article, which is reflected in lines 250-252 of the manuscript. Thank you again for pointing out this mistake to me. I should learn from you and learn from your rigorous academic attitude.

Thank you again for your valuable suggestions. I wish you all the best.

Reviewer 3 Report

It may be worthwhile to consider replacing the Kappa index with another accuracy metric, such as producer/user accuracy. Pontius & Milones (2011) argue that the Kappa index focuses on explaining how randomness accounts for part of the observed accuracy, rather than on identifying disagreements and attempting to explain errors (Pontius, R. G.; Millones, M. "Death to Kappa: birth of quantity disagreement and allocation disagreement for accuracy assessment." International Journal of Remote Sensing, 32(15): 4407-4429, 2011). Therefore, it is more useful to shift the focus to disagreement analysis, which can provide a better understanding of the sources of errors in accuracy assessment.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you very much for your review of my manuscript. According to your valuable suggestions, I have carefully revised them and presented them in revised mode in the manuscript. Now I will explain the specific modification part.

Point: It may be worthwhile to consider replacing the Kappa index with another accuracy metric, such as producer/user accuracy.

Response: Thank you very much for your valuable suggestion. I have verified the accuracy of the land use classification data used in the manuscript according to your suggestion. And the corresponding content in the manuscript has been revised (lines 116-124).

Thank you again for your valuable advice. I wish you all the best.

Reviewer 4 Report

Very interesting and useful  paper. It can be used as a tool for the preparation of a strategic  plan of the research area.

I disagree with the evaluation according to Environmental  Quality  Index (EQI) used in the Table 1,  for the subcategories:

OEL=0,015

IML=0,166 and

ULL=0,200

I believe  that the OEL subcategory, is most important from  environmental point  of view, in comparison  with the IML and ULL subcategories.

Also I would like to underline the need for a justification of the land use changes in the research  area during the past decades and recently, connected with the applied policy in every time period and the parallel observed socioeconomic changes. These are very  important  informations for the better understanding of the multifactoral ecological phenomena.

Active management  using modern and classic silvicultural measures is necessary also in ecological and forestry practice, helping the acceleration  of the natural procedures.

The enrichment of bibliography  is useful and necessary. 

 

A final check of the orthography an terminology is needed.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you very much for your review of my manuscript. According to your valuable suggestions, I have carefully revised them and presented them in revised mode in the manuscript. Now I will explain the specific modification part one by one.

Point 1: I disagree with the evaluation according to Environmental Quality Index (EQI) used in the Table 1, for the subcategories: OEL=0,015, IML=0,166 and ULL=0,200. I believe that the OEL subcategory, is most important from environmental point of view, in comparison with the IML and ULL subcategories.

Response 1: As for your question, I have discussed with the teachers in the relevant research group. We think that the reasons leading to the low environmental quality index of OEL are closely related to the geographical location, climatic characteristics and ecological environment of the study area. Because the Weibei dryland is located in the arid and semi-arid region of western China, the regional ecological environment is very fragile. Based on the specific situation of the research area, the OEL in the manuscript mainly includes sandy ground, Gobi, marsh land, bare land, gravelly land, etc. These areas often face a number of environmental problems (including water scarcity, land degradation, ecosystem imbalances, etc.) which can negatively affect environmental quality, resulting in a low environmental quality index. Among them, sandy ground and bare land areas are usually poor in environmental conditions, due to the lack of water and vegetation coverage, barren land, water shortage and other serious problems, so the environmental quality index of these areas is usually low. In addition, these areas also face other problems, such as land desertification and soil erosion, which will further deteriorate the quality of the environment. In addition, in the process of writing the manuscript, I deliberately compared the previous research results (references [7], [29], [31]) and found that the EQI of the OEL in the arid region of Northwest China, Shaanxi Province, Yan’ an City and other regions were all lower than 0.02. Therefore, It can be inferred that the environmental quality index of other ecological land in Weibei upland area may be really low.

We hope our explanation can get your understanding and recognition, thank you very much.

Point 2: Also, I would like to underline the need for a justification of the land use changes in the research area during the past decades and recently, connected with the applied policy in every time period and the parallel observed socioeconomic changes. These are very important informations for the better understanding of the multifactorial ecological phenomena.

Response 2: I fully appreciate your suggestion. In the process of writing the manuscript, I briefly elaborated the causes of land use change in different periods, they are mainly in lines 181-191, 243-251 and 264-275 of the manuscript. Such as lines 181-191: This result indicated that in the early stages of reform and opening up, due to the impact of the national policy of rapidly growing the social economy, the change in the PLES land use structure within the research region primarily involved the ongoing growth of production and living land as well as the extensive occupancy of ecological land. Conversely, the expansion of living and ecological land was equivalent to the area reduction in production land during the last 20 years. This result demonstrated that with the advancement of the western development strategy and the promotion of the concept of ecologically oriented civilization, the structural change in PLES land use in the Weibei dryland showed a trend of increasing living land and the gradual recovery of ecological land since the 21st century. This change was primarily caused by the occupation of production land by ecological land and living land. Lines 243-251: In summary, the transformation of the PLES structure was related to the relevant regional development policies and measures. On the one hand, after the western development plan was put into practice, the scale of urban and rural construction land in the Weibei dryland expanded more rapidly than before, and the urbanization process accelerated. On the other hand, with the implementation of the concept of ecologically oriented civilizations and the ongoing promotion of the strategy of converting farmland to grassland and forests, the encroachment on ecological land in the study area was contained, and the pasture and forest ecological land types even showed a significant increase. Lines 264-275: In terms of the periodic variations in the eco-environmental quality, activities such as deforestation and grassland destruction led to a sharp reduction in ecological land and continuous expansion of agricultural production land during 1980 and 2000 in the Weibei dryland (Table 3). This led to a decrease in the regional EQI from 0.4295 in 1980 to 0.4288 in 2000 (a decrease of 0.07%), and the eco-environmental quality in the Weibei dryland slightly deteriorated during this period. Between 2000 and 2020, affected by the strategy of converting farmland to grassland and forests as well as the creation of regional ecologically oriented communities, the agricultural production land decreased greatly, and the ecological land increased significantly (Table 4). Consequently, the EQI increased from 0.4288 in 2000 to 0.4365 in 2020 (an increase of 0.77%), which proved that the eco-environmental quality of the Weibei dryland greatly improved during this period. 

These reasons may not be detailed, and it is necessary to conduct a detailed analysis of the factors causing land use change in the future research.

Thank you again for your valuable suggestions. I wish you all the best.