Evaluation of Biodiversity Maintenance Capacity in Forest Landscapes: A Case Study in Beijing, China
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments to the paper entitled:
“What factors affect the biodiversity maintenance capacity of forest landscapes, and how, from a landscape pattern perspective?”
The manuscript represents an interesting contribution on the biodiversity maintenance capacity (BMC), evaluated in a megacity as Beijing, China. This study includes two temporal horizons (2005 and 2020) and four typical landscape patterns indices and could be an interesting paper about the urban biodiversity and forest landscapes. This contribution could have implications for urban biodiversity conservation strategies and support sustainable development of urban forest landscapes. I recommend that this paper deserves be published in the journal Land with several corrections.
Several details and comments are necessary to attend by authors along the manuscript, especially in the References section, because many edition work according to the journal format is necessary. For guidance to authors, pages and lines are cited and all these are detailed below:
I suggest that the paper title must be modified. A proposal is “Evaluation of biodiversity maintenance capacity in forest landscapes: A case study in Beijing, China” or something like this.
Page 1, line 13. Please write “the biodiversity maintenance capacity (BMC)”
Page 1, line 14. Please write “For this” rather than “Then”
Page 1, line 17. Please write correctly “landscapes”
Page 1, line 26. Please write “four” rather than “4”
Page 1, line 37. Please write “Currently” rather than “Presently”
Page 2, line 48. Please write “carbon sequestration” rather than only “carbon”
Page 2, line 52. Please write “previous” rather than “existing”
Page 2, lines 52-53. Please add two or three references related with this asseveration.
Page 2, line 59. Please write “biodiversity conservation” rather than only “biodiversity”
Page 2, line 61. Please write “wide” rather than “ample”
Page 2, lines 65-66. Please delete years and only write the corresponding number of reference according to the journal format.
Page 2, line 84. Please write “Previous studies” rather than only “Studies”
Page 2, line 96. Please write “variable” rather than “variables”
Page 4, line 142. Please write “Beijing is located” rather than “Beijing, situated”
Page 4, line 143. Please write “and presents” rather than “features”
Page 5, line 186. Please add a space between words “determined” and “using”
Page 5, lines 193-197. Please delete authors and years and only write the corresponding numbers of each reference according to the journal format.
Page 5, line 216. Please delete authors and years and only write the corresponding numbers of each reference according to the journal format.
Page 5, line 218. Please write “formula” rather than “formulas”
Page 6, line 227. Please check the font of “ry”
Page 6, line 234. Please check the font of “drmax”
Page 6, line 242. Please delete the point after the word “diversity”
Page 6, line 245. Please delete authors and year and only write the corresponding number of reference according to the journal format.
Page 12, lines 423-425. I consider that the authors must include a map of nature reserves and national forest parks located at Beijing, because this map may be useful in this context and support the information of these lines. Also, this map can be combined with the Districts in the city of Beijing.
Page 14, line 471. Please delete the word “dramatic”, because the authors established that “large-scale ecological planning efforts and policy interventions . . ., enhancing the overall BMC” in the lines 493-495. Also see lines 508-511.
Page 15, lines 499-501 and 508-511. I consider that these results in the city of Beijing are amazing, considering that in many countries, especially in Latin America, the urbanized and cultivated land has been increasing in the last decades. I consider that this result must be highlighted and contrasted with studies carried out in Latin American countries where natural landscapes have been changed to urbanized and cultivated land. Also, can be contrasted with the study of Han et al. (2019) (reference 29 cited by authors) carried out in Seoul, Korea, also located in Asia.
Page 15, lines 518. In contrast to forest landscapes water bodies show a reduction and this must be discussed by the authors.
Page 16, lines 540-541. Please delete years and only write the corresponding number of reference according to the journal format.
Page 16, line 565. Please write “mechanisms of change” rather than “mechanism of the change”
Page 16, line 566. Please write “patterns” rather than “pattern”
Page 16, line 569. Please add other references here, after “previous studies”
Page 16, line 573. Please write “Beijing’s” rather than “those”
Page 16, line 573. Please write “Our” rather than “The”
Page 17, line 623. Please delete authors and year and only write the corresponding number of reference according to the journal format.
The References section needs many edition work according to the journal format. In the Instructions for Authors section of Land journal is cited for example that journal articles must include “Abbreviated Journal Name Year”
In the References section please delete “amp;” between authors name’s in the lines 675, 681, 684, 689, 699, 701, 703, 713, 719, 771, 776 and so on.
In the References section please delete “amp;” in the journal’s name’s in the lines 723 and 777.
Author Response
Please see the attachment. We would like to express our sincere gratitude to you for the valuable time and efforts dedicated to the review of our manuscript. We have carefully considered the comments and suggestions provided, and we are pleased to submit our point-by-point response. Please find attached the detailed response to the comment in a separate document (PDF). We have addressed each comment individually and have provided a clear explanation of the revisions made in the revised manuscript. We believe that these revisions have significantly improved the quality and clarity of our research. We look forward to receiving the final decision on our revised manuscript.Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Some specific changes are as follows:
1. Lines 121-126 “Beijing is one of the cities with the fastest socio-economic development in China…which have achieved remarkable benefits in forest planning and biodiversity conservation.”
It is recommended to add the necessity of choosing Beijing as the study area.
2. Line 150 “First, the land use data for the year 2020...”
Please add the source of the 2005 data.
3. Line 171
Figure 2 is too poorly readable.
4. Line 186 “See Table S1 and Figure S1 in the supporting document for the evaluation process”
I did not find Table S1 and Figure S1 in the supplementary files. The only files available are some information on four people. Please check the supplementary files and provide the right files.
5.Lines 189-190 “where CS is the standardized carbon sink value of each grid unit and HQ is the standardized habitat quality value of each grid unit”
Please add the specific calculation for standardization.
6. Line197 “utilizing Equations (2)–(4)”, Line 186 “…carbon sink were determinedusing Eq. (1)”
The description of the formulae is recommended to be consistent with Line 186. Please check the words for spelling errors.
7.Lines 206-207 “The SOC value, based on the findings of Xu et al. (2019), is determined to be 4.12 kgC/m2.”
It is important to explain the source of the 4.12 values in the references. Because I did not find the corresponding value in the R8 region in Table 3 of the reference.
8.Line 242 “See Table S2 in the supporting document for landscape…”
There is no Table S2 in the supplementary files.
9. Line 363
The readability of Figure 4 is poor. 300dpi is recommended. This problem is present in all images.
10. Line 435
Please add the meaning of the grey, white and black lines in Figures 7 and 8.
11. Lines 484-485 “Note: IJI, intermixing and juxtaposition index; CONNECT, connectance index; PRD, patch richness 484 density; CIRCLE_MN, mean of the related circumscribing circle.”
Abbreviations of words do not need to be explained more than once. It is sufficient to indicate where it first appears in the manuscript.
12. Lines 524-561 “4.2. Driving mechanism of landscape pattern on the BMC of forest landscapes”
This study yielded many interesting results. However, the discussion in section 4.2 is slightly brief. It is recommended that an in-depth analysis of the study results be added in section 4.2.
13. Lines 536-569 “The BMC of forest landscapes reflects the ecological function and biodiversity of that ……The significance of overall landscape patterns in forest planning and biodiversity 568 conservation has been overlooked in previous studies[31].”
These explanations of terminology and gaps in existing research should be expressed in the introduction. These should not appear in the conclusion.
Please double check for spelling errors.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
We would like to express our sincere gratitude to you for the valuable time and efforts dedicated to the review of our manuscript. We have carefully considered the comments and suggestions provided, and we are pleased to submit our point-by-point response.
Please find attached the detailed response to the comment in a separate document (PDF). We have addressed each comment individually and have provided a clear explanation of the revisions made in the revised manuscript. We believe that these revisions have significantly improved the quality and clarity of our research.
We look forward to receiving the final decision on our revised manuscript.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
No additional comments.
