Spatiotemporal Variation of Rural Vulnerability and Its Clustering Model in Guizhou Province

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

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Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Very well written

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript focuses on rural vulnerability issues, which is an important and highly focused topic. There are some suggestions for authors to improve the manuscript.

1. It is recommended that the author provide a more detailed explanation of the basis and meaning for selecting indicators.

2. For the Sensitivity indicators, why not conside the influence of natural disasters, which is probablely an important indicator.

3. The weight calculation methods of indicators are commonly used, and a brief introduction is sufficient.

4. In the conclusion and discussion section, the readers are more concerned about the theoretical and policy implications of the evaluation results. It should add the relevant content.

Language expression can be more refined.

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

The authors approach vulnerability according to the three basic components: exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity, the three components that are the key in determining a system's vulnerability to climate change according to the IPCC (2007). This approach was frequently used in literature by the European Environmental Agency Reports (EEA, 2012, 2018, 2020) and Swart et al., 2012, then adapted to multi-scale approaches on climate change-related vulnerability assessments. I would list here some representative bibliographic titles that are not mentioned by the authors in the manuscript and that deserve to be cited. They also use indicator-based approach and provide illustrative and valuable case studies at various spatial scales in various areas: Yusuf and Francisco, 2009, Huynh et al., 2020, Senapati, Gupta, 2017, Zhang et al., 2018, Grigorescu et al., 2021 etc.

 

Yusuf, A.A. and Francisco, H. (2009), Climate change vulnerability mapping for Southeast Asia, EEPSEA Special and Technical Paper tp200901s1, Economy and Environment Program for Southeast Asia (EEPSEA).

Huynh, H.L.T., Do, A.T. and Dao, T.M. (2020), Climate change vulnerability assessment for Can Tho city by a set of indicators, International Journal of Climate Change Strategies and Management, Vol. 12 No. 1, pp. 147-158. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCCSM-01-2018-0003

EEA (2018), National climate change vulnerability and risk assessments in Europe, Report 1/2018, Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union, 2018

EEA (2020), Urban adaptation in Europe: how cities and towns respond to climate change, European Environment Agency, 186 pp.

Swart, R., Fons, J., Geertsema, W., van Hove, B., Gregor, M., Havranek, M., ... & UoM, U. P. M. (2012). Urban vulnerability indicators. A joint report of ETC-CCA and ETC-SIA. Copenhagen: ETC-CCA and ETC-SIA Technical Report, 1, 2012.

Senapati, S., & Gupta, V. (2017). Socio-economic vulnerability due to climate change: Deriving indicators for fishing communities in Mumbai. Marine Policy, 76, 90-97.

Zhang, W., McManus, P., & Duncan, E. (2018). A raster-based subdividing indicator to map urban heat vulnerability: A case study in Sydney, Australia. International journal of environmental research and public health, 15(11), 2516.

Grigorescu, I., Mocanu, I., Mitrică, B., Dumitraşcu, M., Dumitrică, C., & Dragotă, C. S. (2021). Socio-economic and environmental vulnerability to heat-related phenomena in Bucharest metropolitan area. Environmental Research, 192, 110268.

 

The Abstract should indicate some specific results and some areas where exposure, sensitivity or adaptive capacity are high or low.

I think the authors should check more literature to better frame the exposure and sensitivity indicators. For instance, air pollution or fertilizer application intensity can rather be included in the sensitivity category than the exposure as they are enhancing the systems sensitivity.

In my opinion, the authors should rethink the framing of the indicators in order to have a more accurate picture of rural vulnerability. 

In the vulnerability analysis, it is important to understand the vulnerability to what. Even if we talk about rural vulnerability, in general, it would be useful to understand that the indicators can be broken down and can be different depending on the object of vulnerability (e.g., climate change, poverty).

 

The English language requires minor corrections.

Author Response

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Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

In general, the authors took into account the recommendations and suggestions made in order to improve the manuscript.

However, a minor revision of the use of the terms is still necessary. For example, at the Study area section "In some areas, rocky desertification is serious". What do the authors mean by "serious"? They could use instead "significant", "major", etc. depending on the initial meaning of the term.

 

We kindly ask the authors to read the manuscript once more and, if possible, to slightly revise the English.

Author Response

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