Optimizing Urban Green Spaces for Air Quality Improvement: A Multiscale Land Use/Land Cover Synergy Practical Framework in Wuhan, China
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsGeneral comment:
The paper is very well written and presented, providing a strong justification for the study aim along with relevant references. The design of the study, as well as the results, are clearly described. The paper also presents practical implications. There are, though, some aspects that should be clarified, as noted below.
Specific comments:
- the study investigates statistical relationships between the variables considered, without addressing the physical bases behind them (e.g., what might be the mechanisms behind the spatially variable efficiency of UGS as PM2.5 mitigator? (lines 617-618); stronger influence appears from the analysis at 1-2km, ‘modifying UGS extent could variably reduce PM2.5 pollution’-line 639); what might be role of changes in pollution sources location and/or emission ?). While there is a mention related to this in the ‘limitations’ category, this aspect should be clearly indicated in the methodology at least.
- some more detailed about the PM2.5 dataset would be needed to clarify this part (e.g., what satellite-based data is used? The predictive and validation values (lines 170-171) where do they come from? Is it the same dataset used in the cited papers (lines 167-169) or just the methodology to derive it is similar?)
-lines 466-428 -a phrase is repeated.
Author Response
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Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsGeneral Comments
Since the value for the Bandwidths is one of the tools for explaining results emerging from the analysis, this concept should be more explained (maybe in L. 270 where this issue is commented, or incorporate some reference). Please, revise it.
Specific Comments
Abstract:
L. 24 OLS and GWR were not previously defined in the abstract. Please, revise it.
Introduction:
L. 120 “to / from” while in other lines it is written “to/from”. Please, revise it.
L. 123 “UGS” previously defined in L. 52. Please, revise it.
Study area and data processing:
L. 143 It should be written “LULC” instead of “Lucc”. Please, revise it.
L. 154 It is written “UGS, construction land, water, or bare land” but later in Figure 2 it is written “green space, buildings, waters, bare land”. Please, revise it and homogenize the nomenclature along the manuscript (‘construction’ seems to be the main nomenclature in the manuscript). Same for the nomenclature “bare ground” and “bare land” (see L. 310 – 311, L. 314, L. 315).
L. 156 Indicate (Section 3.2) when writing ‘confusion matrix’ since in that section it is explained the concept ‘confusion matrix’.
L. 162 Please, revise “extratrees” since in the literature this model is named whether “Space-time Extremely Randomized Trees” or “Space-Time Extra-Trees”.
L. 169 Revise the subscript in “PM2.5”. Also in L. 222.
Methodology:
L. 228 – 232 This sentence is not clear enough since it should be mentioned that is referred to the increment defined by Equation 5. Please, revise it.
L. 291 It is written “MGWR 2.2, introduced in 2020”, so a reference should be included where that model was ‘introduced in 2020’.
Results:
L. 324 In L. 241 ‘z’ is indicated with capital letter. Please, revise it.
L. 349 It should be clarified the meaning of “third and fourth ring roads”.
L. 429 – 432 This result is not clear enough when the value of 70 % is revised in Table 2 since values over 0.7 can be found in that Table 2. Please, clarify this sentence.
L. 432 Please revise the subscript in “R2”.
L. 440 Please revise “2015-020”.
Discussion:
L. 535 Please revise if the reference related to Bi et al. is “2022a” or “2022b”.
L. 598 The reference “Zeng et al. (2018)” is not included in the References section. Please, revise it.
In this section it is used “|LRC|” while in previous sections it was only mentioned “LRC”. It should be explained why in this section the absolute value is used.
Conclusion:
L. 617 – 618 Please revise if the sentence “variable spatial variable properties” is correct.
FIGURES and TABLES
Figure 2: legend in graph ‘f’ is not clear enough since colours seem to be related to landuse, as seen in previous graphs, not to km2.
Figure 3: red contours are not explained for this graph but they are explained later in Figure 8. Please, revise it. Moreover, graph ‘g’ from this Figure is not explained in the manuscript and it could be interesting a light explanation. The axes name “(ug/m3)-5000/10000” is not well explained or the graph itself. Also, the symbol ‘micra’ should be used instead ‘u’.
Figure 6 (b and c): a little bit more explanation regarding these graphs should be included in the manuscript.
Figure 7: the caption of this figure is the only one finishing with ‘.’. Please, revise it.
Figure 8: the fourth graph in this figure is missing the stage name (2015-2020). Please, revise it. And in the last graph, since the stage is the same for all graphs (2000-2005) the colours should be explained to which they are related. Please, revise it.
Figure 9: colours in bar graph in this figure should be explained.
Tables: all the presented values in the tables should have the same decimals and format. See Table 1 (some values with two decimals and the rest presenting three decimal). See Table 2 (“300.000” in the Bandwidth value for the 2005-2010 stage). Please, revise it for all tables.
Table 3: “Scales” instead of “Scals”. Please, revise it.
REFERENCES
Some references include “…” instead of the whole authors name, and that should be revised. See L. 695, L. 721, etc.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsGeneral
The paper seeks air quality improvement within urban areas implementing OLS (Ordinary Least Squares), GWR (Geographic Weighted Regression), and MGWR (Multi-scale Geographically Weighted Regression). It is a well needed subject for the areas where air quality is significantly degraded. However, the authors need to illustrate the purpose and research questions clearly (if necessary, use some illustrations). Moreover, the article needs to clearly state novelty of the study at the end.
some detailed points could be made as follows:
About structure of the article
- Line 101-104: Please suggest more reasonable rationale why you chose Wuhan as a research area. Not just because it has extensive research in a research field, it needs more specific and detailed reason.
- Line 107-124: when you add your research questions as an image version too, it might have more power of explanation and raise readers’ understanding point. It can be shown as a preview of research flow.
- Line 125: How about join “2. Study area and data processing” to a subclassification of “Methodology”? Cause you are presenting some data sources in 2.2, It can be sorted into a method part.
Tables and illustrations
- Line 180: When you suggest sub-title of each a-h in Figure 3, It becomes more interpretative what each map represents about.
- Line 321: Because there are quantities of maps in one figure, to improve visibility, I recommend you to make some groups and mark outlines. Also, when you remove area names in each map, it might become high-visibility information.
- Line 339: for clarification, carefully use the color codes legends in (b) and (c). When you make more spaces among legend’s subcategories and mark some outlines of each chart, it can be shown as more recognisable chart.
- Line 496: In figure 9, please make some boxes (outlines) of related groups. It can be sorted into chronological order. Also, please check some overlapping issues between maps and words (especially, “Legend”). Additionally, the nethermost left map is cut.
Some typos
- Line 143, 205, 206, 300, 301, 621, 623: Please check the term if it is LULC or LUCC. Or please suggest the exact terminology of LUCC first, and then use LUCC as an abbreviation.
- Line 150, 153, 156, 158, 178, 303: I cannot find where these Tables and Figures are. Please check Table S1, S2 a-d & Figure S1a-f, S2.
- Line 196: In the bottom of figure 4, Please check spacing and grammatical error (‘Local regression coefficients^between-“, “2) Multi-dimensional optimization strategies to reduce PM2.5 based on the framework”).
- Line 222: Please rewrite PM2.5 as a subscripts.
- Line 259: Please check the spell “-conversion area (h㎡) between-“.
- Line 26, 77, 110, 616, 628: Please correct the words “analyses(verb)” to “analysis(noun)”.
About references
- Line 55-59: When you divide the references into clauses unit, it might be clearer to understand which subject is matching to which reference.
- Line 93: It can be more evident when you add more supportive references of MGWR analysis’s advantages.
- Line 269: Please suggest more preceding papers explaining why GWR is effective at revealing spatial heterogeneity relationships between variables.
Comments on the Quality of English LanguageWith some minor mistakes on typos and grammer, it is in an acceptable level of English.
Author Response
We have modified all comments to upload as attachments.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThanks for your elaborative revision. The overall structures, sentences and figures are well improved.
