Change Patterns of Desertification and Its Dominant Influencing Factors in China–Mongolia–Russia Economic Corridor Based on MODIS and Feature Space Model

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

1. Lines 57-59, Please add relevant references.

2. Lines 63-74, Change "Zeng et al …., [2]" to " Zeng et al. [11] ….", and please review the entire manuscript.

3. Please describe the innovation points of the paper in detail in the introduction section;

4. Line 109, Please add a map of the study area location in Figure 1, please refer to “https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jag.2021.102378”.

5. Line 150, Change " people's production" to “people’s production”, and please review the entire manuscript.

6. Results Section 3.1, please put the research methods and formulas in the Materials and Methods.

7. The Discussion section, which is the most important section, should be revised and strengthened to make the readers convinced.

8. Discussions, please add uncertainty and future outlook analysis.

9. The quality of English needs to improve in order to make meanings more explicitly understandable.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The quality of English needs to improve in order to make meanings more explicitly understandable.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear author, 

It was a pleasure to read this paper. Please, take a look the minor remarks!

With best,

Reviewer 2  

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Overall the aims behind this study are ok but the paper is not put together very well and there are some things missing and some things that need to be removed. Throughout, references are missing, please add these where you give information. The main issue is with the methods. You use a number of different techniques here but you do not justify WHY these are used or HOW they address the aims of the study. References are missing here. Some of the results are not clearly justified. You have the density plots but you do not explain how these are relevant or what they show. This is pretty standard stuff for a remote sensing study. There is also a LOT of repetition here, you very simply repeat exactly the same words for the 3 areas in pp 16, 17, 18, 19 and 21. Do not do this, this is unnecessary. Fig 9 and 13 should be removed. You need to explain why you see a migration in the centre of gravity Fig 14. Is this climate? This is not even mentioned in the discussion. The discussion section needs to refer to EVIDENCE, you do not do this at all. I mark detailed comments on the pdf. 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Not great, there are many areas where it is just not clear what the authors are saying, and they also use the wrong tense in many places. I have marked this on the pdf. Please REMOVE the repetition, this is just a google translate error. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article entitled "Change patterns of desertification..." authored by Wang et al. deals with the very discussed topic of desertification. The strength of the article resides from the methodological tools applied. Instead of this strength, the structure of the paper is weak and the results are not well underlined. Moreover, the authors talk about desertification, while the results consists in an assessment of arid lands (see comment 2 of Major comments). All this issues could be improved following a major revision of the manuscript. My major, specific and minor comments, when properly tackled, could be useful in this attempt.

Major comments:

1. The article is not very well organized. The title captions of the table and figure are elusive, and parts of the Methodology are mingled in the Results. This should be revised.

2. The article discuss the process of the desertification for a wide region including the entire Mongolia and large neighboring parts of China and Russia. Thus, the results of this study are discussing desertification in some large regions that are commonly known as deserts, as Gobi desert (L299-300). Therefore, how reasonable is to discuss desertification (which is the process of becoming desert) for a region that is already a dessert. In my opinion, the assessment should firstly delimitate those regions that are already deserts and the process of the desertification should be analyzed for the rest of the region that are in risk to became desserts. In fact, this is a problem of terminology. For instance, in Figure 12 we can see no trend in the process and that means no process of the desertification. Hence, the title should be „Temporal variation of arid land spatial extension during 2001-2020”. Moreover, the results shown in Figure 15 indicate that the changes in the aridity is random and actually show no trend. Therefore, no clear long-term desertification process could be discussed over the region.

3. Complex analysis, as that performed here, should lead to complex results. Instead of this, in the current study it leads to pure geographical evidence, as that indicated in L334-336 or L359-360. Please find and underline more convincing results of your study.

 

Specific comments:

L24: The discussed trend should refer to a certain period of time on which the analysis was done.

The study region should be briefly and clearly defined in the Introduction. Are the limits in Figure 1 officially established?

In section 2.2 data with different spatial resolution are mentioned as being used in the study. How these data have been resampled at the same spatial resolution?

The results in section 3.1.2 need to be described, not only presented. Also, it is not clear if the results refer to a selected year or to the entire analysis period of the study.

Subsection 3.3.1 comprises aspects of methodology and it is recommended to be moved in Methodology.

In Figure 3 the labels on each subplot need to be increased in size because in current form it is hard to read.

L285: Please rephrase. China and Russia are extended on other very different climate conditions beyond the analyzed region, thus this assumption is marginally reasonable.

The title caption of the tables (ex. Tab 2, 3) should be more informative. Please give more description of the results in the title caption.

L513: The blocking of water vapor from Arctic Ocean by Altai Mountains is pure speculation and unrealistic from the point of view of atmospheric circulation. Arctic air masses, oceanic or continental, are very poor in water content and incapable to supplement the water vapor concentration over the analyzed region.

 

Minor comments:

L27-28: The point 4 repeats basically point 1.

L34: “Feature space” – this key-word is unclear.

L38: It is not clear if the discussion is local, regional or global.

L45: “development of social and economic” looks like an unfinished sentence.

L50-51: it is not clear what “social economy” is.

L93-95: This phrase should be first in the paragraph.

L96: The past used here in “was” is not appropriate.

L179: Something is missing in this line after the semi-colons;

L182: Results would be more appropriate;

L212: “fitted”?

L275: “the monitor accuracy”? This doesn’t seem complete.

L292: based on  

L383: showed

L435: “improved desertification” sounds odd.

In Figure 15, no changes should be left blank instead of yellow. This will be easier to read.

Some odd signs occur instead of commas in section 3.3.1.

L455: “population density” is repeated.

L457: Final dot is missing.

In Figure 18 the title caption should include explanation on what represents the given values.

L551: The idea is not clear.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Meticulous checking of the grammar and English quality is needed.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript has been carefully revised in accordance with the comments and suggestions, and the presentation is more convincing in support of their findings.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I am dissatisfied with this revision. I had provided specific comments on the pdf of the paper, none of which have been addressed. The responses to reviewers document is very brief and says nothing about what the authors have done. This is not up to a required standard. 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

English needs checking.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authored struggled to respond to my comments and suggestions. The manuscript  will still benefit from a careful reading focused on English aspects.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The manuscript will still benefit from a careful reading focused on English aspects.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.doc