The Ideal Strategy of Carbon-Neutral for Park Landscape Design: A Proposal for a Rapid Detection Method
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsDear Authors,
Thank you for your interesting article about an investigation on the carbon footprint and resilience of different city parks of Taichung City in Taiwan.
Please address the following shortcomings:
Line 35: the article addresses city parks in Taichung, Taiwan. Information regarding CO2 emissions should be related to a similar geographic region (Taichung City, or Taiwan), where both the emission and sequestration of CO2 take place.
Line 59: please explain what NDVI stands for.
Line 72: please explain what CN stands for
Line 92: are water bodies of parks in the city of Taichung?
Line 97: please use the correct formatting for citations (here and below in the text)
Line 101: please add citation
Line 124: please add citation
Line 137: who are the scholars cited in text?
Line 158-163: This list can be removed since it is repeated more in detailed few lines below
Line 165: please include a map of the city of Taichung where you identify the parks
Line 177: which are these indicators? Please explain briefly here, and use the correct citation formatting
Line 198 and followings: it is quite hard to read through the equations. Please use the correct formatting and separate each equation by a blank line. Most important: which are the sources of the parameters in equations? To cite few: dismantling and disponing of waste, defect repair and renewal, emissions factors for fuel, etc. Since there are several parameters, I suggest to include a table where each parameter is sourced and values are provided.
Chapter 2.2: please provide more information regarding the NDVI values: what are they? How are they calculated? Please add sources and citations where applicable.
Table 1: could you explain how the weighting factors are calculated?
Table 3: what is the scale of NDVI? From 0 to 1? Can you please explain in text?
Table 4: what is a typical scale of the resilience index? How can I understand to what extent each single score is to be considered satisfactory or good in terms of resilience? How can I compare the difference between the scores of the parks? Is it necessary to show the 4th decimal figure?
Table 5: which is the metric of the figures in each column (cut and fill, etc)? How the carbon neutrality is calculated? How can it be negative for some parks?
Table 6: of I now understand that CN stands for Carbon Neutrality. However, I did not find an equation explaining its calculation.
Chapter 3.6: it would be interesting to see correlation between NDVI and CN with either tree cover or green space. Which is most effective?
Line 329: LEP area ratios were not shown in the results section. New results should not be included in the discussion, rather a “discussion” around previously presented results in relation to their significance, importance, and to the findings of other researchers in literature. I suggest restructuring the level of information given in the discussion by starting from the most detailed (e.g. section 4.4.) and ending with the most general recommendations.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe paper deals with an interesting topic regarding the investigation of parks’ mitigation potential. Despite several studies already analyzed the positive effects on outdoor comfort and in reducing heat stress, the geometrical characteristics and the vegetation mix are still under explored. The paper aims to bridge these gaps in a quite successful way. The paper is well structured, the context and background are clearly presented as well as the main objectives of the study. The methodology is logically set and punctually described. The only remark regards the explanation of the single tasks (steps) where the authors focus on describing how they are conducted without sufficiently mentioning why the steps are needed within the overall process. It is suggested to integrate the methodology section in this direction.
The results and the following discussion are consistently developed, and the findings are sufficiently supported by evidence form the proposed method. A conclusion section where the limitations and future research directions (currently 4.5 and 4.6) are expanded and discussed should be added, addressing a more general reflection on the findings and the possible replication of the process elsewhere.
Minor remarks: please enlarge figure 1 and 2 to improve their readability.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsDear authors,
thank you for revising your paper.
Please address the two following minor aspects:
Line 207: specify the year of the calculation
Line 242 and followings: which is the time horizon in years of the carbon footpint calculation? This should applies to the carbon sequestration, and to the carbon emissions from park maintenance and daily use (e.g. CFrm and CFeu).
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
