Exploring the Influence of Terrain Blockage on Spatiotemporal Variations in Land Surface Temperature from the Perspective of Heat Energy Redistribution

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Study raise two aspects are much described theoretically, it is suggested that Random forest approach should be more elaborate how it is useful in providing the solution of the 1) How to characterize horizontal terrain blockage in the process of heat energy redistribution, 2) What are the spatio-temporal patterns for the influence of terrain blockage on LST in mountain region.

line 66-67 Existing studies have fully discussed the relationship between traditional terrain features and LST, however terrain blockage effect has less attention, which could influence LST by hindering the redistribution of heat energy in mountain.

Please provide the references for existing studies...

Show whole methodology in flowchart with describing the steps of procedures, which will be helpful to readers to understand easily

LINE 142....DEM girds ..It should be grids

Table 1 “The framework of terrain blockage features” should be for elaborative please provide the range values of each parameters.

 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

required minor improvements in few places of the text 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This paper proposes a series of new digital terrain features, to characterize terrain blockage effect in mountain region, then explores the influence of terrain blockage on spatio-temporal variation of land surface temperature in mountain region.

In my opinion, terrain blockage does have an impact on the temperature distribution in mountainous region, which has less discussion in existing studies. Therefore, the topic of this paper is very interesting and fresh. Besides, using the data of one year, the experiment of this paper is adequate and well-displayed. The quality of this paper is good and appropriate to publish.

There are some issues about this paper that needs to be revise before publish.

1. This paper takes coefficient of determination to evaluate the result of model. However, it is represented as two forms——R-square or R2 in the paper. The authors should unify them as one form, to avoid readers’ confusion.

2. This paper discuss the importance for different types of terrain blockage features in Figure 6. Importance for different directions of terrain blockage features is also important, which is not discussed in the paper. The authors should add a figure to discuss the importance for different directions of terrain blockage features, which should be similar to Figure 6.

3. Importance of features are measured by which index of random forest model, this should also be explained in the paper.

4. In Figure 9, the authors discuss the reveal of terrain blockage features to LST diurnal variation, but it only uses R-square to evaluate the result. The authors should also use other two indices (MAE and RMSE) to evaluate the result, like Figure 5 in this paper.

5. Terrain blockage features, which are proposed by this paper, can be used in other studies of mountain region. This should be further discussed in the paper.

6. Explanations of each terrain blockage feature should be described more, and tell the readers which are local features or global features.

7. The limitations of this study should also be further discussed.

 

8. The conclusion section should be refined and highlight the innovative parts of this paper.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

In this research, the authors investigated the influence of terrain blockage on spatio-temporal variation of LST in a mountain region. The authors used the random forest model to analyze the relationship between terrain blockage features and LST.

According to my opinion, I list here my comments that I hope can assist you to improve the manuscript:

 

1.      The paper lacks clarity in certain sections, particularly in the generation of terrain blockage features and the simulation of the relationship between those features and land surface temperature. These sections could be improved for better understanding by the readers. To enhance the clarity of the paper, it would be beneficial to provide more detailed explanations of the steps involved in the framework of terrain blockage features. Clear and concise sub-sections, accompanied by the flow diagram, could aid readers in understanding the sequence of processes and their interconnections. Additionally, integrating more explanatory context and background information where necessary can help readers grasp the significance of each step in the method.

2.      Since air movement breaks the original heat balance, and the raised mountain can block horizontal air movement, I think it is essential when studying the influence of terrain blockage on the variation of land surface temperature to report wind speed and direction which can affect the surface temperature significantly.

3.      From my perspective, some fundamental issues should be examined in this research, as the authors have suggested for future study. This includes investigating elevation values in more than four cardinal directions, particularly if the area covered by a pixel is large (1000 m). Additionally, exploring the correlation between NDVI and land surface temperature is essential in this type of study.

4.      It is essential to compare the outcomes and limitations of this method with those obtained from other traditional methods. Otherwise, the effectiveness of the proposed method cannot be proven.

5.      It is suggested to explain the importance of understanding land surface temperature distribution in the context of your study. Discuss any seasonal variations in it.

6.      It is suggested to present the structure of the article at the end of the introduction.

7.      Figure 3 needs improvement because the caption does not accurately reflect the content, as some features are missing from the figure, and there are undefined symbols present.

8.      Figure 6 replace T1,T2…T5 by the features names approbations as shown in the legend.

9.      Figure 8 (c) and (f) it is preferable to show the errors in the same scale to better recognize the difference between daytime and nighttime.

10.  Figure 9: why the simulation accuracy was estimated for each five days? Why not for each day?

11.  Line 320: “maintain region” I think mountain region.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Your contribution has been clarified by your answers and the improvements made to the text.

Author Response

Thank the previous valuable comments of the reviewer. We added the content in the section of acknowledgments. We express our gratitude to the editors and anonymous reviewers for their time and effort in processing this manuscript, which has improved the quality of this manuscript obviously.