The Impact of Urban Land-Use Regimes on the Stream Vegetation and Quality of a Mediterranean City

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Manuscript title ‘’

 The impact of urban sprawl and Land use changes on the stream quality of a Mediterranean city’’

Comments:

 

1. Originality: Authors have used novel thought in their study, which is suitable for this journal.
2. Scientific Quality: Manuscript is very well structured, scientific and is written in a way that is easy to understand.
3. Relevance to the Field(s) of this Journal: The article is relevant to this journal as the aim and scopes have been matched.
4. General Comment:

The methodology is good but needs more robust information in the introduction, analysis, and discussion.

Check the English grammar. The English language is moderate. Please check all parts of the manuscript and correct grammatical errors.

Resolution of all figures should be improved.

5. Title: Well written
6. Abstract: Write the main results in abstract.
7. Introduction:

LULC change map may be generated for better understanding. For this author may visit- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pce.2022.103117 and

https:// doi.org/10.3390/su15021416

Line 66, write the full name of QBR, RMP, RQI, IHF, WQI, rPHA RHS ?

8. Methodology:

Write the more detail about your study area.

The entire methodology may be framed in a flowchart.

9.     Results:

Move the fig. 8 in results section.

10.  Discussions: Authors have presented it very well.

11. Conclusions: Where is conclusion ?? please write the conclusion.
12. References / Bibliography: All fine

 

 

 

 

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Manuscript Number: hydrology-2180532

General Comments: I would like to thank the editor of Hydrology for providing me with an opportunity to review the paper. The title of the study seems interesting, the study is focused on the relation of land-use changes with the environmental quality of the Dendropotamos stream. No doubt, the study is aligned with the scope of the journal and provides some interesting insights into the literature. However, for scientific contribution to the literature, the study needs quality improvement. Below are my comments and suggestion that the authors need to incorporate.

 

Main Points:

1.     The abstract of the paper is too weak and does not provide any significance for the finding of the study.

2.     In the abstract, before the layout of your purpose, try to add a sentence at the beginning with a brief background information description. There are too many simple conclusive statements in the abstract, which are well-known to people who are involved in this area. You should first lay out a background information description.

3.     I found a weakness in the identification of the research gap identification paragraph. There are many studies cited in the papers have already been published in the literature. How the author distinguished this research has significance.

4.     The description of the study area has been written too long, I should conceive, and the location of the study area should be included.

5.     Figure 6 is not clear enough to be understandable.

6.     Figure 7 needs more explanations.

7.     Results are well written; however, I suggest using reader-friendly language as the reader can easily understand and get more benefit from the research output.

8.     Conclusion section is too large and needed to be precise.

Minor Points:

I found various grammatical mistakes in the manuscript.

It is recommended that a native speaker must review the manuscript before publication. Moreover, the author may forget to cite a recent study on a similar topic.

 

https://doi.org/10.1007/s12205-021-0151-5

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Review Report on the Manuscript Number: hydrology-2180532 Title: The impact of urban sprawl and Land use changes on the stream quality of a Mediterranean city 

The manuscript investigates the relation of land-use changes (categorized at 6 different classes) with the quality status of an ‘urbanized’ stream (Dendropotamos). The manuscript is well written and the topic seems to be appropriate for the journal of Hydrology. However, it must be revised before of be considered for publication. In the following, I suggest some possible improvements.

1.      I recommend summarize more accurate and representative keywords. Like the landscape and Hydromorphology, just general keywords which are common, are they appropriate to be key words for this paper?

2.      The Abstract is a very confusing for readers. The methods used and also objectives in this study should be presented together.

3.      Line 60-62, It would be good to add some works about problems caused by land use change. Please read and add references as follows:

Xiaojing Ni, Prem B.Parajuli, YingOuyang…. Assessing land use change impact on stream discharge and stream water quality in an agricultural watershed. CATENA 2021, 198, 105055.

Chunyan Cheng, Fei Zhang, Jingchao Shi & Hsiang-Te Kung. What is the relationship between land use and surface water quality? A review and prospects from remote sensing perspective. Environmental Science and Pollution Research volume 29, pages56887–56907 (2022).

Misagh Parhizkar , Mahmood Shabanpour, Manuel Esteban Lucas-Borja , Demetrio Antonio Zema, Siyue Li, Nobuaki Tanaka, Artemio Cerd. Effects of length and application rate of rice straw mulch on surface runoff and soil loss under laboratory simulated rainfall. International Journal of Sediment Research 36 (2021) 468e478.

Assessing Land-use Effects on Water Quality, In-stream Habitat, Riparian Ecosystems and Biodiversity in Patagonian Northwest Streams. Science of The Total Environment. Maria Laura MiserendinoRicardo Casaux…...2011.

Stenger-Kovács, C., Lengyel, E., Sebestyén, V. et al. Effects of land use on streams: traditional and functional analyses of benthic diatoms. Hydrobiologia 847, 2933–2946 (2020).

4.      Line 127, There is no necessity to present this figure. Please remove Figure 2.

5.      The Materials and Methods section is too long and I think that this section could be reduced. I recommend combine from 2.1 to 2.3 sections.

6.      Line 88, Why did you choose this Study area? According to what? Investigation or other researches?

7.      Line 280-285, it would be better if you could report the actual and comparable results, so that your readers can see similar findings, if the experimental conditions were comparable to your study.

8.      Line 286 to 290, here you present interesting results, you could explore and discuss these results further.

9.      Line 296, place Conclusions section after Figure 8 and complete it.

10.  Please explain relation and extension of results obtained from the study to natural conditions in larger scales (scaling).

11.  Please check the format of the references carefully.

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

All comments are completed but do not set in journal fom.

Reviewer 2 Report

The author put a lot of energy into revising the manuscript. the revised manuscript seems much improved, after careful revision and answering all the concerns, now the manuscript has the potential to be published in its current form. 

I accept and recommend the manuscript be published in its current form.