Spatial Spillover Effects of Agricultural Agglomeration on Agricultural Non-Point Source Pollution in the Yangtze River Basin
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
1. The abstract was poorly written. Such as, the results are not clear, lack of quantitative and accurate description. The results are striking. There seems to be a lack of logic between the result and the conclusion. And, the abstract is not concise enough. It is suggested to reorganize the language of the abstract.
2. The abstract is not concise enough. It is suggested to reorganize the language
3. Equations 1 and 2 are difficult to understand. Please correct them.
4. Some well-known formulas or models do not need to be detailed in the paper.
5. The discourse is illogical, obscure, and poor in language. And the content is too long, not concise.
Line 62-66, these sentences lack logic and it is difficult to understand whether agricultural intensification has a positive or negative impact.
Line 66-75, the content seems to be inconsistent.
Similar deficiencies or logic errors mentioned above appear in large numbers. Thus the manuscript needs a major revision.
6. Introduction, the past research conclusions and progress should be summarized, and the unresolved problems should be pointed out. Not a list of past research. There are some unfounded assertions, such as, Line 159-162, this conclusion is baseless and obscure.
7. The research content is too simple and lacks scientific significance. For example, the manuscript analyses the relationship between pollution and indicators such as agricultural intensification, but this is only a statistical significance, which is far from the reality. The data come from the statistical mean of the domain (city level), rather than the point data of the farmland, and the accuracy is very low. Therefore, the error of the analysis results is very large, which is basically unscientific. What is more serious is that some missing data are obtained by interpolation method, and these interpolated data are not correct and cannot represent missing data. Therefore, this manuscript contains serious errors in the original data collection and is not intended for publication.
8. 2.3.2. Study Areas, the title is incorrectly named.
9. The calculation formula of NPS is too unclear. Each parameter in the formula should be detailed about how to determine its value, such as the coefficient of pollution generation of unit ?; the coefficient of resource use efficiency in the agricultural production process. The question is very serious, and it concerns the reliability of the whole study
10. The variation of each variable (e.g., NPS, AGG, etc.) from 2000 and 2020 is very small, so, the significant statistical correlation is actually of no practical significance. It is wrong to think that NPS and AGG and other indicators have mutual influence
11.Figure 6 has no practical significance and is recommended to be deleted
12. 4. Conclusions,Policy Implications,Limitations and future directions
This section is too long. Section 4.1 should be the conclusion, not the result
13.There are a lot of spelling mistakes and the language needs polishing.
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
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Reviewer 2 Report
This manuscript needs to following minor corrections:
1- Authors did not state obtained important results quantitatively in abstract.
2- Parameters of Tables 2, 4, 5 and 6 are not unit.
Author Response
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Reviewer 3 Report
accepted
Author Response
Thank you very much for your recognition of my paper.
Reviewer 4 Report
In this manuscript, Zhu and others assessed the status quo of non-point source pollution from agricultural lands in the Yangtze River basin and investigated the spatiotemporal impacts of agricultural agglomeration. Specifically, the authors observed differences in agricultural agglomeration levels from regions along the Yangtze River main channel and reported that agricultural agglomeration led to increases in non-point source pollution for the studied regions. Results of their work highlighted the importance of reviewing and improving the manual for nutrient/fertilization management and called for the needs for research and management advances in agricultural technologies. Overall, this work provides an up-to-date assessment of the current understanding of the intertwined relationships between agglomeration, economic growth, and environmental quality for the Yangtze River basin and fits into the remit of the targeted journal, i.e. Sustainability. However, the manuscript could use more polish with the writing as there are numerous typographical and grammatical errors in the manuscript. I recommend the acceptance of this manuscript after extensive editing of English.
Author Response
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Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
1. The abstract is still poorly written. The elaboration of results and conclusions lacks accurate and quantitative discussion. And, all results and conclusions are mostly single or subjective discussion or conclusions, which will lose the scientific nature and rigor of academic papers. It is recommended that you supplement your results and conclusions by adding some key data results
2. Equations 1 and 2 still has some garbled code.
3. Figure 6 has no practical significance and is recommended to be deleted
4. The conclusions remain lengthy, and it is recommended that the description of the results be replaced with a more in-depth summary of the study.
Author Response
The second response to Reviewer 1 Comments
Point 1: The abstract is still poorly written. The elaboration of results and conclusions lacks accurate and quantitative discussion. And, all results and conclusions are mostly single or subjective discussion or conclusions, which will lose the scientific nature and rigor of academic papers. It is recommended that you supplement your results and conclusions by adding some key data results.
Response 1: Thank you for your advice.
Based on your suggestion, I have added some key data results in the conclusion section of the abstract, and you can check it in the abstract section of the revised manuscript.
Point 2: Equations 1 and 2 still has some garbled code.
Response 2: Thank you for your advice.
I have adjusted the equations 1 and 2, and fixed some errors in the equation expression, you can check it in sections 2.1.1 and 2.1.2 of the manuscript.
Point 3: Figure 6 has no practical significance and is recommended to be deleted.
Response 3: Thank you for your concern.
Based on your suggestion, I have removed Figure 6 and the related contents.
Point 4: The conclusions remain lengthy, and it is recommended that the description of the results be replaced with a more in-depth summary of the study
Response 4: Thank you for your concern.
Based on your suggestion, I have deepened the study summary and replaced the description of the results with a deepened summary of the study, which you can check in section 4.1.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
