30 Years of Land Cover Change in Connecticut, USA: A Case Study of Long-Term Research, Dissemination of Results, and Their Use in Land Use Planning and Natural Resource Conservation
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This paper does a novel work in three areas: a) engaging students, through course curricula, of various levels at the University of Connecticut (UConn) to do research, explain, and disseminate the knowledge and importance of geospatial data to monitor developmental activities at various levels of government within the State of Connecticut; b) it generates some unique results (Fig. 3 a-c; Fig. 7 a-b, and Fig. 8); and c) explains how UConn closely works with different levels of the state government. By developing such a mechanism, this paper contributes to a) inform stakeholders how to generate geospatial data and what their importance is; and b) how to minimize possible spatial developmental conflicts through collaboration between the academic and non-academic institutions. Very exciting job!
However, my suggestions are:
- To provide a stepwise explanation of how Fig. 3(a-c) are generated and how they are interpreted;
- How information in Fig. 7 (a-b) is generated and that their uses and importance (please provide high resolution write up both in Fig. 7 (a-b)
- Steps wise explanations of how Fig. 8 is created and how temporal and spatial information is derived from Fig. 8.
Since this research tries to bridge between non-academicians and academicians, a detailed explanation would help non-academicians to understand the process better.
Since land cover status in Connecticut is available even from the Historical Imagery of Google Earth, please minimize the lengthy repetitive explanations on the land cover changes throughout the paper.
This paper would make a great contribution to the scientific community and the models presented in Figs. 3, 7, and 8 can be translated to other geographical areas if they are explained in detail in a stepwise manner. Please shorten the lengthy and repetitive explanation of land cover from the entire manuscript. Also, further elaboration on how to coordinate between the university (through curricula) and different government levels would truly help to implement similar programs in other states within the U. S. in particular and other countries in general to accomplish the huge task of monitoring developmental activities by minimizing possible spatial and temporal conflicts. By coordinating between an educational institution and various levels of government to create a win-win situation where students learn, earn academic degrees disseminate knowledge, quality work can be completed at a cheaper rate while graduating quality manpower to enhance the economy of a state. This would provide education that would help solve the real-world problems by involving various stakeholders.
PLEASE MAKE ABSTRACT AND CONCLUSION MORE INCLUSIVE AND INFORMATIVE WITH RESEARCH FINDINGS.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer 1,
Attached as per the LAND guidelines is a cover letter detailing changes made to our manuscript. Thanks for your help in making this a better paper.
Regards,
Chet Arnold
University of Connecticut, USA
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
General comments
This is a well-written paper and a major contribution. This paper shows a clear departure of conducting research for mere academic interest only. Following are my comments and suggestions.
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The forest category is missing in Table 1. Please provide a description of the forest category.
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Lines 249-251. How do the authors inform non-technical audiences about the limitations of Landsat datasets, and remote sensing image analysis? This is important for other researchers who also need to do similar work in other parts of the world.
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I would be happy if the authors can also provide a brief description of population (population density) or economic trend during the study period.
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Last but not least, I suggest that the authors include some best practices or recommendations so that interested researchers in other parts of the world can follow or replicate this approach.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer 2,
Attached as per the LAND guidelines is a cover letter detailing changes made to our manuscript. Thanks for your help in making this a better paper.
Regards,
Chet Arnold
University of Connecticut, USA
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
The paper is not a research paper but rather an interesting communication paper which presents the results of a long-term research/implementation project. It focus on the dissemination and the use of the results by government and society. The paper is well structured and written, and I have mainly minor comments.
I disagree with the interpretation of Figure 14 which shows the increase in percentage of developed category town-wide versus in the riparian corridor within the town and the strong correlation between the two variables. For the authors, the strong correlation “seems to indicate that local development pressure is a principal factor controlling riparian conversion” (and this argument is mentioned again lines 570-574). However, suppose a completely random distribution of developed areas over the territory, then developed in riparian corridor’s areas will be almost perfectly proportional to overall developed areas, giving a correlation of one.
Line 118. The text mentions four major land cover categories of interest but the table 1 only shows the first three categories.
"Square kilometers" is written using different forms: square kilometers, km. Square and km2. Please homogenize, is using km2 put 2 as superscript.
Line 255 The term “op-ed article” seems to be an americanism, and is not very common in academic literature. Using a more usual word can be helpful for many readers. Maybe it is the same for “turf”.
Line 336 insert a line break before “3.1. Subsection”
Line 345 “forest and farmland is being”, I suppose it is “are being”
Line 355 Figure 11. Please insert the units of the vertical axis (km2) into the graph
Line 406 typo: Two points
Line 407 Table 2, as percent is mentioned in each column header (except the last one), no need to put %
Line 621 UConn University of Connecticut
I hope these few comments will help authors in improving the manuscript.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer 3,
Attached as per the LAND guidelines is a cover letter detailing changes made to our manuscript. Thanks for your help in making this a better paper.
Regards,
Chet Arnold
University of Connecticut, USA
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 4 Report
Comments:
Line 26. Keywords. land cover change is used in the title, you can insert another one.
Line 120. Table 1. It's a bit contradictory that first, you are talking about 4 major land cover categories, while in Table 1 there are 3. I suggest inserting the forest class in this table.
Line 133. Figure 1. Please insert north arrow and scale bar.
Line 95. CCL. Abbreviation presented in line 86.
Line 143. Finally. I suggest using another word, “finally” is more appropriate for sequence paragraphs using First, Second, Third, and Finally.
Line 189. Figure 3. Please insert north arrow and scale bar.
Line 214. Figure 4. Please insert north arrow and scale bar.
Line 237. Figure 5. Please insert north arrow and scale bar.
Line 264. Figure 6. Please insert north arrow and scale bar.
Line 376. Figure 12. Please insert north arrow and scale bar.
Line 444. Figure 15. Please insert north arrow and scale bar.
Line 550. Figure 19. Please insert north arrow and scale bar.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer 4,
Attached as per the LAND guidelines is a cover letter detailing changes made to our manuscript. Thanks for your help in making this a better paper.
Regards,
Chet Arnold
University of Connecticut, USA
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Authors have addressed my major concerns except for a few issues, such as figure 7, but I leave this up to the decision of the editor.
