Exploring the Relationship between Forest Scenic Beauty with Color Index and Ecological Integrity: Case Study of Jiuzhaigou and Giant Panda National Park in Sichuan, China
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Overview
This study investigates the relationships between forest scenic beauty and vegetation color and ecological integrity by correlation and linear regression analyses, respectively, while the results show that (1) The overall scenic beauty of the autumn forests in the study area was at a "medium" level; and (2) The scenic beauty of the autumn forest significantly positively correlated with the saturation and value ratio, but non-significantly negatively correlated with the ecological integrity. This topic has certain research significance and value, and provide some valuable ideas for China’s ecological protection and local economic development. However, there are still large limitations and shortcomings in this article, which need more in-depth analysis and explanation by the authors.
Comments
1. Figure 1, please employ the newest version of the Chinese map. In fact, due to the problem of disputed territory, I do not suggest the authors to add the whole map of China, but the maps of research regions are ok.
2. The issue of the research sample (Line 160-175). There is serious shortage in the sample selection of questionaries, while the explanations here is perfunctory. I wonder is the sample size sufficient (the small sample obtains only 256 observations) and representative in this study? In fact, the authors did not follow the typical sampling method, while the observations are not random selection, which may have caused significant bias in the results obtained. That is, the research sample is not representative, indicating that the statistical result would be fail to explain the actual situation, while the percentage statistics are meaningless. Regarding to the results, the authors proved that the results are consistent with some former studies, while not consistent with certain research. I believe that the results are not representative and robust. Therefore, I have many doubts on the sample and data, as well as the veracity of these results.
3. What concerns me most is that the contributions of this research are not clear. For me, I doubt that there are not enough contributions and novelty for the publication of “Forests”. I suggest that the authors listed clearly “Strengths and Limitations” as the last section. I believe that the authors could try to conclude the contributions from the aspects of theoretical contributions, and new methods or new application (if possible), especially the former one.
4. The problem of the number of references. The number of first reference (Line 429) is 122, and I am afraid that the whole numbers of references are inaccurate.
5. The English expression is not professional, while there are a lot of grammatical mistakes and expression issues. Therefore, I suggest that the authors should ask a native speaker to revise the submission.
In general, I believe that this manuscript cannot be accepted under the current version. The authors need to rework more carefully according to the shortcomings to access the publish standard of “Forests”. Lastly, I would like to thank the editors for letting me review this manuscript of “Forests”.
Author Response
Thank you for your comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Exploring the relationship between forest scenic beauty with color index and ecological integrity: Case study of Jiuzhaigou and Giant Panda National Park in Sichuan, China” (ID: forests-1887152). Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. We have studied comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval. Revised portion are marked in red in the paper.
Response to Reviewer 1 Comment
Point 1: Figure 1, please employ the newest version of the Chinese map. In fact, due to the problem of disputed territory, I do not suggest the authors to add the whole map of China, but the maps of research regions are ok.
Response 1: Thanks for your kind suggestion. We have revised the map and focused on the Sichuan Province where we finished the investigations, as shown in Figure 1 (page 4,line 134).
Point 2: The issue of the research sample (Line 160-175). There is serious shortage in the sample selection of questionaries, while the explanations here is perfunctory. I wonder is the sample size sufficient (the small sample obtains only 256 observations) and representative in this study? In fact, the authors did not follow the typical sampling method, while the observations are not random selection, which may have caused significant bias in the results obtained. That is, the research sample is not representative, indicating that the statistical result would be fail to explain the actual situation, while the percentage statistics are meaningless. Regarding to the results, the authors proved that the results are consistent with some former studies, while not consistent with certain research. I believe that the results are not representative and robust. Therefore, I have many doubts on the sample and data, as well as the veracity of these results.
Response 2: Thanks for your comments. In response to the reviewer's questions and suggestions, we mainly revised and clarified the following: (1) Representativeness of the questionnaire subjects, the landscape photos of seven vegetation types were selected as the subjects of the questionnaire survey on the autumn beauty degree of forests in the western Sichuan region (page 3, 128-133 line). (2) Randomness of the questionnaire subjects, the questionnaire were distributed by the network platform, all the questionnaire subjects are from the network, with a certain degree of randomness (page 5,182 - 184 lines). Moreover, a large number of current studies have shown that the background difference of questionnaire respondents has no significant effect on the evaluation of beauty(page 2, 73 - 77 lines). Therefore, in this study, the backgrounds of questionnaire respondents were counted (page 5, table 1), and the differences between the backgrounds of different questionnaire respondents were not compared. (3) Questionnaire reliability test, this study used Cronbach's to test the reliability of the original questionnaire results, and correlation analysis was used to test the degree of correlation between the two evaluation methods of SBE and rank ranking obtained from the beauty degree (page 5,189-193 lines and 7, 250 - 255 lines). (4) Sample size, the number of valid questionnaire in this research was reasonable (between 105 and 331) based on the literature review and the related questionnaire results of the key references(page 5,191-193 lines). (5) Discussion of questionnaire results: we have revised the discussion section(page 12, 318 to 325 lines).
Point 3: What concerns me most is that the contributions of this research are not clear. For me, I doubt that there are not enough contributions and novelty for the publication of “Forests”. I suggest that the authors listed clearly “Strengths and Limitations” as the last section. I believe that the authors could try to conclude the contributions from the aspects of theoretical contributions, and new methods or new application (if possible), especially the former one.
Response 3: Thanks for your kind suggestion. We have revised “Prospects and Limitations” (page 14,427 - 444 lines).
Point 4: The problem of the number of references. The number of the first reference (Line 429) is 122, and I am afraid that the whole numbers of references are inaccurate.
Response 4: Thanks for your kind suggestion. We have checked the references one by one (page 14-18,446-609 lines).
Point 5: The English expression is not professional, while there are a lot of grammatical mistakes and expression issues. Therefore, I suggest that the authors should ask a native speaker to revise the submission.
Response 5: Thanks for your kind suggestion. We are very sorry for grammatical mistakes and expression issues. We have carefully corrected the mistakes and sent the manuscript to one native speaker for revising the expressions. All corrections are marked with red in the revised manuscript.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Generally, this study is interested to me about the exploring the relationship between forest scenic beauty and color index and ecological integrity. However, I think the authors have to revise it again for the quality of manuscript.
1. Abstracts
The creative thinking of this study is combining the ecological integrity evaluation for conceptual framework of this study. So I think the abstracts may focuses on the creative thinking and innovation from the potential scenario into ecological integrity management. By the way, some keywords are the same as the abstracts, such as aesthetic; ecological integrity, so I also suggest revising it.
2. Introduction
Please identify the main impacts on the issues of ecological integrity approach for forest scenic beauty and color index and ecological integrity first, and show the research gap with main synthesis based on these issues for their creative insights of this study.
3. Evaluation framework of this study
The main contribution of this manuscript is conduct the evaluation framework under “Ecological integrity evaluation indicators“, however, it’s lack of the discussions on multiple dimensions (or frames)with creative thinking and some powerful evidences from Supplementary Table S1 into the main manuscript. So I suggest we have to figure out it for the new contributions on ecological integrity evaluation indicators, and please talk more about it on why and how we can apply the main theory into this study. Moreover, the same as questionnaire and indicator design.
4. Research method and survey method
This study is lack of the discussions on research method and survey design method, so the reader cannot check the validity of the data, especially on the structural equation modeling (SEM), and how we can apply the SEM into this study. Second, what the criterions for the sample size? Is it based on estimation bias, significance level or the other criterions? Please identify these issues.
5. Results and Discussion
It seems lack of more discussions from section 4, so that the reader can not catch the main contributions from past study on the fields of ecological integrity evaluation indicators. Second, the conclusions are poorly about the management strategy or policy making on our main topics, so I suggest the authors have to revise it for the quality of this paper.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.docx
Author Response
Dear Reviewer:
Thank you for your comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Exploring the relationship between forest scenic beauty with color index and ecological integrity: Case study of Jiuzhaigou and Giant Panda National Park in Sichuan, China” (ID: forests-1887152). Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. We have studied comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval. Revised portion are marked in red in the paper.
Point 1: Abstracts
The creative thinking of this study is combining the ecological integrity evaluation for conceptual framework of this study. So I think the abstracts may focus on the creative thinking and innovation from the potential scenario into ecological integrity management. By the way, some keywords are the same as the abstracts, such as aesthetic; ecological integrity, so I also suggest revising it.
Response 1: Thank you for your comments. We have revised the abstract and keywords ( page 1, 11-13 lines and 22- 29 lines) .
Point 2: Introduction
Please identify the main impacts on the issues of ecological integrity approach for forest scenic beauty and color index and ecological integrity first, and show the research gap with main synthesis based on these issues for their creative insights of this study.
Response 2: Thanks for your kind suggestion. We have revised the current status of research on the relationship between scenic beauty and ecological integrity in the introduction section (page 2, 46-55 lines and page 3, 97-107 lines ).
Point 3: Evaluation framework of this study
The main contribution of this manuscript is conduct the evaluation framework under “Ecological integrity evaluation indicators”, however, it’s lack of the discussions on multiple dimensions (or frames) with creative thinking and some powerful evidences from Supplementary Table S1 into the main manuscript. So I suggest we have to figure out it for the new contributions on ecological integrity evaluation indicators, and please talk more about it on why and how we can apply the main theory into this study. Moreover, the same as questionnaire and indicator design.
Response 3: Thanks for your kind suggestion. We have added the relevant description of the forest ecological integrity framework in the introduction (page3, 102 -113 lines ). Considering that the focus of this work is (1) to evaluate the autumn scenic beauty of different vegetation types in the study area, and (2) to investigate the interrelationship between forest scenic beauty, vegetation color index, and forest ecological integrity. The relationship between forest beauty and forest ecological integrity is only one of the important contents of this work. Therefore, the details of ecological integrity evaluation are put in the appendix and not discussed in depth in this work. The details of constructing an index system for the evaluation of forest ecological integrity have been discussed by the authors in an article entitled " Constructing an index system for the evaluation of the ecological integrity of forests in western Sichuan, China, based on structural equation modeling ". The article is currently under review.
Point 4: Research method and survey method
This study is lack of the discussions on research method and survey design method, so the reader cannot check the validity of the data, especially on the structural equation modeling (SEM), and how we can apply the SEM into this study. Second, what the criterions for the sample size? Is it based on estimation bias, significance level or the other criterions? Please identify these issues.
Response 4: Thanks for your kind suggestion. The rationality of the questionnaire design and the validity test of the questionnaire results have been explained and verified in the materials and methods (page 5, 173-193 lines ), results section (page 7, 250-255 lines). Regarding the validity verification of the structural equation model, Supplementary Table S3 has been added in the appendix.
Point 5: Results and Discussion
It seems lack of more discussions from section 4, so that the reader cannot catch the main contributions from past study on the fields of ecological integrity evaluation indicators. Second, the conclusions are poorly about the management strategy or policy making on our main topics, so I suggest the authors have to revise it for the quality of this paper.
Response 5: Thank you for your comments. We have revised the innovative points and the significance of the study in the abstract (page1, 22-27 lines) and conclusion sections (page 14, 427-434 lines ). Since the current research has mainly focused on the exploration of the relationship between forest ecological attributes and scenic beauty, this study was the first exploration of the relationship between forest scenic beauty and ecological integrity. Therefore, the discussion part focused on the relationship between scenic beauty and ecological integrity (page 13, 382 - 411 lines), while the interrelationship between scenic beauty and ecological integrity evaluation indexes has been introduced in the introduction (page 3, 97-110 lines).
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The only concern for me is that the authors should explain the representativeness of the research sample before the potential publication. Beseides, the authors have dealt with the questions well that I raised.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer:
Thank you for your letter and for the reviewers’ comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Exploring the relationship between forest scenic beauty with color index and ecological integrity: Case study of Jiuzhaigou and Giant Panda National Park in Sichuan, China” (ID: forests-1887152). Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. We have studied comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval. Revised portion are marked in red in the paper. The main corrections in the paper and the responses to the reviewer’s comments are as following:
Response to Reviewer Comment
Point 1: The only concern for me is that the authors should explain the representativeness of the research sample before the potential publication. Beseides, the authors have dealt with the questions well that I raised.
Response 1: Thanks for your kind suggestion. Regarding the representativeness of the study sample, we have revised and explained it in the following. (1) Representativeness of the questionnaire subject. In this study, Jiuzhaigou and Baoxing, which have the typical vertical zonal vegetation characteristics of western Sichuan, were taken as the study areas, and seven vegetation types that can represent the vertical zonal vegetation characteristics of the study area were selected as the subjects of the questionnaire. According to the relevant literature and field survey, these seven types include almost all the forest vegetation types in the study area (page 3, 124 – 134 lines). (2) Representativeness of the questionnaire respondents. According to the existing research, the most important concern about the background of the questionnaire respondents in the design of the questionnaire is whether the respondents have related professions. Moreover, many studies have shown that the professional background of the respondents has no significant influence on the evaluation of scenic beauty (page 5, 186-189 lines). Therefore, this questionnaire also paid special attention to this point, and counted the professional background of the questionnaire respondents (page5, table1).
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
