Quantitative Analysis of Vegetation Dynamics and Driving Factors in the Shendong Mining Area under the Background of Coal Mining
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for Authors- The abstract should be shorter.
- "1. Introduction" is too long and contains many general things.
- The distribution of citations could be more balanced, giving due credit to the original methods while also acknowledging the contributions of other researchers.
- The authors describe issues related to kNDVI a lot. In contrast, descriptions of factors controlling vegetation are insufficient. Especially, as far as I understand, what factors they used to evaluate human activities are not explained. In Section 3, the authors show maps of the contributions of climate and human activities (Fig. 8). Concerning climate, they also show other figures about temperature and precipitation (Figs. 5 to 7), so I understand temperature and precipitation are the climate factors. But no such info is given about factors showing human activities in Sections 2 and 3. This is a severe problem.
- In relation to the above, many things related to land use suddenly appear in "4. Discussion." If land use is a factor of vegetation change, it must be described in Sections 2 and 3. For example, "Changes in land use types" (4.3.1) are not discussions but facts or results.
- The conclusions in Section 5 are of only local interest. The authors describe what happened in a specific area in China and do not address the importance of this work on forest research in general.
Comments on the Quality of English Language
- The text is primarily understandable, but there are many grammatical issues. For example, the required "the" before "Shendong mining area" is missing in the title.
- The text tends to be lengthy, redundant, and repetitive.
Author Response
We would like to heartily thank you for the constructive comments on the manuscript titled “Quantitative analysis of vegetation dynamics and driving factors in the Shendong mining area under the background of coal mining” by Xufei Zhang, Zhichao Chen, et al. We have carefully read the manuscript and done thorough proofreading. Your academic sense and scientific literacy allowed us to improve the level of this manuscript. We highly appreciate your time and effort. Based on the constructive comments, careful modifications have been made to the manuscript. Please refer to the latest manuscript and amendment document submitted for details and explanations.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsFor comments please refer to the attached Word file.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Need proof-read, check the sentences for meaning and minor corrections.
Author Response
We would like to heartily thank you for the constructive comments on the manuscript titled “Quantitative analysis of vegetation dynamics and driving factors in the Shendong mining area under the background of coal mining” by Xufei Zhang, Zhichao Chen, et al. We have carefully read the manuscript and done thorough proofreading. Your academic sense and scientific literacy allowed us to improve the level of this manuscript. We highly appreciate your time and effort. Based on the constructive comments, careful modifications have been made to the manuscript. Please refer to the latest manuscript and amendment document submitted for details and explanations.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsGeneral comment: The manuscript presents interesting data on the vegetation dynamics in the Shendong mining area (China). The manuscript is written in an orderly and good manner. The introduction, results, discussion and conclusion are consistent and comply with the requirements. The data is interpreted accurately. The methods used are well presented. The tables and figures are informative and well designed. The reference list is complete and up to date.The study and the data obtained are novel and scientifically sound and therefore interesting for publication in Forests after a minor revision
A number of (minor overall) comments on the manuscript from my side are reported below.
Lines 55-56 “ areas like high latitudes and North America have seen a gradual stabilization or even reduction in vegetation coverage” This is a controversial statement. There is a lot of data showing the greening of the Arctic. Eg, From 1985 to 2016 Arctic tundra greenness increased (greening) at ~37.3% of sampling sites and decreased (browning) at ~4.7% of sampling sites https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-18479-5
Lines 173 – 174 “The vegetation growth season is brief, characterized by a lengthy period of dormancy”. If the vegetation growth season is brief, then to analyze the influence of meteorological indicators on vegetation, it is more correct to take into account not the average annual air temperature, but the temperature of the growing season. Moreover, a change in phenological cycles was previously noted in a phenological cycle change Shendong central mining area (https://doi.org/10.13225/j.cnki.jccs.2020.1387 ). It can be assumed that the greening is strongly influenced by the earlier start of the warm period.
Lines 225 - 226 “The ecosystem type was determined by analyzing Landsat series remote sensing imageries of mining sites from 1994 and 2022 using human-computer interactive interpretation For the reviewer, and probably for many readers, it is not clear what "human-computer interactive interpretation" means. Please give a brief сlarification.
Lines 326 – 327 “Regions exhibiting an increasing tendency constituted 94.11% of the total mining area, whereas regions with a notably increasing trend accounted for 90.44% (p < 0.01). In a similar study ( https://doi.org/10.13225/j.cnki.jccs.2020.1387) , different results were obtained ("The area with decreasing vegetation coverage accounts for 27.65% of the total area of the central mining area"). How can you explain the discrepancy in the results ?
Line 413 “The average annual temperature” Many studies analyze the dependence of vegetation on Land Surface Temperature (LST). Therefore, I recommend to clarify “The average annual air temperature”
Lines 396 - 397 “future forecasts imply a decrease mostly focused in the Cuncaota and Buertai coal mine areas, which encompass around 40.02% of the total mining area” It is not clear to me why “Inconsistent and improvement” variation types (Table 3) correspond a decrease in vegetation
Lines 559 - 562 "The results indicate that there was no substantial causal connection between changes in vegetation, precipitation, and temperature during the course of the 29-year research. The study determined that precipitation and temperature collectively accounted for 30.77% of the variation in kNDV”. This statement contradicts earlier statements about the impact of climate change on vegetation. It is more accurate to note that anthropogenic activities have a stronger influence than climatic indicators
Lines 567 -568 "Prior research has shown that vegetation growth in dry and somewhat dry areas is mostly limited by thermal factors, such as sun radiation and changes in temperature" Please provide references to prior research
Lines 675 – 676 “Therefore, it is imperative to develop efficient strategies and policies for rehabilitation that advocate for sustainable land administration in mining regions while concurrently confronting the obstacles presented by climate change”. As stated in the text of the article, climate change, in particular increased precipitation, has favourable effects on vegetation. Why then is it necessary to address the negative effects of climate change?
Lines 718 -719 “The development of vegetation is predominantly impacted by temperature and precipitation” and Line 726 “vegetation change is predominantly influenced by human activities , with climate change being a secondary factor” These conclusions contradict each other
Author Response
We would like to heartily thank you for the constructive comments on the manuscript titled “Quantitative analysis of vegetation dynamics and driving factors in the Shendong mining area under the background of coal mining” by Xufei Zhang, Zhichao Chen, et al. We have carefully read the manuscript and done thorough proofreading. Your academic sense and scientific literacy allowed us to improve the level of this manuscript. We highly appreciate your time and effort. Based on the constructive comments, careful modifications have been made to the manuscript. Please refer to the latest manuscript and amendment document submitted for details and explanations.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe authors seriously considered my previous comments, and the manuscript has been improved significantly. However, there is a remaining issue related to my earlier comments. Land use data are suddenly shown in 3.4.2, and the text only says, "According to our monitoring of land use change in the Shendong Mining area from 1994 to 2022 (Figure. 8a, b)" without citing a paper. Although Table 1 lists used data, it does not include land use data. So, the source of land use data is unclear, with only the information "our monitoring." Please write how "our monitoring" was conducted to produce land use data. Also, please include land use data in Table 1, with some relevant text in Section 2.
Comments on the Quality of English Language
Concerning problems with English, I only wrote one example last time (the lack of "the" before "Shendong mining area"). The authors corrected this problem, but I do not see other linguistic changes. In other words, problems with English are still scattered throughout the manuscript.
Author Response
Hello, thank you for your guidance again. We have made corrections. Please see the attachment for specific corrections.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
