Regional Impacts of Climate and Land Cover on Ecosystem Water Retention Services in the Upper Yangtze River Basin

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

I found the manuscript very important contribution in the field of physical sciences especially in eco-hydrology. The report contains very useful scientific  analyzes and interpretations. 

But to increase the scientific significance of the manuscript, necessary revision should be  made based on the comments/suggestions forwarded as follow and in the annotated version (pdf) of the manuscript as well.

1) Abstract: the scenarios shall be mentioned briefly, values of change of climate and land cover should be indicated instead of qualitative presentation.

2) Land cover change and climate change are dependent each another. So, it is better to give a background information on the interaction of land use/ cover and climate change and the consequent effects on hydrological cycle.  

3) Methodology: Structure - check and revise the flow of sections. Section 2.2 (line 102 -110) requires improvement. Description of InVEST model is not sufficient. Index and coefficient stated should be clearly described.

4) table 2 (line 164) - add columns with the range of precipitation, temperature, any other variable for each climate zone. 

5) line 172: the size of pixel used not stated.

6) discussion given to scenarios from line 174 -177 is not consistent to the description given in section 2.2 (line 105-107).

7) Result: Line 220 -225 - The techniques (e.g. Land cover change matrix) used how to know the replacement of one land cover with the other is not indicated in the methodology.

8) table 5:The source of observed value not mentioned.

9) line 285 -292: The scale of land use/cover used for the analysis of impact of land use/cover on water balance is not clear. 

10) Explanations given for the results are not sufficient. e.g. why the effect of land use/cover on water conservation is dominant at small scale and why climate change is dominant at large spatio-temporal scale? why water retention was reduced/increased in some regions?

11) Moreover, there are several inconsistencies of terminologies and results in the manuscript. Maps and figures can be improved. Check the annotated version. 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thanks for your comments with my manuscript (No. sustainability-566719, Title: Regional Impacts of Climate and Land Cover on Ecosystem Water Retention Services in the Upper Yangtze River Basin). We have read and discuss these comments carefully, then revised the draft throughout the full text. We also polished this manuscrpite by the native English-speaking colleague. The attachment is our point-by-point response to you, please check it out, thank you very much!

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for the opportunity to review this paper. The paper addresses an important topic, namely looking at water retention as a function of climate and land cover in the Yangtze River Basin.

 

While I think the paper may become suitable for the journal Sustainability, I have a few suggestions:

could the authors add to the explanation of water retention? Maybe by giving examples as to what they mean by that. Is it water volume? Or water extent? Or boths? Is this surface water? Of any quality? Provide a rationale for choosing the study area Explain why InVEST is the best choice for the work, other than being most commonly used Include the literature source for their data sets Explain how they came to the conclusion that precipitation is more important at the local scale based on the correlation coefficients

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thanks for your comments with my manuscript (No. sustainability-566719, Title: Regional Impacts of Climate and Land Cover on Ecosystem Water Retention Services in the Upper Yangtze River Basin). We have read and discuss these comments carefully, then revised the draft throughout the full text. We also polished this manuscrpite by the native English-speaking colleague. The attachment is our point-by-point response to you, please check it out, thank you very much!

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

I have gone through the revised version of your manuscript and I found significant changes in the new version. 

Some comments in the revised manuscript:

In equations 1-3 (line 128-130) what does ^obs represent/show in QS1^obs, QS2^obs, and QS3^obs? Is it important?

In figure 8b, a reader can easily understand if an arrow is used to  show which equation represents which graph.

Check consistency of the abbreviation used in the manuscript. e.g. evapotranspiration  (ET0/ET₀/et0?),  precipitation (Pr/pr?). I suggest to use P for precipitation.

Conclusion part shall be supported with important values. 

 

 

 

 

 

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thanks for your comments with my manuscript (No. sustainability-566719, Title: Regional Impacts of Climate and Land Cover on Ecosystem Water Retention Services in the Upper Yangtze River Basin). We have read and discuss these comments carefully, then revised the draft according to your comments. The attachment is our point-by-point response to you, please check it out, thank you very much!

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors seem to have improved the work and addressed my comments 

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thanks for your comments with my manuscript (No. sustainability-566719, Title: Regional Impacts of Climate and Land Cover on Ecosystem Water Retention Services in the Upper Yangtze River Basin).