Linking Demographic Factors, Land Use, Ecosystem Services, and Human Well-Being: Insights from an Sandy Landscape, Uxin in Inner Mongolia, China
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript entitled ‘Linking demographic factors, land use, ecosystem services, and human well-being: Insights from an sandy landscape, Uxin in Inner Mongolia, China’ addresses an important issue, as it aims to relate different aspects of subjective human well-being to demographic factors and land use and ecosystem services. Although the manuscript is generally well written and the combination of methods can provide novel insights, the overall presentation of the work needs to be improved. In the following, I provide various suggestions for each section.
Abstract
The first two sentences are definitions, which is not appropriate for an abstract. You may start with ‘Understanding the relationship between…’ and then indicate the research gap. Replace also ‘The conclusions are as follows:’ with ‘Our results indicate that…’. The abstract could also be enriched with further results and be strengthened by replacing the last sentence with a more specific statement.
Introduction
I agree that defining the underlying concepts (e.g. ES, HWB, etc.) is very important, but I suggest restructuring the introduction to better frame your work. Currently, the research gaps or the ‘big question’ is not clear enough and you should elaborate on this. The historical development of “the environmentalist's expectation” may be interesting, but does not contribute much to indicate the (expected) contribution of your work to research on ES and HWB. I therefore suggest to focus the introduction on your main research objective and to indicate open questions as well as how your study aims to fill these gaps. Please place your research also better within the international context by relating to more recent studies in this field.
An important issue that is not mentioned sufficiently in the introduction is what you understand as eco-restoration area. Please indicate also what is different or specific to such areas compared to other areas.
Materials and Methods
There are different types of analyses (questionnaire, human well-being assessment, drivers analysis), but their linkages remain rather unclear. I therefore suggest adding a section that provides an overview of the different conceptual steps and that explains how the individual analysis steps are related. This would help to improve the understanding of what you have done and for which purpose.
Moreover, methods and results should be clearly separated. Please provide full details on the methods in this section (some descriptions are only provided in the results section and should be moved to the methods section), while the methods section already contains results (e.g., of the survey).
2.1. Study area: Please add some more details on population and land use.
Table 1: Caption is missing
Figure 2: I suggest including the hypotheses in the presentation of the model to indicate the positive/negatively influence of the different variables on ES and HWB. This could be done, for example, by adding ‘H1’ etc. and indicating by ‘+’ or ‘-‘ whether the influence is positive or negative. Moreover, you may use different colors.
Results
The results section contains some methodological details, which should be moved to the methods section (see also previous comment). To improve readability, I would also suggest to focus on the main results without repeating coefficients that are included in the tables.
L248ff: Please explain what direct and indirect effects are. This appears here for the first time, but it should be probably already explained in the methods.
Discussion
The discussion section is rather short, but I think that you have lots of interesting findings that are worth to be discussed in more depth, in particular the relationships between ES and HWB. Also, the various demographic factors are mentioned shortly, but these statements are not supported sufficiently by the presented results nor by literature. Just some examples: ‘Family members have more years of schooling, which indicates that they have more land use choices, such as hobby farm tourism, rather than relying only on animal husbandry.’ or ‘Besides this, renting grassland was also a widely popular strategy.’… Please explain what this means for HWB and ES and what are the implications for policy making. Moreover, your findings need to be better related to those of other (international) studies. You could also point out the specific socio-ecological context of your study area and whether the findings would be applicable also in other regions, and if yes, in which regions.
Please add also a paragraph on the limitations of your work (e.g., related to the representativeness of the survey or simplifications in the structural equation model, limited number of ES and not considering cultural ES). You may also indicate open issues for further research.
Conclusions
This section summarizes some results, but please substantially revise by indicating shortly your main findings and specify what they mean for research and decision-making.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 1 Comments
Point 1:
Abstract
The first two sentences are definitions, which is not appropriate for an abstract. You may start with ‘Understanding the relationship between…’ and then indicate the research gap. Replace also ‘The conclusions are as follows:’ with ‘Our results indicate that…’. The abstract could also be enriched with further results and be strengthened by replacing the last sentence with a more specific statement.
Response 1:
We rewrote this abstract follow your comment. Please see L13-25.
Point 2:
Introduction
I agree that defining the underlying concepts (e.g. ES, HWB, etc.) is very important, but I suggest restructuring the introduction to better frame your work. Currently, the research gaps or the ‘big question’ is not clear enough and you should elaborate on this. The historical development of “the environmentalist's expectation” may be interesting, but does not contribute much to indicate the (expected) contribution of your work to research on ES and HWB. I therefore suggest to focus the introduction on your main research objective and to indicate open questions as well as how your study aims to fill these gaps. Please place your research also better within the international context by relating to more recent studies in this field.
An important issue that is not mentioned sufficiently in the introduction is what you understand as eco-restoration area. Please indicate also what is different or specific to such areas compared to other areas.
Response 2:
Thanks for your valuable comments. Follow your revise suggestions, we reorganized and rewrote this section. Please see Introduction Section.
Point 3:
There are different types of analyses (questionnaire, human well-being assessment, drivers analysis), but their linkages remain rather unclear. I therefore suggest adding a section that provides an overview of the different conceptual steps and that explains how the individual analysis steps are related. This would help to improve the understanding of what you have done and for which purpose.
Moreover, methods and results should be clearly separated. Please provide full details on the methods in this section (some descriptions are only provided in the results section and should be moved to the methods section), while the methods section already contains results (e.g., of the survey).
2.1. Study area: Please add some more details on population and land use.
Table 1: Caption is missing
Figure 2: I suggest including the hypotheses in the presentation of the model to indicate the positive/negatively influence of the different variables on ES and HWB. This could be done, for example, by adding ‘H1’ etc. and indicating by ‘+’ or ‘-‘ whether the influence is positive or negative. Moreover, you may use different colors.
Response 3:
Thanks for your comments. According to your advise, we add a new subsection (”2.1. Framework”, L92-L100), and we also organized “Materials and Methods” section, and moved SEM methods from results section, make it more clear.
We added some more details on population and land use, please see L104 and L110.
We added ‘H1-5’ and ‘+’ or ‘-‘ for “Figure 3. Structural equation model...”,please see L155.
Point 4:
Results
The results section contains some methodological details, which should be moved to the methods section (see also previous comment). To improve readability, I would also suggest to focus on the main results without repeating coefficients that are included in the tables.
L248ff: Please explain what direct and indirect effects are. This appears here for the first time, but it should be probably already explained in the methods.
Response 4:
Thanks for your suggestion, we moved those methodological details to the methods section.
We explain what direct and indirect effects are in L198.
Point 5:
Discussion
The discussion section is rather short, but I think that you have lots of interesting findings that are worth to be discussed in more depth, in particular the relationships between ES and HWB. Also, the various demographic factors are mentioned shortly, but these statements are not supported sufficiently by the presented results nor by literature. Just some examples: ‘Family members have more years of schooling, which indicates that they have more land use choices, such as hobby farm tourism, rather than relying only on animal husbandry.’ or ‘Besides this, renting grassland was also a widely popular strategy.’… Please explain what this means for HWB and ES and what are the implications for policy making. Moreover, your findings need to be better related to those of other (international) studies. You could also point out the specific socio-ecological context of your study area and whether the findings would be applicable also in other regions, and if yes, in which regions.
Please add also a paragraph on the limitations of your work (e.g., related to the representativeness of the survey or simplifications in the structural equation model, limited number of ES and not considering cultural ES). You may also indicate open issues for further research.
Response 5:
Thanks for your suggestion. We rewrote Discussion section, and explain what this means for HWB and ES and what are the implications for policy making. More detail please See Discussion section
We added a paragraph on the limitations of your work, please see subsection “4.3. Uncertainties” (L403).
Point 6:
Conclusions
This section summarizes some results, but please substantially revise by indicating shortly your main findings and specify what they mean for research and decision-making.
Response 6:
According to your suggestion, we rewrote Conclusions section, please see L417.
Reviewer 2 Report
- The biggest concern is the research design and data collection. The authors claimed they examined the change between two times. However, it seems like the changes were measured by participants’ self-reported cross-sectional questionnaire in 2017. If the data was only collected by one wave, the changes cannot be confirmed and examined.
- If the authors collected the data at two waves, how to measure the effect of changes in a SEM model? Did the authors created a latent variable as Wave2-wave 1? If yes, the latent variables could be + or -, which might affect the result.
- Was the sample representative? More information about the sample collection is needed.
- A SEM model is often conducted to examine a theoretical framework based on theories and previous studies. The authors should provide more theories and previous studies to support each hypothesis. Each hypothesis should have one paragraph to support it in the literature review section. In addition, the references for creating latent variables should be added.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 2 Comments
Point 1:
The biggest concern is the research design and data collection. The authors claimed they examined the change between two times. However, it seems like the changes were measured by participants’ self-reported cross-sectional questionnaire in 2017. If the data was only collected by one wave, the changes cannot be confirmed and examined.
If the authors collected the data at two waves, how to measure the effect of changes in a SEM model? Did the authors created a latent variable as Wave2-wave 1? If yes, the latent variables could be + or -, which might affect the result.
Response 1:
We only collected the data in 2017, the past ten years(2007) data was recalled by middle-aged family member.
We created observed variables by 2016-2007, the result in our study means change. For example, livestock number was100 in 2016 and 50 in 2007, the result of 50 represents land use change in land use latent variable.
Point 2:
Was the sample representative? More information about the sample collection is needed.
A SEM model is often conducted to examine a theoretical framework based on theories and previous studies. The authors should provide more theories and previous studies to support each hypothesis. Each hypothesis should have one paragraph to support it in the literature review section. In addition, the references for creating latent variables should be added.
Response 2:
We added the sample information in L120. (We conducted face-to-face interviews in 12 randomly sampled villages and obtained 344 valid questionnaires. Structured questionnaires were provided to local herdsmen.)
Thanks for your comment, we have added previous studies to support each hypothesis (L160-179).
Demographic factors, such as family size, gender, age, and education, can change over a certain period of time, pushing families to change their land use strategies [1], thus directly impacting on HWB. We formulated the following hypotheses on family's demographic factors:
H1: Changes in demographic factors can positively affect the land use of households;
H2: The increase of demographic factors may have a negative impact on HWB.
Changes in land use by households in this region are mostly manifested as changes in land use intensity, such as leasing pastures, increasing or decreasing investment in artificial grass, and increasing or decreasing livestock. These changes will eventually influence the structure and function of the ecosystem around the family, causing changes in ESs [2,3]. We formulated the following hypotheses on family land use:
H3: Changes in family land use positively affect the provisioning ESs, increasing their supply;
H4: Changes in family land use negatively affect the regulating ESs, reducing their supply.
Families acquire ESs such as food production, forage supply, firewood supply, water retention, sandstorm prevention, and climate regulation, from the surrounding ecosystems. The supply of these services directly influences the well-being of the families [4,5]. We formulated the following hypothesis on ESs changes:
H5: Changes in ESs positively affect the well-being of families.
Reference：
- Wang, Y.; Bilsborrow, R.E.; Zhang, Q.; Li, J.; Song, C. Effects of payment for ecosystem services and agricultural subsidy programs on rural household land use decisions in china: Synergy or trade-off? Land Use Policy 2019, 81, 785–801.
- Xu, Y.; Tang, H.; Wang, B.; Chen, J. Effects of land-use intensity on ecosystem services and human well-being: A case study in huailai county, china. Environmental earth sciences 2016, 75, 416.411-416.411.
- Wang, X.; Dong, X.; Liu, H.; Wei, H.; Fan, W.; Lu, N.; Xu, Z.; Ren, J.; Xing, K. Linking land use change, ecosystem services and human well-being: A case study of the manas river basin of xinjiang, china. Ecosystem Services 2017, 27, 113-123, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoser.2017.08.013.
- Delgado, L.E.; Marín, V.H. Well-being and the use of ecosystem services by rural households of the río cruces watershed, southern chile. Ecosystem Services 2016, 21, 81–91.
- Ciftcioglu, G.C. Assessment of the relationship between ecosystem services and human wellbeing in the social-ecological landscapes of lefke region in north cyprus. Landscape Ecology 2017, 32, 897-913, 10.1007/s10980-017-0494-y.
Reviewer 3 Report
Title: Linking Demographic Factors, Land Use, Ecosystem Services, and Human Well-being: Insights from a Sandy Landscape, Uxin in Inner Mongolia, China
Summary
This paper presents a fascinating topic. It majorly describes the results of an evaluation in Uxin, in Inner Mongolia. To link demographic factors, land use, ES, and HWB, a questionnaire was developed. These results are the underlying source for a structural equation model and other descriptive statistical analysis. These results lead to an evaluation of family HWB changes and analyze the different relationships between demographic factors, land use, ES, and HWB.
Overall Evaluation
The paper is very well and understandable written. Nevertheless, there are issues that the authors need to consider for the article to be accepted.
- The main concern is about the State of the Art. The publication does not reflect the current state of the science. Please, add relevant and new literature.
- Material and Methods are not reproducible. Please add more details about the experts (Z.123) and the underlying statistical software (Z.129 ff)
- Chapter 3.2 has to be part of Chapter 2. Please, reorganize the M&M Chapter
- The results for Research Question 2 are missing. Please, add.
- Chapter Conclusion needs a revision. A summary of the main findings is not enough for a conclusion. Please, include the following steps and a bigger picture or include the text in Chapter Discussion
Minor Recommendations
L 108 Please change in (iii)
Table 1 Numbers of Cultivated land area and Grassland area need an explanation. Why are the sums are 333 and 217
L 199 change in m2
L 364 ff. ??, please, check
L 393 suggested citation is: “Millennium Ecosystem Assessment”
Best regards
Author Response
Response to Reviewer 3 Comments
Point 1:
The main concern is about the State of the Art. The publication does not reflect the current state of the science. Please, add relevant and new literature.
Response 1:
We have rewrote Introduction Section and Discussion Section, and added relevant and new literature.
Point 2:
Material and Methods are not reproducible. Please add more details about the experts (Z.123) and the underlying statistical software (Z.129 ff)
Response 2:
According for your comments, we add more details about the experts (L140) and statistical software information (L209-L219).
Point 3:
Chapter 3.2 has to be part of Chapter 2. Please, reorganize the M&M Chapter
The results for Research Question 2 are missing. Please, add.
Response 3:
we reorganized “Materials and Methods” section, and moved SEM methods from results section, make it more clear.
We added analysis and reorganized Result section for Research Question 2, and increased discussions in Discussion section.
Point 4:
Chapter Conclusion needs a revision. A summary of the main findings is not enough for a conclusion. Please, include the following steps and a bigger picture or include the text in Chapter Discussion
Response 4:
According to your suggestion, we rewrote Conclusions section, please see L417.
We also rewrote Discussion section, and explain what this means for HWB and ES and what are the implications for policy making. More detail please See Discussion section.
Point 5:
Minor Recommendations
L 108 Please change in (iii)
Table 1 Numbers of Cultivated land area and Grassland area need an explanation. Why are the sums are 333 and 217
L 199 change in m2
L 364 ff. ??, please, check
L 393 suggested citation is: “Millennium Ecosystem Assessment”
Response 5:
We corrected those mistakes.
“Table 1 Numbers of Cultivated land area and Grassland area need an explanation. Why are the sums are 333 and 217”
Because a few families didn’t have cultivated land or grassland, so the sums of them are not 344.
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Thank you for addressing the previous comments. The manuscript has much improved and gained in clarity.
Just one point: Please define the acronyms (ESs and HWB) also in the first sentence of the abstract.
Reviewer 2 Report
The quality of the revised manuscript has much improved. I am satisfied with the current manuscript.
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear authors,
Congratulations on the greatly improved paper.
I have only two minors:
1. Should it not be in the title ... from a sandy ....?
2. There is a missing space in line 325.
Best regards
