Analysis on the Evolution and Resilience of Ecological Network Structure in Wuhan Metropolitan Area

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Congratulations to the authors for the work done.

The work presented is novel and deals with a tremendously interesting topic.

It presents some things in my opinion that should be improved:

1. The abstract is more of a statement of objectives than a summary of all the parts of the article. There is a lack of explanation of the methodology and the conclusions are not detected. It does not cover all parts.

2. The introduction is short. Section 2.1 (Research area) should be part of the introduction and not part of the methodology

3. The conclusions should be a bit broader.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

We would like to thank you for your careful reading, helpful comments, and constructive suggestions, which have significantly improved the presentation of our manuscript. We have carefully considered all comments from the reviewers and revised our manuscript accordingly. The manuscript has also been double-checked, and the typos and grammar errors we found have been corrected. 

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

Please see the attached file.

Good luck!

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewer，

We would like to thank you for your careful reading, helpful comments, and constructive suggestions, which have significantly improved the presentation of our manuscript. In the following section, we summarize our responses to each comment from the reviewers. We believe that our responses have well addressed all concerns from the reviewers. We hope our revised manuscript can be accepted for publication.

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The article, drawing on a hybrid methodology,  firstly  point out  the ecological corridors networks of the Wuhan metropolitan area in 2000, 2010, and 2020 using the minimum cumulative resistance model; then explores  the network structure evolution and resilience through network analysis in terms of network centrality, connectedness and stability. Such a analytical structure is aimed to assess the evolution of the ecological networks structure in Wuhan middle reaches over three  years thresholds and, finally, to develop a “whole-node” ecological security pattern optimization system, and investigate the ecological network structure, including the trend of regional ecological integrity  and approaches to strengthening network resilience based on ecological node analysis.

To the mentioned goals the study applies  a sound methodology approach which is well explained and draws on a comprehensive literature review.

Notwithstanding, in the opinion of the referee, some remarks may  be brought some remarks possibly helpful for the discussion section and to best clarify  and underline limits and goals of the study:

-          The relationship between some result section comments (e.g. rows 216,217, 218) and discussion evaluation (rows 241, 242) they appear not properly fitting. Particularly the decrease of the network average recorded over the studied period seems not consistent with the conclusion of a overall networks resilience increase  arguments earned with the netework analysis method;

-          Some other discordance seems to exist  between some sentences in the sect. 4.1. and 4.2 (e.g. rows : 240, 250 and 252 with 290-294).

It is possible that, despite the overall goal of the article focussing on city region level study and planning issues, it misses to underline and assess the cross-scale nature of the ecosystemic matter and of the ecological network nature as well.  Such a bias, along with the abstract approach  embodied in network analysis,  entails, in the discussion section, along with the ones previously mentioned some counter-intuitive statement according to which, to increase ecological network connectivity it is suggested to weaken secondary nodes.

The referee suggests to evaluate the utility of this remarks in improving methodology adopted limits and consistency between  results, discussion and conclusion sections.

Finally, some table  and figures mentioned in section 3.3. ( fig. 7, fig. 8, table 7)  of  the article are missing in the manuscript received, and that prevent for better evaluating some results and related discussion.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewer，

We would like to thank you for your careful reading, helpful comments, and constructive suggestions, which have significantly improved the presentation of our manuscript. In the following section, we summarize our responses to each comment from the reviewers. We believe that our responses have well addressed all concerns from the reviewers. We hope our revised manuscript can be accepted for publication.

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.