Which Provincial Regions in China Should Give Priority to the Redevelopment of Abandoned Coal Mines? A Redevelopment Potential Evaluation Based Analysis

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript uses the Driving force-State_Response (DSR) model to classify the potential to redevelop abandoned mines in China. It is a well-designed, comprehensive, study. however it is too long, the authors should condense it and remove the non-technical, subjective information.

The title should reflect the fact that the mines considered in this study are coal mines

The authors explain the assumptions they made to rank parameters, for example, small mines are assumed to have caused more serious damage to the environment than large mines (L. 166-168). However, these assumptions are not recognized in the discussion as a possible margin of error.

I found the text hard to follow as the information is repetitive and often subjective sentences are mixed with the results, which is confusing to the reader. Also, non-relevant information about some specific provinces of China is more distractive than informative (e.g., L. 330-345)

In several instances, the authors write “in our country” (L. 81, 365) without acknowledging that the journal is international. The word “China” should be used instead.

Sentences are unclear at times. See L. 179 “considers the support degree of local external development conditions”. Besides the poor grammar, “local” and “external” are opposite, how can they be local and external?

The text leads the reader into interpreting the results together with the advantages and disadvantages of the implementation in each of the provinces, which seems unprofessional as the results should be presented and the recommendations made, and no further. Please remove sentences listing the specific measures “the government of these regions” should take (e.g. L. 427-433). Once you present your results and give your recommendations, the message is sent to the readers (public) and there is no need to give direct instructions to a specific party.

Tables. Tables should be self-contained, any acronyms spell-out, and either units or the possible range of values included. (see Table 6).

Figures are good, however the labels are hard to read. Increase the font size.

Grammatical errors abound.

A few specific edits to consider (only the first page to give an idea of where errors may be) are included below:

L. 3   abandoned coal mines

L. 15 Replace “. On this basis, this article employs” by “, followed by”

L. 18-19 The paper takes methodology is applied to the 25 coal-producing provinces of China as the subject and studies the redevelopment potential of 19 abandoned mines from provincial perspective

L. 24 resource, . It declines declining obviously from the southeast to northwest.

L. 24-28 unclear sentences. Rewrite and give some numerical (ranked) results. Instead of “the government”, use the more general term “decision makers”.

L. 122-125 Remove the whole paragraph.

L. 166-168  Due to the fact that Most of small-scale coal mines are non-national mines, the poor were constructed with substandard mining technology conditions at the mining stage resulting in causing serious damage of  to the underground space. Moreover, the uncomplete incomplete mining records mine information make the results in a low redevelopment value of these mines. [Note: The term non-national may mean different things in different countries, therefore it is not a good qualifier].

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

In order to direct the layout of regional abandoned mines redevelopment, this paper constructs a comprehensively assessment framework for abandoned mine redevelopment potential based on the Driving Force-State-Response (DSR) model. Overall speaking, the paper is well-written. The research methodology was clearly explained and the research findings were clearly presented.

However, there are some grammatical errors in the manuscript. The authors should have the paper proofread by a professional English writer. Detail comments are given below.

1. How to confirm the correctness of the quantitative analysis results of this study?

2. The results are relatively superficial, and more analyses are needed, to enhance the new contributions, new findings or new implications in this paper. 

3. It is hard to find the international implications from this paper

4. What are the reasons for insisting on using the word reutilization? (Although not a common word)

5. Papers that directly take abandoned mines as the research object and provide a general analysis framework for reutilization pattern selection have not been found." - Explain more detail about this claim.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

It is interesting to investigate the reconstruction of abandoned mines and propose measures for sustainable development, especially from the perspective of national development. However, China not only has a vast territory but also has huge social and cultural differences. The authenticity of cloud data analysis results needs to be carefully examined. Here are a few comments:

1. Why should the author divide it into 5 types of potential levels and 8 categories of redevelopment sequences?

2. This research concludes: "The provinces with high potential for redevelopment of abandoned mines in China are concentrated in the middle and eastern regions". The most populous area in China is here. It's easy to think of, where are the special discoveries obtained through the cloud analysis?

3. It seems that it is not difficult for a person with the concept of sustainable development to draw the conclusions of this study. The author should emphasize the unique contribution of this research.

4. The references are relatively old, and I suggest the authors update them to the latest.

5. The structure of the paper can be improved. For example, rather than using numbered paragraphs from line 111 to line 119, the authors should write in a paragraph.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

In this revised version, the authors took care of most recommendations but English is still in need of improvement, especially for clarity purposes. For example (page 1 shown here, but authors should revise the whole manuscript):

The keywords show the term redevelopment potential, however in the title and in the text it says redeveloped potential. Change all redeveloped to redevelopment for consistency as well as for better wording

Line 15. The sentence starting with ..Followed by... has no subject (incomplete sentence).

L. 25 . "It declines declining obviously from the" ..... is wrong, plus this information seems to be unnecessary. I would recommend to remove this sentence from the abstract.

L. 44.. and tourism resources, etc. Remove either "and" or "etc.", both in the same sentence do not read well.

L. 185 Due to the fact that most of small-scale coal mines are non-national mines, the poor mining technology conditions at the mining stage results in serious damage of underground space. 

using the "national" or "non-national" qualifier on a mine is not correct. The real reason for small mines to cause damage to underground space is a deficient construction and, as you mention later on in the manuscript, incomplete information about the resource. 

This sentence could read instead: "The fact that most of small-scale mines operated using poor mining technology result in serious damage of the underground space."

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf