Modeling Urban Growth and the Impacts of Climate Change: The Case of Esmeraldas City, Ecuador

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Overall, this is an interesting paper and an enjoyable read.

The English is OK, but there are a number of places where the content lacks clarity due to jarring grammar or phrasing. For example I don't understand the logic of this sentence "Urban land growth is an important process that has a strong relationship with population growth and their scientific evaluation is the basis for governments to make policies cautiously (Zhang et al., 2020)" - specifically the second half "and their scientific evaluation is the basis for governments to make policies cautiously": 

Author Response

Thank you for your comments. Pleasee see attached 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper was an interesting topic as it predicted climate change and urban growth by selecting Esmeraldas, Ecuador, and I think it is considered very suitable for the journal of "sustainability". Since the overall content was written in-depth and the variables were selected in detail, I think there is no big problem with publishing if only a few minor matters are corrected. One question when selecting variables is whether "proximity to rivers” can be selected as accessibility-related factors on the same level as "proximity to roads" or "proximity to focal point" in Table 1. Is the area close to the river-related to urban growth? If you have any reference data on this part, it would be good to mention it.

In addition, in Chapter 1 introduction, which accounts for many papers, it seems like it explains Esmeraldas like an encyclopedia, so I think it would be good to revise this part. Rather than simply a vast explanation of the area to be studied, it is requested to investigate the methodology of previous studies similar to this study and briefly describe the theoretical background of urban growth modeling methods (CA in this study).

Author Response

Thank you for your changes, please see attached. 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

A strong and compelling paper, obviously well researched and with access to solid data. CA seems like a very suitable prediction tool here. The accuracy of the trial run, as shown in fig. 6, is impressively good. I suspect the reason you had (red) misses in many of the outlying areas is CA's tendency to build on and accelerate based on a critical mass. If the starting point is spotty or small, the CA simulation may not find enough support points in its proximity and will start eliminating or reducing occurrences, eventually withering them down to nothing. Not sure if you can make adjustments for that. In the same figure, many of the false alarms seemed to be surrounding the creek, for some reason. 

The very last sentence in your paper is important, in that it hints at counter measures to your prediction, possibly triggering somewhat of a reversal or at least deceleration in the forecasted trend. 

I found two possible errors or typos: Page 18, five lines from the bottom: "However, population that lives on areas exposed to flooding areas stand out due evident worst conditions."  (Bad syntax)

Page 20, in the Demographic Features of the table, you list "Population". Not sure what you mean by that. 

On the last paragraph of page 21, your font size all of a sudden grew. 

There are a handful of other very minor typo or grammatical issues, but overall this is a very well written paper with lots of food for thought. 

Author Response

Thank you for your review. Please see attached

Author Response File: Author Response.docx