Analysis of the Spatial and Temporal Variability and Factors Influencing the Ecological Resilience in the Urban Agglomeration on the Northern Slope of Tianshan Mountain
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 3)
This study showed transitions of ecological resilience in UANST (The urban agglomeration on the northern slope of Tianshan Mountain). And it continued to find potential factors affecting the resilience. The study seems to show how and why the resilience changed by the urban agglomeration in the area with several analyses.
The study topic is definitely important and should be studied more with drastic urbanization and its massive effects to the environment and human society, however, the paper still has lack of explanations. Please check the comments below.
p.3, l.124
The authors included “habitat quality” to assess the ecological resilience without rational reason. Please indicate why the authors included it in this paragraph or around it.
p.4, l.171
The authors wrote that “(l.171) In this study, the data used to calculate the ecological resilience of the UANST include land-use data, topographic data, temperature and precipitation data, GDP data, traffic 172 data, population density data, and nighttime light data.)” However, if these data were not used to calculate the ecological resilience, this sentence should be revised.
P.6, l.209
The authors wrote that “is set based on the actual situation in the study area and relevant studies.” I could not get how the authors determined based on “the actual situation.” The authors need to explain in detail, otherwise this method seems arbitrary.
p.7, l.227
The authors wrote that “which is more in line with the actual situation of the study area.” Please explain how Xie et al is better than others. What do the authors mean “the actual situations”?
p.8, l.248
Please explain why The SHDI and AWMPFD have weights of 0.25 and 0.15, respectively.
p.9, l.311
Please explain how the authors could make the value range as indicated in table 5, which is related to this sentence “the ecological resilience scores were classified into five levels based on the changes of ecological resilience scores in the thirty years(Table 5) : very low (1), low (2), medium (3), high (4), and very high (5).”
Author Response
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Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 2)
the article is largely improved in respect to previous versions. I only suggest to review the following sentences and in particular the words marked in yellow:
1) The study by Xia et al. is representative, he pointed out that the three aspects of urban ecological resilience, which must be characterized by different indicators to reflect the comprehensive nature of ecological resilience. They assessed the changes in eco logical resilience in Hangzhou, a coastal city in China, over the past 20 years by resistance, adaptability and recovery [40].
2) In turn, this effect directly increases the risk of disaster impacts on the ecological resilience of urban agglomerations, make changes in its resistant and adaptable.
3) Such characterization is necessary and meaningful or evaluating ecological resilience which is difficult to quantify
Author Response
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Reviewer 3 Report (Previous Reviewer 4)
Authors addressed all comments although the discussion and conclusions are still a bit weak.
Author Response
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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.
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
1. It is recommended to supplement the quantitative description in the abstract part, which is a mostly quantitative description at present.
2. The logic of the research status is not clear and the expression is not rigorous. It is recommended to further sort out the research progress, existing problems, and deficiencies of the ecological resilience of urban agglomerations at home and abroad, summarize the scientific problems that need to be solved in this study and highlight the research significance.
3. The introduction of the research area is insufficient, the general map of the research area is not standardized, and the functions of latitude and longitude and compass are repeated.
4. The temperature and precipitation data in the research data are conditional. It is recommended to use the average value of adjacent 3-5 years to represent the precipitation and temperature in different periods.
5. It is recommended to consider vegetation factors in the analysis of factors affecting ecological resilience. The analysis of the impact factor results is too superficial and insufficient, and it is recommended to further analyze the current situation of the study area.
6. The discussion part needs to be strengthened, especially the demonstration of the research results, the spatio-temporal evolution mechanism of ecological resilience, uncertainties in the research, data constraints, etc. Ecological protection recommendations need to be explored in the specific context of the study area, and the recommendations made by the authors seem too general and lack relevance.
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
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Reviewer 2 Report
The article aims at providing an ecological resilience assessment of a large area, which is defined by the Authors as the fastest urbanizing region in China.
The article shows several weaknesses both in its theoretical background and in its empirical development.
In respect to the theoretical background, the main weaknesses are related to:
1) the concept of resilience as "return to an original state" has been largely reviewed by Holling itself in the Nineties (please see Holling, C.S., 1996. Engineering resilience versus ecological resilience. In: Schulze, P. (Ed.), Engineering with Ecological Constrains. National Academy, Washington DC, USA.). Moreover, there are other definitions of resilience better focused on socio-ecological systems as that one at stake (The Stockholm Resilience Centre, whose work focuses on socio-ecological systems, defines resilience as the capacity to deal with change and continue to develop).
2)the theoretical background of the proposed ecological resilience measurement framework is not adequately explained with reference to the wide literature referring to this issue (see for example: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/26270172.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A482cf517a8261a4a828a474cc516486e&ab_segments=&origin=&acceptTC=1;
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac5767
3) The choice of indicators is not adequately motivated.
With reference to the test case, the main weaknesses can be summarized as follows:
1) It is not very clear when the urbanization process started in the proposed case study area
2) Some analyses lead to almost predictable results (e.g. "The expansion of the built-up area occupied high-quality habitats, resulting in a lower overall quality of the ecosystem and reduced landscape connectivity")
3) some statements are in contradiction with each other: for example, since the expansion of the built up area (that depends on the population increase) results into a lower quality of ecosystems and a reduced landscape connectivity, how it is possible to state that the magnitude of population density does not have a strong influence on the regional ecological resilience? Moreover, the Authors state that "human-dominated land types such as construction land have a lower regeneration capacity in the face of pressures from outside"; then, in the final discussion, they state that "Regenerative capacity is an expression of the inherent properties of the land itself, which are less affected by human activities".
4) in the conclusion, the Authors state that "humans are consciously reducing their influence on ecological resilience". It is not very clear how this statement comes from the developed analyses.
Summing up, the article deserve a major revision, especially in its theoretical and methodological premises, which are not enough scientifically sound to support the test case.
Author Response
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Reviewer 3 Report
This study showed transitions of ecological resilience in UANST (The urban agglomeration on the northern slope of Tianshan Mountain). And it continued to find potential factors affecting the resilience. The study seems to show how and why the resilience changed by the urban agglomeration in the area with several analyses.
The study topic is definitely important and should be studied more with drastic urbanization and its massive effects to the environment and human society, however, the discussion in the paper seems too simple and is not fully based on previous academic discussion. The paper should be thoroughly revised with deeper academic discussion and logical connections.
<Major comments>
The authors says “The meaning of resilience means "return to the original state" at the beginning of the paper. However, the concept of resilience has a multiple meanings in its characteristics whether to define as process or output. The paper lacks this deep and wide discussions and simplifies the concept. Moreover, I could not grasp why the ecological resilience contains human aspect such as population density and GDP. The authors need to elaborate this part with showing the definition of ecological resilience.
This comment is related to the first comment. As to the analyses and implications, how can the authors judge the change as resilience? As there is no definition of the ecological resilience, we could not find what is going on in the case study areas.
The authors need to clearly state the novelty of the paper, for example, how study on UANST is important to academic discussion, etc.
Rationale to select resilience indicators are not mentioned. For example, figure 2 has no reference which means the idea came from authors. If so, readers cannot get why the diagram in figure 2 is appropriate. And why these indicators such as population density were chosen among other potential indicators. Moreover, resilience includes the value of ecosystem services in its indicator. But how it is related to ecological resilience. How human life is integrated into the ecological resilience is not clear in the paper, maybe because of the lack of its definition.
The authors also found some factors influencing the ecological resilience. However, there is no explanation how these indicators were chosen. Please add explanation on authors’ expectation before testing.
p.10, Table 4 and l. 365-571
I am wondering if these factors positively affect the ecological resilience as covariances of all factors are positive. If so, the data and its explanation are contradictory. Please clearly explain this point.
The study should end with limitations and future studies, as no study can be perfect. The authors should add this contents at the end of the paper.
<Minor comments>
p.3, l.110
“To reasonably characterize the spatial distribution of ecological resilience in the study area, after several tests, …”
—>The authors needs to explain it more how they judged reasonably, etc.
p.2, l.63
What UANST stands for?
p.2, l.84
“In summary, the future development of the UANST will experience pressure on its resource and environmental carrying capacities”
—>I could not find which parts were summarized.
p.2, l.88
“The comprehensive nature of ecological resilience allows it to reflect the effect of …”
—>Please specify what this “it” means.
p.5, l. 161-167
Please explain what “GN,” “SHDI,” etc. means.
p.9, l.311
“Cold hotspot”
—> Figure 5 says “cold spot.” Please unify the terminology if they mean the same.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 4 Report
My difficulties with this manuscript are three-fold: (1) the authors often offer mathematical constructs without fully explaining their meaning or what was measured to represent them, (2) the authors expect the average reader to understand the myriad of professional jargon associated with these types of analyses and (3) the manuscript has no real discussion and no real conclusions.
The final item is the most problematic, although the first two items are frustrating. The discussion (one paragraph) offers little to describe the importance of the work and nothing to place the work in the context of the literature or previous work. The conclusion regurgitates results and offers no indication of the work's next steps or future context.
The manuscript continually offers mathematical relationships without clearly showing where these relationships come from (there are references but little context) and often no indication of how the values were derived. There is, on occasion, inconsistency between the representation in the text and the representation in the equations, making the readers jump back and forth in the article.
General:
Page 1, Line 31: Change ecologists to ecologist
Page 1, Lines 36-38: References are needed here
Page 2, Line 47: Add a comma after pollution
Page 3, Line 104-105: There needs to be a space between the Figure legend and the paragraph
Page 3, Line 114: Is the correct word "needed" or should it be "used"
Page 4, Line 123: Change "activities so ... based" to "activities. This paper, based"
Page 4, Line 132: Add "and" after model
Page 4, Line 133: Change "assessed" to "assesses", add a period after background, Delete "and" and capitalize the following "the"
Page 4, Line 146" Is "rsietence" meant to be "Resistance"? How are Habitat Quality and Ecosystem Service Value quantified in this case. Simply referring to Costanza, McKinney or Forman is inadequate.
Page 4, Line 155: Add "(SHDI)" after patches and add "(AWMPFD)" after dimension
Page 5, Lines 160-167: Inconsistency in terminology between text and equation
Page 5, Line 200: Delete J
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Accept in present form
Author Response
Thanks for your review.
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper has been significantly improved.
However, the paper still has some weaknesses in the theoretical background and namely on the interpretation of the concept of ecological resilience. In detail:
1) line 31: Resilience is the capacity of a system, whether an individual, a forest, a city or an economy, to deal with change and continue to develop. Reference is required. Moreover, despite the authors added the definition provided by the Resilience alliance, they do not adopt such a definition nor explain the difference between this definition and the other one they provide (line 104)
2) The definition of resilience provided at lines 104 -106 should be adequately referenced.
3) Line 106: “resistance, adaptability and recovery” are the three key components used to assess urban resilience. who has introduced the three components?
4) the sentence The ecological resilience of urban agglomerations is a complex adaptive system should be better clarified; socio-ecological systems are, indeed, generally defined as complex adaptive systems and resilience as a set of properties/features of these system.
finally, the article requires an indent English and text review since it includes numerous mistakes.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 4 Report
The authors have addressed my concerns
Author Response
Thanks for your review.
