Analysis of the Implementation Status and Characteristics of Ecological Restoration Projects in Korea: Ecosystem Conservation Charge Return Projects
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 3)
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe authors made a number of revisions. I greatly appreciate the authors' revision. Although I think this article is more of a research report than a scientific paper, I think it still has a chance of being published.
1. It is suggested that the authors highlight the experience or lessons of the study results for similar projects in other parts of the world.
2. It is suggested to ask native language researchers to revise the English of this article.
Author Response
- Thank you for your valuable comments! Changes based on your suggestion have been made throughout the text.
- English proofreading was completed by a professional native English science editor.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 1)
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThis article has improved in its quality tremendously compared to the previous version. Aside from minor inquiries, the main concern now is to revise the discussion. You cannot have so much findings and only 3 paragraphs of discussions which are mostly related to present study findings. Take more time to read, reorganize the discussions and come up with a better version.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Thank you for your valuable feedback! Comprehensive revisions have been performed throughout the entire manuscript, including the Results, Discussion, and Conclusion sections.
[M1] The table was removed from the Introduction, and a written description of the content was provided.
[M2] The errors were corrected.
[M3] Changes based on your suggestion have been made throughout the text. The strengths and limitations of the study were also added to the Conclusion.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe authors analyzed 277 ecosystem restoration projects in South Korea to examine project location trends and target species selection. This work reveals the current status and existing problems of these projects. For example, most projects are relatively small in scale, but an increasing number have clearer recovery goals and target species, especially birds, amphibians, and insects. Project locations and target designations are also becoming more diverse. The overall idea of the article is clear and provides specific and detailed baseline information and data for policy makers and conservation practitioners. I suggest some minor revisions. Here are my suggestions:
Main Concerns:
I think the Results section could be shortened by reducing the amount of content focusing just on project status (Section 3.1 to 3.3). While status details are important context, there is less content on the characteristics and outcomes of the ECCRP projects. I suggest the authors reorganize the Results to appropriately condense the classification of different projects and increase content analyzing target protected species trends and implications.
Minor comments
1. Line 103 delete extra space in "T he"
2. Line 165 change "habitat" to "habitats"
3. In Figure 1, consider increasing the number class intervals so that color differences are more distinct across provinces with variability in project numbers. Adding longitude/latitude may also improve context.
4. Move Line 262-264 to Materials and Methods section.
5. Line 421-423 "The ECCRP, based on the polluter-pays principle, has been a representative restoration project in Korea, and the number of completed ECCRPs has steadily increased since its start in 2003." cite a figure or references supporting the statement on number of completed projects increasing over time.
6. Line 428-429 clarify what "numerous changes" refers to.
7. Line 448 what Article 43.2 refers to.
8. In Conclusions, highlight one or two sentences summing up key research achievements or novel contributions of the work.
Comments on the Quality of English LanguageLanguage is clear and understandable.
Author Response
Thank you for your valuable feedback! We have revised the Results section according to your suggestions.
1–4. The required modifications have been made.
- Changes have been made to lines 407-411.
- Adjustments have been made to lines 414-418.
- This part was deleted during the editing process.
- The conclusions have been revised to highlight key research achievements and novel contributions of the work.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
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
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThis article uses classifications to define the condition of data and then process the raw data using descriptive interpretations. However, the analysis falls short of measurements and indications and without these, no new information is generated. The article is attached with comments but generally, the revision is more than total rewrite of this article.
The guide includes:
1. Set a theme for this work. Charges can come in the form of land title change, development type and approval mechanics.
2. Highlight on Red Listed species (in IUCN) and then design a map to inform readers where these species reside. Development overlap with wildlife boundaries is a geospatial analysis that would be appreciated.
3. What sort of mechanism was introduced by Korea regarding development. How many projects abided to the charges and what could be the future confidence? Carry out a SWOT analysis.
4. Impose statistical analysis to demarcate the confidence for projects by their category. Carry out a trend analysis and inform readers the sensitivity if implementations disregard or deviate from baseline settings.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
The language is acceptable and the writings style is good. However, minor mistakes to grammar and syntax are present but these could be rectified if the authors check the consistencies in sentence phrasing.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe scientific questions and contents of this study are valuable, however, this manuscript has some obvious defects that reduced the reliability of its results, or even can make misleading results. The followings are my suggestions to the authors for the improvement of this research:
1. Some important information should be mentioned in the Introduction. For example, why did you carry out this study? What aims you have by this research? What can its results be used for? Conservation implications, or population management?
2. How did you choose the variable that included in the final modeling and excluded the other variables? As variable selection can have important impacts on the modeling results, more details about the method of variable selection are needed here.
3. Modeling and selecting parameters need more detailed information.
4.How was the performance of the model/ method evaluated?
5. There is no information about how the future predictions were established. Actually, future predictions should be projections of the current niche models into future environmental envelopes. This study seems like the authors used current occurrence locations and future environments to build future distributional predictions separately. If so, the results could be unreasonable and misleading.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsI think the authors have done a lot of work. But I have to reject this paper. Because, this is not an academic paper, but a research report. It reports some facts, but these facts are not attractive to readers other than locals. I suggest that the authors analyze the available data and hopefully draw some conclusions that can be referenced elsewhere.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
