The Spatial Distribution of Fallow Land and Its Ecological Effects in the Agro-Pastoral Ecotone of Northern China

Comments 1: The layout of the three small figures a, b and c in Figure 3 needs to be combined into a complete figure.

Response 1: Thank you for pointing that out. We agree with that comment. Therefore, in line 171 of Section 2.1 on page 4, I combined three maps a, b, and c to show the research location in a more concise graphic.

Comments 2: Table 2 in part 2.3.1 of this paper is Classification criteria of cultivated land ecological vulnerability assessment indicators. Is this classification first created by the author? Again refer to other literature, if reference to other literature, please cite the appropriate reference.

Response 2: Thank you very much for your valuable advice. When constructing the cultivated land ecological fragility index system, we have made reference to the literatures on cultivated land health and cultivated land ecological fragility studied by scholars. The literatures previously cited focused on various categories of indicators (such as society and economy, etc.), and lacked references to the overall framework of the index system, so the references are now added to line 298 of Section2.4.1 on page 8.

Comments 3: How the Erosion intensity is defined in Table 7 of this paper is not clearly explained in the method part;

Response 3: Thanks for your suggestion and reminder, we have added the classification basis of soil erosion in section 2.4.7, lines 466-469 on page 14

Comments 4: The contents of Figure 1 and Figure 11 are not clear and cannot be identified. I hope they can be replaced with HD pictures;

Response 4: Thanks for your comments, we have redrawn Figure 2 (original Figure 1) on page 6, Chapter 2.3, line 222, and improved the accuracy; We have redrawn Figure 10 (original figure 11) on line 653 of Chapter 3.3.1 on page 24 to enlarge the font and improve the accuracy of the picture

Comments 5: The discussion part of this article needs to be further completed. For example, the discussion on the analysis method and the comparative analysis with the relevant literature in similar areas is lacking in this paper.

Response 5: Thank you for your questions about the discussion section of the study. In view of your comments, we have re-analyzed the discussion section on page 29, Part IV, 777-840, and divided it into three parts: The first part "The Rationality of Ecological Fragility Evaluation of Cultivated Land as the Basis for Fallow Land Layout"; the second part "Discussion on the Implementation of Ecological Effects of Fallow in the Northern Farming-Pastoral Ecotone"; The third part, "Effect of Fallow Period Length on Ecological Outcomes", discusses the methods of this study and analyzes and compares the methods of other literatures of the same type.

Comments 1: The language of the paper is quite unrefined. In the first sentence of the abstract, "For an extended period", are you trying to say "For a long period"?

Response 1: Thank you very much for your valuable comments. We have refined the language of the study according to your comments.

Comments 2: I don’t see a necessary logical connection between the first sentences and the fallow restoration projects mentioned in the second sentences of the abstract. The logical relationships in the methods section are also very unclear. How is the comparative analysis of ecological effects conducted? The methods statement in the abstract failed to clarify this.

Response 2: Thanks for your valuable comments, we have rewritten the summary, paying attention to the logical relationship between each sentence, and explaining the method used in the ecological effect.

Comments 3: There is excessive redundant content in the abstract, with critical information seriously lacking, especially quantitative results.

Response 3: Thank you for pointing out the problems in the summary. We have deleted irrelevant redundant information in the summary and added quantitative information in the results section.

Comments 4: Line 148 clearly should belong to the methods rather than objectives. The introduction section contains too much redundant content and is overly long.

Response 4: Thanks for your valuable comments, we have cut out some irrelevant content in the introduction, and removed the method section of the first part of the third page, line 142 (originally line 148) from the target.

Comments 5: Figure 1 seems unnecessary, and I couldn’t clearly discern the research framework from it.

Response 5: Thanks to your suggestions, we have redrawn Figure 2 (original Figure 1) on page 6, line 221, and rearranged the logical relationship between the frame diagrams.

Comments 6: Figure 2 is also evidently redundant, and the legend seems to have some problems. In particularly, the location map of the study area is generally presented as Figure 1; this is the first time I’ve seen it as Figure 3. While in Figure 3c, what is the boundary line within the study area? Is it a county boundary? At what spatial scale was this research conducted?

Response 6: Thank you for pointing out the problems in Figure 2 and Figure 3. At your suggestion, we deleted the original Figure 2 and redrew Figure 3 (now Figure1) in section 2.1 and row 169 of page 4. The research was carried out by county and the county boundary legend was added

Comments 7: In section 3, Materials and Methods, what’s going on? Doesn’t “Index System Construction” belong to Materials and Methods? This is the first paper with such disorganized content I’ve seen. In section 3.3.1, Entropy Weight Method, determining weights is a crucial step—did the authors really conduct this step based one no references?

Response 7: Thank you very much for pointing out the problems in this part. We have sorted out the contents in order according to the structure of the paper, and put the "index system construction" part into the "Method" in line 275 of section 2.4.1 on page 7. References are introduced in the entropy weight method weight calculation on page 10, section 2.4.3, line 349.

Comments 8: Line 415, are you sure this is the calculation formula for NPP?

Response 8: Thank you very much for your comments on this section. The original formula of 415 lines (now page 13, Section 2.4.7, line 453) is the calculation of vegetation carbon sink, which uses NPP data. The source of the data is explained in section 2.2, line 178 on page 4.

Comments 9: Line 422, how were the data involved in this model obtained?

Response 9: Thank you very much for pointing out the problem. The Rusle model includes elevation data, soil property data, rainfall data and vegetation cover data respectively, which have been explained in Part 2.2 of page 4 and calculated above.

Comments 10: The methods section should be presented according to the actual methods and steps used by the authors, but the current presentation is too chaotic. What’s worse, how were ecological effects of fallowing from 2015 to 2023 examined? The methods section failed to provide any corresponding content. The content arrangement of the results section should generally align with that of the methods section, but right now, the methods section is disorganized, making it impossible for the results section to keep consistent with it.

Response 10: Thank you very much for pointing out the problem. The Rusle model includes elevation data, soil property data, rainfall data and vegetation cover data respectively, which have been explained in Part 2.2 of page 4 and calculated above.

Comments 11: Figure 5 showed the most fundamental and important results, but it is too unclear and the figures are too small.

Response 11: Thank you very much for pointing out the problem. We have enlarged the text of Figure 5 (now figure 4) in line 522 of section 3.1.2 on page 15 and improved the clarity of the picture

Comments 12: In Table 4, what does “Ind” mean? This table is quite poorly presented, and figures and tables should not expand across pages.

Response 12: Thank you very much for your questions. According to your suggestions, we have revised the language problems in Section 3.1.2 on page 14 and Table 4 on line 525, and processed all the tables in this study without crossing pages.

Comments 13: Lines 519-521 clearly belong to the methods section, yet the author does not mention these contents there. Lines 594-606, this paragraph also clearly belongs to methods rather than results. The organization of this paper is too chaotic, the methods and results are very seriously mixed.

Response 13: Thank you very much for your question. We have deleted the method part from lines 519-521 of the original manuscript (Part 3.1.2 of page 14 now), and the method part from pages 594-606 of the original manuscript has been deleted and inserted into lines 415-426 of section 2.4.7 of page 12.

Comments 14: The discussion should focus on the methods or results of this paper, but there is too much irrelevant content in the current discussion.

Response 14: Thank you for your questions about the discussion section of the study. In view of your comments, we have re-analyzed the discussion section on page 29, Part IV, 777-840, and divided it into three parts: The first part "The Rationality of Ecological Fragility Evaluation of Cultivated Land as the Basis for Fallow Land Layout"; the second part "Discussion on the Implementation of Ecological Effects of Fallow in the Northern Farming-Pastoral Ecotone"; The third part, "Effect of Fallow Period Length on Ecological Outcomes", discusses the methods of this study and analyzes and compares the methods of other literatures of the same type.

Comments 15: The conclusion is also disorganized and severely lacks quantitative information.

Response 15: Thank you very much for your question. We have revised the conclusion of Section V, lines 843-863, on page 30 and added quantitative information.

Comments 1: I recommend that the authors refine the abstract to better highlight the innovation and necessity of their research.

Response 1: Thank you very much for your suggestion. We have rewritten the abstract to grasp the logical relationship between sentences and introduce quantitative information to highlight the research results.

Comments 2: Please address formatting, wording, language, and grammar issues following the journal's requirements

Response 2: Thank you for your comments, we have revised and reviewed the language of this study.

Comments 3: The English language and style are generally acceptable, but minor spell checks are necessary.

Response 3: Thank you very much for your comments, we have re-checked and corrected the spelling of the language

Comments 4: For Figure 3, it is advisable to create a standard research location map that includes details such as location, topography, landforms, land use, and other relevant information.

Response 4: Thanks for your suggestions on the research, we have redrawn the original figure 3 (now Figure 1). In Section 2.1 of page 4, line 169, three maps a,b and c are drawn as one, showing the geographical location and topographic information of the region.

Comments 5: Figure 1 is currently blurry and unclear; modifications are needed to enhance its clarity.

Response 5: Thank you very much for your suggestion. We have redrawn the original picture I (now picture 2) on page 6, part 2.3, line 222, and changed it to vertical distribution and refined the content to improve the picture clarity.

Comments 6: For Figure 9, I recommend merging the smaller maps into a single image to facilitate analysis.

Response 6: Thanks to your suggestions for the study, we have redrawn the original figure 9 (now Figure 8) in line 604 of section 3.3 on page 20 to highlight the regional information and topographic information of three small regions in the northern agro-pastoral ecotone.

Comments 7: The methodological section is somewhat simplistic; I suggest simplifying the theoretical introduction of the methods used.

Response 7: Thanks for your suggestions on the study, we have made corresponding changes in section 2.4 "Methods" on page 7: Delete the redundancy theory part in section 2.4.7 of page 13, and add the practical operation procedure of the method in section 415-426 of section 2.4.7 of page 12.

Comments 8: It would be prudent to delete the last column of Table 5.

Response 8: Thanks for your suggestions on the research, the last column of empty values in Table 5 has been deleted.

Comments 9: Additionally, supplementary analysis regarding the impact of changes in meteorological factors, such as precipitation, on the fallow area would be beneficial.

Response 9: Thank you for your valuable suggestions regarding the study. You recommended incorporating the influence of rainfall on the ecological effects of fallow areas. I would like to clarify that the rainfall factor has already been considered in the analysis of soil erosion, as calculated using the RUSLE model in Section 3.3.4 on page 26 of the study. The RUSLE model includes several components: the rainfall erosion factor, soil erodibility factor, slope length and slope factor, soil and water conservation factor, and vegetation cover factor. In this analysis, we present the combined effects of these five factors to calculate the amount of soil erosion. If a separate analysis of the rainfall factor is warranted, we can certainly propose it as a standalone factor for further investigation.Look forward to your suggestions.

Comments 1: Line 148: The terms "latitude" and "longitude" are generally not mentioned in this way.

Response 1: Thank you for your suggestions. We have changed the expression of latitude and longitude in accordance with your suggestion to make it more accurate

Comments 2: The subheading could perhaps be changed into "Data Sources and Pre-processing." The author should include more information on the data pre-processing.

Response 2: Thank you very much for your suggestions. We have revised the subtitle of section 2.2 and added the details of processing ndvi data in lines 177-180.

Comments 3: Sections 2.3 and 2.4 could be combined. Moreover, there is a lot of redundant content in section 2.3. Section 2.4 also contains excessive redundant content. The author should briefly present the methods and steps used in this paper, without including too many explanatory or general knowledge.

Response 3: Thank you very much for your suggestion. According to your suggestion, we have merged the contents of 2.3 and 2.4, the redundant contents have been simplified, some contents have been rewritten, the duplicate contents of the research framework in 2.3.1 have been deleted, the specific framework details have been rewritten according to the contents of the article, and the original research method of chapter 2.4 has been changed to Chapter 2.3.2. And update the content

Comments 4: This paper contains too much irrelevant content and is overly scattered. The author should remove sections that are not closely related to the main topic, e.g., section 2.4.6, which is unnecessary.

Response 4: Thank you very much for your insightful suggestions! We deleted section 2.4.6 and deleted the corresponding section 3.1.3.

Comments 5: Line 405: Why is the explanation of this formula placed above the formula rather than below it?

Response 5: Thanks to your suggestions, We have deleted this part of the content and checked whether there are similar errors in the full text

Comments 6: Section 2.4.7: The authors used multiple methods to analyze ecological effects but fails to provide an overall evaluation indicator, which results in scattered conclusions. This also makes it difficult for the reader to understand the overall ecological effects.

Response 6: Thank you for pointing out the problems in Section 2.4.7. According to your suggestions, we have established an index system for the assessment of environmental conditions: Ecological Index. By calculating the overall index to judge the overall ecological situation, the research avoids the dispersion of the discussion content, and divides it into four parts for specific discussion, so that readers can better understand the overall environmental trend

Comments 7: The organization of the results section is also still chaotic, and the themes are not clearly highlighted. For example, according to the methods section, cultivated land vulnerability is used to identify fallow land. Therefore, there is no need to present too much content about cultivated land vulnerability in the results section.

Response 7: Thank you very much for pointing out the problems in this part. We have deleted the superfluous method details described above, and added a new method comparison description in 4.2

Comments 8: The problem of mixing methods and results remains quite serious. The results section should not include any statements about the methods or steps, e.g., Lines 579-582.

Response 8: Thank you very much for your comments on this section. According to your suggestion, we have deleted and simplified the parts in the whole article where this problem occurs, and we will pay attention to this problem in the writing process in the future!

Comments 9: The discussion section should focus on the methods and results of this paper, but the current discussion still fails to make it.

Response 9: Thank you very much for pointing out the problem. We added the detailed discussion on the results and deleted the part of methods already explained above. For example, in line 664-674 of part 4.1, we added the result of dividing fallow areas in the northern agro-pastoral ecotone, and discussed the reasons.

Comments 10: Lines 780-786: I do not understand what the authors are trying to convey here.

Response 10: Thank you very much for pointing out the problem. This part has been mentioned in the previous part, should not be put into this part to elaborate too much, has been deleted according to your suggestion.

Comments 11: The organization of the conclusion section is also very disorganized and does not clearly present the main findings of this paper.

Response 11: Thank you very much for pointing out the problem. In the result part, we used more detailed figures to describe the ecological effect of fallow implementation, and subdivided the ecological effect of various aspects, and detailed the result part.

Comments 12: Lines 848-857: This content clearly should belong in the discussion rather than the conclusion.

Response 12: Thank you very much for your questions. As you suggested, we put the contents of lines 848-857 into lines 709-718 of the discussion section to avoid confusion with the results.

Comments 1: The abstract is obviously too long.

Response 1: Thank you for your suggestions. We have simplified the length of the abstract and revised the content.

Comments 2: Although I understand what NDVI stands for, the authors still should follow the rules for using abbreviations.

Response 2: Thank you very much for your suggestions. We explain the definition of the NDVI index, which first appeared in Chapter 2.2

Comments 3: Line 183: Which version?

Response 3: Thank you very much for your suggestion. I am very sorry for not giving a complete explanation of the database information. The soil data used in this study came from HWSD2.0.

Comments 4: It’s clear that Section 2.3.1 is entirely redundant. Most content in this section do not belong in the research framework. Are the authors attempting to explain why certain ecosystem services were selected as indicators of ecological effects in this section?

Response 4: Thank you very much for your insightful suggestions! In Section 2.3.1, we have made a simplification of the contents involved in this study, and added why these indicators were chosen to evaluate the ecological effects of fallow cultivation

Comments 5: Line 217: Is this section trying to justify the selection of specific ecosystem services as indicators of ecological effects?I still don’t understand why the authors added Figure 2 in this paper. What is the relationship between this figure and this paper? For example, ecological compensation appeared only in this figure and references. Is this figure the technical framework from the author’s dissertation?

Response 5: Thanks to your suggestions, We have simplified the information in the frame diagram and deleted the content of ecological compensation.

Comments 6: Cultivated land ecological vulnerability or ecological vulnerability of cultivated land—which professional term did the authors intend to use?

Response 6: Thank you for pointing out the problems in study. We unified the professional terms of the whole paper, using cultivated land ecological vulnerability as a unified term.

Comments 7: Line 311: The variable descriptions below the formula are still poorly formatted. Even the variables in the text do not match those in the formula.

Response 7: Thank you very much for pointing out the problems in this part. We rewrote the variable description below the formula and made changes to the variables that did not match

Comments 8: Line 330: This section title is clearly unrelated to this paper’s title. What are the authors trying to present here?Where is the analysis method for the ecological effects before and after fallowing?

Response 8: Thank you very much for your comments on this section. This part should be the evaluation method of ecological effect of fallow - ecological index, the title has been revised

Comments 9: (6) RUSLE Model: What is the logical connection between this section and the previous content?

Response 9: Thank you very much for pointing out the problem. The relationship between method (6) and method (5) has been supplemented

Comments 10: Where is the title for Section 3.3? Sections 3.3.1 and 4 should be key results of this paper, but what methods were used to obtain these results? The methods section lacks much of the necessary information.

Response 10: Thank you very much for pointing out the problem. We have made changes to the title of 3.3, the method description in section 3.3.1 of the article is method (5) and method (6), and the naming error in section 4 has been corrected to 3.3.6

Comments 11: What is the logical connection between Sections 4 and 3.3.1? Are the authors sure that the subheading in Section 4 consistent with the content?

Response 11: Thank you very much for pointing out the problem. We have changed the titles that do not match

Comments 12: Line 634: This is the first time I’ve seen this subheading.

Response 12: Thank you very much for your questions. We have changed the title of this section

Comments 13: Line 733: Environmental quality evaluation—are you sure this paper conducted such an evaluation? What about the results of the ecological index?

Response 13: Thank you very much for your questions. We will use inappropriate terminology that has been modified and have revised the content of the conclusion section on the evaluation of the ecological effects of fallow