Analyzing Urban Agriculture’s Contribution to a Southern City’s Resilience through Land Cover Mapping: The Case of Antananarivo, Capital of Madagascar

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The „Analyzing urban agriculture contribution to southern city's resilience through land cover mapping: the case of Antananarivo, capital of Madagascar” is an intriguing article, applying state-of the art methodology to provide new insights about a crucial issue: land use patterns and conflicts in the metropolitan areas. The three main objectives of the paper are clearly outlined: to design a methodology for distinguishing the fragmented urban and agricultural spaces in the metropolitan areas of the developing world; to better understand agri-urban landscapes and city-agriculture interactions; and to quantify urban agriculture functions and give valuable information to policymakers. In order to achieve this, a high resolution, three-level categorization of the urban, natural and agricultural areas of Greater Antananarivo was created and analyzed accordingly.

The Introduction section successfully presents the main goals of the paper, and the methodological challenges of the subject. However, the literature background concerning urban agriculture and land use conflicts in the metropolitan areas of the developing world is somewhat sketchy in my opinion – some detailed examples would enrich these paragraphs.

The Materials and Methods section is very elaborated and provides a clear understanding of the research design. The applied methodology is coherent, in line with the stated goals, and utilizes innovative solutions (Random Forest classification).

The results are described in a satisfactory manner. The structure of the section reflects the main aims of the article. The high accuracy and Kappa-index values support the adequacy of the selected methodology. A link to a well-managed dataset containing the produced land cover maps is also provided. The Conclusion reflects the main findings, notes the limitations of the study.

I have only a few remarks:

• There is a typo in row 309 (level 4 instead level 3). Also, there is a typo about the levels in the Table 4.
• The references contain double numbering.
• In my opinion, the language of the paper is very good, yet it still contains a few instances of incorrect terminology, namely: ultra-downtown area or ultra-center (I recommend core urban area) and local hydraulic scheme (maybe water management system?).

In summary, this is an excellent paper, and I recommend it for publication after some minor corrections.

Author Response

Dear colleague,

Thank you for reviewing our article and for the feedback you have given us on the quality of our work.

In accordance with your remarks, we have improved the article:

- In the introduction we have completed the context concerning urban agriculture by using new bibliographical references (lines 41 to 45);

- In line 309 (now line 317) we have corrected the error on the classification level number;

- We have corrected the double numbering of the bibliographic references section;

-  We have modified the incorrect terminology by: “core urban” (lines 365, 405, 429 and 503) and “water management system”(line 448).

The article was reread and corrected by an English native speaker to eliminate the errors that you had noticed.

I think the improvements we have applied have improved our article and I hope they are in line with your request.

Best regards,

S. Dupuy

Reviewer 2 Report

The article deals with a topic of considerable interest in developing countries, as is the case.

In general, the method is well applied and the results well analyzed.

However we think that there are some comments that should be taken into account:

1. The summary could very briefly provide some quantitative data as a result of the investigation.
2. There is no bibliographic review of the works previously carried out in this line of research in the introduction. We believe that a better review of previous works should be done
3. Figure 1 is unclear, it should be improved, although the information it transmits is very accurate
4. Also improve Figure 2, it is not readable. Improve lines and colors to quickly identify areas. The color of "Other land use" blends into the background.
5. The classification of urban objects on lines 187-189 does not correspond to the images in Figure 3.
6. In line 259-260, it is said that “which have been shown to be equal or better than other algorithms such as… .., AdaBoost and neural networks [18],… ..” First of all, I do not strongly agree with this statement given the power that artificial neural networks demonstrate in many fields. Although the referenced bibliography assures this, the difference between neural networks and other methods is not very significant either, nor is there a large number of studies pointing in this direction, otherwise it would be advisable to refer them to more studies
7. At line 282 it is not clear what is the cell size used for classification.
8. Line 315, why is the confusion matrix obtained at level 3 not shown?
9. In the Land use maps of Great Antananarivo, designated as Figure 1 again. I recommend the use of hatches or hatched symbols to distinguish at level 3 all kinds of crops, using only the color is very difficult to read the map
10. There is no comment at any time, at what graphic scale would the cartography be prepared to be printed?
11. I fully agree on the potential of using LiDAR for this type of study, as indicated by the authors in the conclusions

Author Response

Dear colleague,

Please see the attachment.

Best regards,

S. Dupuy

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Reviewed paper focuses on achieving three main objectives: 1) to design a methodology to map simultaneously urban and agricultural spaces within chosen cities, 2) to use remote sensing data to better understand agri-urban landscapes and city-agriculture interactions, 3) to quantify agriculture functions. To achieve these purposes, Authors suggested their own method. They described the procedures used to develop the land-use map, its characteristics and its reliability, the procedure used to develop the agri-urban landscape map and its composition /pattern, and finally the analysis of urban agriculture main functions in terms of food security, employment and interactions with the city.

The paper concerns significant and current issue - the use of new technologies and digital tools in space and land management. Authors presented well developed and prepared set of digital tools aimed at supporting decision-making process in urban development and land management. Selected topic can be considered as quite novel. The quality of presentation is high (paper is understandable and easy to read) and the work is complete. The main strength of the paper is its contemporaneity and well prepared presentation. Authors used relevant and up-to-date resources, mainly articles from the international scientific journals.

The keywords are selected properly and the main body of the article is constructed in a very good manner. I especially appreciate the well described method. There is a minor suggestion concerning abstract: Authors should explain the term “southern cities” (it is too ambiguous). The part “study area” could be improved by adding the map presenting it (it can be removed from the other part of the paper). These minor corrections will improve the quality of the paper.

Generally, the paper is clear and well organised. The references cited are correct and adequate to reflect other work. Paper also is coherent with aims and scope of the journal. This paper covers following areas: Land systems science, land management and land planning. Therefore, I strongly recommend this paper to be published.

Author Response

Dear colleague,

Thank you for reviewing our article and for the feedback you have given us on the quality of our work.

Please find an answer to each of your remark here below :

- “Authors should explain the term “southern cities” (it is too ambiguous)”

à The term “southern cities” is used in many other references in the literature:

• Eriksen-Hamel, N., Danso, G., 2010. Agronomic considerations for urban agriculture in southern cities. International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability 8, 86–93. https://doi.org/10.3763/ijas.2009.0452
• Hordijk, M., Sara, L.M., Sutherland, C., 2014. Resilience, transition or transformation? A comparative analysis of changing water governance systems in four southern cities. Environment and Urbanization 26, 130–146. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956247813519044
• Myllylä, S., Kuvaja, K., 2005. Societal premises for sustainable development in large southern cities. Global Environmental Change 15, 224–237. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2005.01.001
• Parnell, S., Robinson, J., 2012. (Re)theorizing Cities from the Global South: Looking Beyond Neoliberalism. Urban Geography 33, 593–617. https://doi.org/10.2747/0272-3638.33.4.593

Consequently, we have chosen to keep it in the document.

- “The part “study area” could be improved by adding the map presenting it (it can be removed from the other part of the paper)”

à We have created a new figure (Figure 1) showing the study area with a Digital Terrain Model displaying  the topography of the area. As a consequence we have modified the figure presenting the distribution of the collected waypoints (now figure 3) in order to remove the localization of the area.

The article was reread and corrected by an English native speaker to eliminate the errors that you had noticed.

I think the improvements we have applied have improved our article and I hope they are in line with your request.

Best regards,

S. Dupuy