The Morphology of Evolved Urban Fabric around Farm Ponds
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear author,
Generally, I consider this text as a well written one and pointing to a really actual and important topic. But the study is dealing on a local scale and is based on descriptive analyses of the land use change, which may not be of much interest to international readers. On the other hand, the chosen study area may draw some interest because of super-high dynamics of development.
So the general findings and comments to improve the paper are:
- try to add some methodological novelty into your paper using GIS (eg. landscape metrics) or statistical methods. And consider also my remark to l.277
- however in abstract is emphasized that paper wants to explore pond’s potential relationship to the concept of Transit-Oriented Development (TOD), I consider it to be an untapped opportunity to make the paper more interesting to wide public as the attractive TOD topic remained hidden somewhat in the background
- methodological part must be extended to close the gap in information about land-use classification used (see remark to l.136-138)
- discussion part of the paper summarizes the findings and experiences gained from the study of the four ponds in question. However, these should be set in an international context and critically compared with the results of other studies from different parts of the world.
And now some detailed remarks line-by-line:
l.13: the high dynamics of land-use changes in study area should be mentioned in abstract
l.114 onwards: missing resolution (pixel spacing) for imaginery and precision scale for topographic map sources
l.136-138: from the figure (or text) is not clear which land-use classification was used (how many and which classes) and how large was the minimal mapping unit; how the authors distinguished different land-uses from land-cover (eg housing/mixed use/local workshop/services from general build-up)?
l.182: source of photos is missing (authors’ own work?)
l.193; l.208-214; l.219; l.237; l.247: probably mistyped unit. There is no “M” in SI units, neither base nor derived. The writing of numbers should be unified in the whole paper (thousand separator; decimal symbol)
l.192-194: the sentence does not seems to be in coherence with fig.7. Alongside m2 also % of the whole area should be added.
l.200: the separate parts of figure should be marked from a) to h) and for five bottom images I would recommend to write the year directly into the image to improve the orientation of reader. There is missing legend for land-use change outputs (eg. what is orange color?). The individual parts of image are quite small and I recommend to split it into two separate figures (Fig. I: a)+b) in upper part and photo from c) in the bottom line vs. Fig. II: five land-use change maps arranged in two lines (3+2))
l.204; l.224; l.243; l.258: units and description of axes should be written vertically from top to bottom; why there is 2020 mentioned when no land-use analysis was performed? The scale of right vertical axis should be the same for all four figures to improve the comparability and clarity for readers; unify font in the table (mixing of serif and sans serif fonts is a typographical error); in three figures (first, second and fourth) are missing values for land-use change compared to the third one
l.221; l.239; l.254: similar comments as for l.200
l.261: this activity is missing in methodology chapter – eg. which tool was used to perform the verification? I do not understand the tolerance calculated – difference of 697 sq.m. is not 1.15% out of 5332 sq.m but aprox. 12 times more.
l.277: proposed topic to extend discussion on methods and tools used – what was the motivation of author to use AutoCAD and Adobe Illustrator for the study and what were the cons and pros of these tools in comparison to GIS tools such as ArcGIS or QGIS which are more common in landscape ecology research?
l.289: update the figure design similarly to remark for l.204 (description of axes; font unification) and l.193 (writing of numbers)
l.406: mistyped surname of author in reference nr. 12. Should be „Pfefferbaum“ instead of „Pfe_erbaum“ – twice
I hope my comments will help you to increase the quality of the text and the paper will be successfully published.
Your faithfully
Reviewer 1
Author Response
Dear Reviewer:
On behalf of my co-author, I’ll like to thank you for the significant reviewing effort. The comments are very enlightening. Hopefully I have answered all the questions. All the answers are followed by notes: (as added between line xxx – yyy) for quick search.
In the manuscript, the texts in blue color refer to the answers to all the reviewers’ comments and questions.
Your effort is highly appreciated.
Best regards,
Naai-Jung Shih
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The article presents an interesting topic and elaborates it sufficiently. The structure of the article could be additionally improved to provide better understanding of the study.
Introduction should include the main aim of the research, emphasize the key relation which will be analyzed (for ex. urban development - resilience - urban morphology/efficiency/etc.), provide an insight into its importance in both international and national context and, finally, summarize all the steps/parts of the article. The study area should be presented briefly, as well as its overall specificities, but its historical development (maps included) might fit better into the part related exclusively to the case study(s).
The second part might benefit by including the short overview of recent international/national studies targeting similar problems (defined by the aim and the main research relation).
The third part, related to methodological issues and sources, should include part related to the selection of case studies (criteria of selection and comparison which are currently a part of case studies).
The fourth part should completely focus on the presentation and analysis of the area and selected cases. Therefore, I would suggest inclusion of all segments (currently given as separate parts - a section of the Introduction related to the development of the area, as well as segments 4,5,6).
Discussion provides all necessary information, while Conclusion could be improved, introducing the possible directions of further research and relating them to similar international (and multidisciplinary) experiences.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer:
On behalf of my co-author, I’ll like to thank you for the significant reviewing effort. The comments are very enlightening. Hopefully I have answered all the questions. All the answers are followed by notes: (as added between line xxx – yyy) for quick search.
In the manuscript, the texts in blue color refer to the answers to all the reviewers’ comments and questions.
Your effort is highly appreciated.
Best regards,
Naai-Jung Shih
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
This paper analyzes the transformation and retention of farm ponds in northern Taiwan in the face of urban development. The authors correctly frame the evolution of the ponds through urban resilience and the urban resilience literature.
The original purpose of the thousands of ponds was irrigation and rainfall catchment. But with urban development, many ponds were destroyed.
The four case studies involve the creation of parks around three ponds and the use of the fourth for photovoltaics. These appear to be successful transitions. The parks provide open space, passive recreation, beauty, and festival and cultural space for the nearby residents and tourists.
The paper is well-illustrated.
The remote sensing identifies the pond location and size and surrounding development. An issue the authors should address is the anticipated effect of this development (residential, mixed use, commercial, and schools) on the water quality of the ponds. Greater impervious surface typically means reduced water quality.
The authors should also explain the Wetlands Conservation Act of 2015 as it applies to the ponds.
Finally, the authors should discuss the transferability of the case studies of the ponds to urban resilience efforts around the world or at least elsewhere in Taiwan.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer:
On behalf of my co-author, I’ll like to thank you for the significant reviewing effort. The comments are very enlightening. Hopefully I have answered all the questions. All the answers are followed by notes: (as added between line xxx – yyy) for quick search.
In the manuscript, the texts in blue color refer to the answers to all the reviewers’ comments and questions.
Your effort is highly appreciated.
Best regards,
Naai-Jung Shih
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
Dear Authors!
I am sorry to say but the scientific level (the novelty of research methods and the research topic) is very low. Unfortunately, your research design and the structure of your manuscript is not well developed, the introduction section contains the descriptions of the study areas. The research goals are not clear. The description of the study area, the introduction and the materials and methods are mixing with each other. Unfortunately, I can say the results and the conclusions has a very local interest, and almost nothing international significance. There is no any new element on the used very old-fashioned methodology. It is not clear why did not you used any GIS methods (Arc GIS, or QGIS) for calculations of different areas of the land cover types? AUTOCAD, and Adobe Illustrators are just a vector based graphical software’s. I think this is a very descriptive study about the land use change of the surrounding areas of the selected ponds of the study area. It is trivial, that the built-up areas has been increased because of the urbanisation process. Regarding with the figures: There is no scale on the figure 1, and the visibility of the maps is very low. The legend of figure 2 is too small. There is no scale on the Figure 4, 13, 14 and 16. The Figure 15 is unclear, it is hard to understand.. What is A1-5 etc.
I am very sorry, but I must reject your manuscript, Best wishes:Reviewer
Author Response
Dear Reviewer:
On behalf of my co-author, I’ll like to thank you for the reviewing effort. Hopefully I have answered all the questions. All the answers are followed by notes: (as added between line xxx – yyy) for quick search.
In the manuscript, the texts in blue color refer to the answers to all the reviewers’ comments and questions.
Your effort is highly appreciated.
Best regards,
Naai-Jung Shih
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear author,
I am glad to see you made significant step to improve your manuscript. It seems to be much better now. But still I have a few last remarks to be fixed:
l.193/194: still is not clearly explained which the structure of land-use classification was used for vector representation. You mention 167 resp. 57 classes, but structure is still unclear (Do I understand well, that you used these from TGOS?). A clear link to paper/source already published with the description of classification system will be likely or you can develop an annex with your own description of individual classes (be inspired by existing papers such as: doi: 10.1016/j.landusepol.2019.02.041; doi: 10.3390/land9080273 or doi: 10.1007/s10980-020-01059-9).
l.196: housing/mixed/commercial are widely recognized as categories of land-use, not of land-cover (for LC “build up“ should be correct).
l.259, l.278, l.290, l.312: there is a typo in the figure („develped“)
l.312: missing „thousand separator“ in the figure
I.437: missing explanation of UAV - probably unmanned aerial vehicle (aka drone)
With regards
RW1
Author Response
Dear Reviewer:
On behalf of my co-author, I’ll like to thank you for the significant reviewing effort. The 2nd review was returned in one single day! All the comments are very enlightening. Hopefully I have answered all the questions and corrected all errors. All the responses are followed by notes: (as added/corrected/shown between line xxx – yyy) for quick search.
In the manuscript, the texts in green color refer to the changes made for all the reviewers’ comments and questions.
Your effort is highly appreciated.
Best regards,
Naai-Jung Shih
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
Dear Authors!
As I see you made significant changes in your manuscript, and added some new paragraphs into the text. Although can I see a nice improvement on the quality of the paper, unfortunately I also see some weakness too. In the introduction you should define more clear point by point the aims of your study. What are your research questions what kind of methodological problems would you like to solve? You should define it in short sentences or short questions! In the methodological chapter, you should underlie more precociously the novelty and the international significance of your methodology.
I offer you to create an independent ‘Discussion’ chapter, where you should compare your findings (results) with another same studies. You should put many international references into this new chapter and to demonstrate the novelties of your results.
Based on the methodological chapter it is not clear how was the borders of the ponds were delineated? The digital land cover maps was created based in visual interpretation of the Google Earth satellite images, or with some automatized recognition methods?To tell the true, he visual observation based digitalization of lakes is very old fashinoed traditional method without any novelty.
Unfortunately, the quality of figures is usually very low. For instance, in case of Figure 2, there is no legend, and no scale! The quality of the pictures (maps?) is also very low in the Figure 2. In upper parts of the figure 6, 8, 10 and 12 you created just a low quality print screen cut offs from the monitor! I am very sad to see that the line on the edges (tray of your windows) is visible. The legend of the maps is missing in case of the c, d, f …etc. of Figure 6, 8, 10 and 12. What is the meaning of green lines? Main road? Why is it missing from the legend?
Regarding the title of figure 14: what kind of borders visible on this figure? What is the meaning of blue and white patches on the 14/A figures? The scale and legend is missing on this figure! Please don’t describe the legend in the text!
On the table 4 and the figure 16 the scale of the maps is not visible!
Generally, the English of the text is very poor. For instance, in Line 193-194. is it a kind of land cover classification?
The sentences in line 80-81 is not necessary, you should delete it!
I think this manuscript need major revision again! best wishes: Reviewer
Author Response
Dear Reviewer:
On behalf of my co-author, I’ll like to thank you for the significant reviewing effort. The 2nd review was returned in one single day! All the comments are very enlightening. Hopefully I have answered all the questions and corrected all errors. All the responses are followed by notes: (as added/corrected/shown between line xxx – yyy) for quick search.
In the manuscript, the texts in green color refer to the changes made for all the reviewers’ comments and questions.
Your effort is highly appreciated.
Best regards,
Naai-Jung Shih
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
