Evaluation of the Spatiotemporal Evolution of China’s Ecological Spatial Network Function–Structure and Its Pattern Optimization

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

 1. General remarks:

The article presents very valuable research, a very good and demnstrative overview on China´s ecologicla condition.

2.      Remarks to the theory and methods:

·        The the own theory used by authors for ecological networks and ecosystem services is wel described. Anyway, it is to mention, that there are several well developped theories on ecological networks in the world, e.g. the theories developed by Formann and Godron in North America,  the concept of Pan-European  ecological network, the national econets (NECONETS) in Europe, up to local ecological metworks and territorial systems of ecological stability (TSES) used in several countries already in physical planning and projecting, even supported by legislation .

·        It would be welcame at least to mention, or explain the relation to the basic terms of the concepts of ecological networks used e.g. core areas versus sources, bio/ecocorridors, barriers versus resistance surfaces, conflict of ecological and technical/human networks, etc.   The term „ecological source“ (in both case singular and plural) sounds very commonly, could be used in whatever concept. Probably they should mean the biocentres or ecological core areas etc. in econet concepts. Resistance surfacein relation to mentioned econets are named usually as  barriers.

·        Concerning the resistance areas: it is to be taken in acount the natural bioms and delibarate, that in each of them have the core areas, as well as corridors and resistance areas very different character. E.g. deserts are barriers for forests, but corridors for natural desert flora and fauna, similarly the high  mountains etc. And in opposite: the forrests are barriers for desert or high mountain  biota The  simply land use structure without its comparisson with natural ecosystem types is not an absolute index for the evaluation of the quality ecological networks, in particular for a such waste and diverse territory as China is. At least on the level of the division on the Fig. 11.

This remark should be reconsidered!

·        Concerning the ecosystem services: the author´s concept is acceptable and well demonstrated, but also lack some basic literature sources on the topic (e.g. Constanza and many others).

3.      Technical remarks.

·        I do not feel competent to judge the numbers on area, vollumes etc., but the  data on row 98  

„ ... inventory (1994-1998), the forest area was 15890 hectares, ...“ is a mistake. I suggest to controll all other numeric data.

- All figures are very nice and probably also the content of the maps are correct. Anyway, to follow the core messaage of the maps – the spatiotemporal changes – only visually , by comparisson of pictures, is quite hard issue.

I suggest to present less pictures – e.g at Figure 3, 4, 5, 6 the starting an final pictures – and complete the text with tables demostarating the changes of source areas, corridors, resistance ares in all observed years.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 1:

Hello! Thank you for your valuable suggestions and comments on " Evaluation of the spatiotemporal evolution of China's ecological spatial network function-structure and its pattern optimization". We are using the revision mode to make changes based on your comments, please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors construct and explore the spatiotemporal evolution characteristics of China's large-scale ecological spatial network and ecosystem services from 2005 to 2020 using the complex network theory. This study provides a reference for the future optimization of China's ecological network and zoning management. The logic of the manuscript is clear, but I still have several concerns:

1. What is the definition of ecosystem service importance, please explain.
2. What does the average path length refer to, what does it mean, and why there is no unit in the article.
3. From 2005 to 2020, the number of corridors showed a trend of decreasing and then increasing, and finally the overall number was still decreasing. What meaningful conclusions can be drawn from this phenomenon?
4. This study divides China's eco-spatial network into 5 regions. What is the geographic division based on?
5. The ecological sources and ecological corridors extracted in this study do not conform to the national three districts and four belts. What is the coincidence rate?
6. What is the coincidence rate of the ecological corridor extracted in this study with the real water system? How to connect potential ecological corridors with rivers?
7. Can this study understand network structure robustness from an ecological perspective?

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 2:

Hello! Thank you for your valuable suggestions and comments on " Evaluation of the spatiotemporal evolution of China's ecological spatial network function-structure and its pattern optimization". We are using the revision mode to make changes based on your comments, please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

In general, I think that this study presents a useful step forward for the community and that it builds on the present state of knowledge. I have a couple of concerns with the presented methodology that should be addressed. However, more details about the model development and optimization need to be clarified. My major comments and questions are as follows:

• What is the uniqueness of the proposed algorithm and its potential impacts, over other recently established states of the art for remote sensing applications? The authors should explain this aspect in the introduction section. Otherwise, the readers cannot see the importance or uniqueness of your proposed methods over other techniques.
• You need to rewrite the abstract with a proper summary. Also,  check the sentence structure and grammar errors.
• You need to introduce MCR models in the introduction?
• Why did you choose features such as vegetation, meteorology, DEM, etc.? How about soil moisture information?
• Can you clarify the temporal and spatial evolution of ecosystem services in ecological space in terms of your study area?
• Can you provide high-resolution figures (Figure 3-10)?

• Can you explain the high-resolution features and information in your application?

• How did you choose essential tuned hyperparameters for your method? You should provide a table for hyperparameters settings. What is the fundamental theory about this information?

• In the discussion section, you should discuss your results vs previous research.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 3:

Hello! Thank you for your valuable suggestions and comments on " Evaluation of the spatiotemporal evolution of China's ecological spatial network function-structure and its pattern optimization". We are using the revision mode to make changes based on your comments, please see the attachment. 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors significantly improved the manuscript by addressing all the comments.