Analysis of the Evolution Pattern and Driving Mechanism of Lakes in the Northern Ningxia Yellow Diversion Irrigation Area

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The study reported the Analysis of the evolution pattern and driving mechanism of lakes in the northern Ningxia Yellow Diversion Irrigation Area. The results are important and present useful insights for land cover ecosystem restoration and resource conservation. I, therefore. Recommend minor revisions

Comments

L35-36. National resources. This is repeatedly used. Kindly revise

L71-72, here and where applicable in the entire manuscript, carefully control sentences/clauses repetitions

 L84-85. Are precipitation and rainfall different in this context and field?

L242. Revise capital

L259. It’s mainstream, not main stream, revise here and where applicable all through.

L257-268. In this study, we will analyze the changes of upstream incoming water, precipitation, water consumption and subsurface since 1990. Is this a proposed study or what was done in the present study? If it was done, then kindly revise the tense. Also, revision preposition, change in, and not change of.

L308. Revise tense in the word “in addition”

Section3. Change result and analysis to result and discussion. The result should be adequately supported by recent studies. Throughout the manuscript, I could not see any support and the entire manuscript is lacking a discussion of the result.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

General comments

The article is interesting, but the analyzes carried out seem to be quite superficial. There is no real discussion of the results obtained in the study. The authors focused only on registering and interpreting the changes themselves. There is no general summary of the situation in which the authors could try to answer the following questions:

What do the observed changes mean?

What to expect in the future?

Is there any way to manage these water resources?

What directions land/water management would be desirable according to the authors?

Is the region adapted (prepared) to the further progress of climate change?

Are any adaptation measures being taken?

 

In my opinion, answers to at least some of these questions would significantly increase the overall value of the article. This should also be reflected in the additional conclusion (or conclusion).

The lack of discussion of the results places the article between the recommendation "Accept after minor revision" and "Major revision". However, I am convinced that the authors are able to supplement it.

 

Additional comments

 

The paper contains a lot of minor editing errors: dots, spaces, superscripts. Some names in References are written in capital letters.

 

Phrases or entire sentences that repeat themselves appear in many places in the article; to be removed:

Line 36:

national resource [3, 4]. It is also an important national resource. The evolution of lakes is

Lines 41-42:

and reducing flooding [5-7]. The traditional analysis of the evolution of lakes is mainly

based  on  the  following  principles  The  traditional  analysis  of  lake  evolution  is  mainly

Lines 71-22:

irrigation area is crisscrossed with ditches and lakes [16]. The irrigation area is crisscrossed

with ditches and lakes. According to records, by the time of the Republic of China, Ning-

Lines 79-80:

rapidly again [17]. After the founding of New China, with the completion of Qingtongxia

Water Conservancy Hub in 1959, Ningxia Irrigation District developed rapidly. Ningxia

Line 82:

ness [18]. The climate is continental. Precipitation increases from north to south, varying

Line 203:

trend after 2010, which may be related to the This may be related to the fact that Zhenshuo

Line 286:

is still a typical In general, the Yellow River Irrigation Area is still a typical drought area.

Line 308:

period when Ningxia In addition, this stage was also the stage when Ningxia invested

Lines 323-324:

average regional rainfall, the total water consumption, the proportion of forest land, the 

proportion of grassland, the proportion of arable land, the proportion of construction land

 

Lines 17, 214, 243. Why do the authors emphasize "no obvious cyclical change"? What kind of cycles did the authors expect during the period covered by the study?

 

Lines 34-35: The first sentence of the introduction is incomplete, or it leads nowhere.

 

Line 45: The word „various” fits here better than „different”.

 

Lines 60-61: None of this postulate was implemented in the paper. This links up with my general comments.

 

Line 73: The new paragraph is in the middle of the sentence.

 

Line 76: Please convert miles into kilometers.

 

Line 81: “has a continental climate” instead of “is”

 

Line 96 (Fig. 1). Low quality map; the descriptions are barely legible.

I suggest using "Key:" word instead of "Legend".

The same for Fig. 10 (Line 280)

 

Line 117: eCognition

 

Line 119: If data were obtained from 25 stations, why is the temperature analysis only for 10 stations? (Line 209 – temperature; line 237 – precipitation)

 

Line 178: I cannot understand: what does it mean “fish tail” here?

 

Line 218. In Fig. 3, you can reduce the scale of the Y axis (e.g. starting from 6 °C) to better show the course of temperature changes. The beginning of the axis from 0 suggests that the mean annual temperature within 0 °C is possible in the studied region.

 

Line 235. The UB and UF notations are standard elements of the Mann-Kendall statistics, however they should be clarified, in the text or in the description of the figure.

 

Line 236: Should be: Rainfall

 

Line 255 (Fig. 6 and 7): It has not been explained why, despite the use of data from 10 stations (and according to Methods 25 stations), there is no data for 2011-2014. Given the runoff from these years, it probably would not change the interpretation of the results, but the lack of these data remains unclear.

 

Line 293 (Fig. 12): decimal places are redundant in numbers on the Y axis.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

see attchment 

Comments for author File: Comments.docx

Author Response

Thank you for your review!