The Ecosystem Services Value Change and Its Driving Forces Responding to Spatio-Temporal Process of Landscape Pattern in the Co-Urbanized Area

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

-- Title: The ecosystem services value change and its driving forces responding to spatial-temporal process of landscape pattern in the co-urbanized area.

-- Relevance: The paper presents a discussion about the landscape pattern of Zhongmu County from 2005 to 2018 and its impact on ecosystem service value. Ecosystem services are a relevant indicator to quantify, especially in urban environments.

-- Observations:

Line 106 - Where is “and used multiple methods such as”: The authors must cite all methods or summarized their application.

Materials and Methods: The methodology attends to the proposed objectives.  

Figure 1 - The image has no appropriate resolution.

Results and Discussion: “4.1.1. Landscape elements and ESV” and “4.1.2. Landscape Index and ESV” - They are not essentials for the context. In the Result's topic, these arguments were explained very well. The discussion must detail the driving forces and geographical context. The image has no appropriate resolution.

The paper has a high potential for publication but needs revision.

The authors present a methodology and a discussion that meet the proposed objectives.

The figures and tables are self-explanatory but, the reader needs the previous reading of the appendices.

The “Optimization measures and outlook” and “conclusions” highlight the main results and the future contributions.

References errors - line: 58; 59; 63; 65; 69; 70; 72; 82; 90; 92; 96; 97; 170; 180; 185; 191; 199; 204; 215; 237; 387; 400; 405; 432; 436; 448; 558.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper mainly discusses the impact of regional landscape pattern change on regional ESV under the background of rapid urbanization expansion, and takes Zhongmou County as the research area to analyze, revealing the significance of regional development strategy on landscape pattern, and then influencing regional ESV and sustainable development.  The specific objectives are as follows: 1. Deeply explore the dynamic response of landscape pattern and ecosystem;  2. How to optimize the regional landscape pattern of urban integration;  3. Explore the dynamic changes of each driving force and its impact on the regional development planning of urban integration.  Topic selection is quite innovative, and rich in practical significance.  However, before publication, there are still the following issues that need to be improved by the author:  
1. Introduction (Paragraph 2 and 3) : It is necessary to elaborate on the close correlation between landscape pattern and ESV. Different types of landscape pattern will provide different ESV. However, the literature support here is not enough, the review is not quite systematic and logical, and the citation is not standard.  This is a very important research gap argument for this paper.  
2. Introduction (Paragraph 4) : Urbanization development will have a profound impact on landscape pattern, thus causing an impact on ESV.  This paper aims to explore the impact of urban agglomeration development policies on ESV of core areas, which is an interesting research point.  However, the author's logical discussion or argument is not enough, so it is suggested that the author strengthen the summary of this part.  
3. Materials and Methods (Study Area) : Why should this county be selected as a typical representative to reflect the development of Zhengzhou-Kaihe integrated urban agglomeration?  ?  Why is it important?  How does it fit with the research focus of this paper?  
4. Materials and Methods: Sections 2.3, 2.4 and 2.5 mainly introduce research methods, so it is appropriate to put them in a separate section - "Methods", because the current structure is a bit chaotic.  
5. Materials and Methods: The selection of landscape pattern index in Section 2.3 lacks literature or argument support.  
6. Materials and Methods: 2.5.2 and 2.5.3 are suggested as a separate section, because this section mainly introduces spatial econometric regression methods, rather than ESV evaluation methods.  
7. Results (results of spatial correlation analysis) : For the key part of this paper, the corresponding analysis of landscape pattern change to ESV change lacks quantitative analysis.  It can not reflect the corresponding temporal and spatial changes, so it is suggested to discuss and demonstrate through temporal and spatial correlation analysis.  The moran analysis currently used reflects the unilateral spatio-temporal pattern, but cannot directly reflect the interactive response relationship between them.  
8. Discussion (driving factor analysis) : As for the impact of urban planning policies on landscape pattern and ESV change response, the conclusions here are mainly elaborated by the authors subjectively, lacking analytical and inferential support.  There is also a lack of quantitative evidence to support the discussion of driving factor analysis.  
9. Discussion (Optimization Strategy and Outlook) : The policy suggestion part is more of a mere formality and has little relevance to the analysis results of this paper.  
10 Appendix: There is no need for such a long introduction of Appendix A1 and A2. It is enough to give the corresponding source of citation. At present, although detailed introduction has been added, there is no corresponding source of citation  
11. In addition, some normative contents and formats need to be further modified. For example, there are a lot of invalid links in references in this paper.  

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper focuses on analyzing the ESV value change and the main driving forces through a case study. The topic is current and valuable; the selected methodologies to reveal the complex relationships between socio-economic processes and ESV change are appropriate. However, the manuscript includes several structural and content-related issues which have to be fixed before acceptance. See my detailed comments below:

• "Error! Reference source not found.." can be read many times in the text; please correct them;
• line 57-75 and 90-104: please correct the citation form and add brackets to the numbers; 
• line 69-70: please correct the name of the cited documents: you referred to the first name of the authors instead of their surnames; moreover, where is the 17th citation? If you look at the reference list, it seems that an error has occurred regarding these citations;
• line 100: citation is needed at the of that sentence which is related to the changing landscape patterns in the study area;
• line 66-89: a bit more background is needed regarding the selected methodology to prepare the ground for the further analyses and to prove the scientific added value of the paper;
• line 105-113: this paragraph can be widened by introducing the following sections and the importance of the paper based on the previously revealed methodology-related aspects;
• line 151-159: Although this subsection's title is "Socioeconomic data,"; there are no social indicators involved in the study at all. Furthermore, how did you manage climate-related factors in the crop and grain output analysis?
• line 160-164: please clarify the selected timeframe as you mentioned this aspect before;
• The results are well introduced; there is no need to modify this chapter;
• The Discussion section introduced numerous important and relevant aspects; however, it is nothing to do with the main limitations of the study. Please complete the section with this aspect.

Author Response

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Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Overall, the author has responded well to the proposed comments, but there are still some small comments: 
- in the discussion section, the proposed analysis of the policy suggestions is not very relevant, and it may be more appropriate to remove it. 
- in the driving factor analysis section, these analysis is more about policy descriptions than driving factor analysis. 
- section 4.4 should not be placed here, or it can be moved to the last as a research prospect.

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

The authors made a really thorough revision of their paper; however, it would be helpful to use color-marked sentences to emphasize the changes they had made. The paper is almost ready for publication; although, I can suggest two minor aspects to fix them before acceptance:

1. line 121-131: please rephrase the highly long sentence.
2. 2.2.2 subsection: if the readers did not consider the impact of climate on grain prices for the time being, please indicate this in the finalized version of their paper. 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx