Stakeholders’ Perceptions towards Land Restoration and Its Impacts on Ecosystem Services: A Case Study in the Chinese Loess Plateau

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Detailed comments can be found in the attached annotated PDF.

Overall, I think this kind of reflection on the perceptions of changes to land use policy is incredibly valuable and your results should be shared. I have concerns, however, with the detailed quantitative assessment and number of groups studied. Some groups have fewer than ten observations and i would strongly advise aggregation, e.g. famer vs. non-farmer before you perform such detailed testing for relationships. 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

1. This research report and the authors´analysis adds to existing studies of the Chinese Loess plateau restoration efforts by contributing evidence of the value of seeking and evaluating stakeholders´ assessments of past interventions as well as for planning future interventions. 

I found the section on "existing issues and recommendations" to be a very valuable addition to the analysis of stakeholder responses. It provided more context as well.  The discussion of tree species and the photos was also essential for all readers to understand the situation. 

2. There are some odd uses of English that should be corrected by a style editor. 

For example, line 451 - are admitted..

that these impacts are admitted by local stakeholders.

for example, the use of "Literally" (line 475) is jarringly out of place , as though a person is making an opinion while speaking:

Please provide a definition of "ecological forest"  ,line 496.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx