Integrating IPAT and CLUMondo Models to Assess the Impact of Carbon Peak on Land Use

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for giving me this opportunity to read the manuscript entitled "Booming or steady? Integrating IPAT and CLUMondo models to assess the impact of carbon peak on land use". The topic of this manuscript is interesting and would be a good contribution to this field. I think it could be considered for publication in Land once the following issues are addressed.

1. Please replace the keywords that already appear in the manuscript’s title with close synonyms or other keywords, which will also facilitate your paper to be searched by potential readers.
2. Lines 145-147: References should be added to support the statement of “The built-up area increased from 400,058 square kilo-145 meters in 2010 to 60,721 square kilometers in 2020.” 
3. Lines 53-54: “Many studies have found that realizing the carbon peak policy will impact land use changes [16]; …”. Some newly published papers are suggested to be cited here, for example, the paper titled “How does urban expansion impact people’s exposure to green environments? A comparative study of 290 Chinese cities”.
4. The discussion section needs to cite appropriate literature to discuss whether the results and findings of this study support/subvert existing conclusions or opinions, as well as provide an appropriate explanation of why the results were generated. However, the authors only give the contribution of their work, which I think is not a good way to present the “Discussion” section.
5. I suggest the authors add a “Limitation” as a sub-section to the “Discussion”.
6. Figure 2: Please add “Scale” to the maps here. “1:1000km” is not the right way for electronic version articles/maps.
7. The manuscript's language still has some grammatical errors. Therefore, a critical review of the manuscript language will improve readability.

Author Response

please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

1. The title is specific and relevant but in my opinion “Booming or steady?” must be removed.
2. Authors and affiliations are well list and the correspondent author is mentioned.
3. The abstract has 209 words. The purpose of the study is explained in the first two sentences of the abstract. The methods concerning the IPAT and CLUMondo models were used to simulate the carbon emissions generated from a natural development scenario. The results showing the carbon emission are summarized. The main conclusion is indicated.
4. Keywords are specific to the article.
5. The introduction places the study in the context of carbon emissions mitigation and the carbon peak policy’s impact on land use. Key and recent publications are cited in the text. The purpose of the work and the significance of carbon emissions mitigation and the potential relationship between carbon peak policy and land use change are mentioned at the end of the paragraph.  The introduction paragraph is comprehensible for a large number of scientists outside the topic of the paper.
6. Materials and Methods are described with sufficient detail and allow other researchers to replicate them.
7. Carbon emission were projected for three scenarios (NDS, IPS, and RCS) from 2011 to 2030. CLUMondo simulation of land use change involved cultivated land, woods, grassland, building land, waters and unusued land was also investigated under NDS, IPS, and RCS scenarios.
8. Results are discussed and interpreted in perspective of previous studies concerning the carbon emission and land use change under different scenarios. Future research directions concerning carbon emission prediction model and the impact of increased policy planning and combine CLUMondo with other models are also mentioned.
9. Figures and tables are easy to interpret. There are no additional graphics that would add clarity to the text.
10. Conclusions and policy recommendations highlight the importance of carbon emissions mitigation when facing limited land area and land intensity.
11. References are all cited in text. The research literature is relevant for the paper topic.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript entitled “Booming or steady? Integrating IPAT and CLUMondo models to assess the impact of carbon peak on land use” focused on the simulations with IPAT and CLUMondo models to predict carbon emission in different scenarios of China environment. The topic is interesting and actual, and in my opinion the authors effectively explored the topic in the Introduction section. Also, the Materials and method are clearly explained and described as well as the results obtained.

In my opinion, the authors should cite some previous studies in the discussion section (for example at page 11, lines 446-449). Moreover, the figure 3 could be improved, explaining in the caption the mean of the percentage on the right axis and the mean of lines. Finally, the authors could change the key words since all words indicated are present in the title except “scenario analysis”. I suggest including words relate to the study area.

I believe that the paper should be published after minor revisions.   

Author Response

请参阅附件。谢谢！

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for giving me this opportunity to read the revised version of the manuscript and for the detailed responses to my earlier comments. I am satisfied with this revised version, and I think it is acceptable now.