Consistency and Accuracy of Four High-Resolution LULC Datasets—Indochina Peninsula Case Study

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Author mentioned in response to reviewer “We borrowed their methods, constructed validation data based on Google Earth, and supplemented relevant content in the introduction, method, results, conclusion, and abstract of the paper. This has brought important changes to the article, both in terms of content and structure. Please review the revised manuscript”– Therefore it is better to citied the articles as reviewer(s) suggested previously are as follow:

Recommended articles: https://doi.org/10.3390/w14030402

https://doi.org/10.3390/environments4020034

https://doi.org/10.3390/land10090994

The overall accuracy is low of the LULC classification, I think it is better to justify the reasons/ disadvantage/limitations of such earth observation database.

Author Response

Thank you for reviewing this article. Please see the "Response to Reviewer 1.docx".

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors took into account the recommendations made and made the respective changes in the text. I recommend publishing the manuscript in its current form.

Author Response

Thank you for reviewing this article. Please see the "Response to Reviewer 2.docx".

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

I would like to thank the authors for their careful revision. In particular, the methods and discussion sections have been greatly increased. I think my comments and suggestions have been revised in this version, and there's only minor suggestion left.
1. The links to many references show errors, please modify.
2. There are still many grammatical errors in the paper, so it is suggested to polish it again.

Author Response

Thank you for reviewing this article. Please see the "Response to Reviewer 3.docx".

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This research evaluates the characteristics, credibility, and application potential of different LULC products based on the secondary dataset of remote sensing satellites. 

The results in Abstract and Line 383–386 (text) in the manuscript have a contradiction. Please make sure. 

Line 50: I think it is better to describe the high spatial resolution dataset (30m, even 10m) more. Could you please add the “time range/availability of satellite data” of these high spatial resolution datasets? 

Line 270: 4.2. Confusion of land types: is it possible to clearly present the results? This section is too general. There is no clear description of figure 3 results in the text. 

Line379 ( 4.4. Reference accuracy of multi-source LULC datasets): I do not know why the author(s) did not mention ground truth data (e.g., GPS, google earth) as a reference to evaluate the accuracy of multi-source LULC datasets in this manuscript? 

Recommended articles

https://doi.org/10.3390/w14030402

https://doi.org/10.3390/environments4020034

https://doi.org/10.3390/land10090994

Line 383–386: My primary concern is that the overall accuracy (60%) of all datasets is still low to conduct further research related to LULCC. How does author(s) justify this? I think these lines (383–386) are significant findings of the investigation. Therefore, it should be mentioned in the abstract. 

Line 110–112: The second objective of this research is not presented in this manuscript. 

There is no discussion section in this manuscript. Please add the advantage and disadvantages of these LULC datasets and elaborate further on more in-depth LULC research on spatiotemporal changes, driving mechanism analysis, and future scenario simulations in the discussion section. 

Please make sure all dash, space, a hyphen, en dash, and capital words would be appropriate throughout the manuscript.

Please make sure the font size is in the table and figure.

Please make sure the abbreviation is clearly defined in the text.

Reviewer 2 Report

In chp. 1. Introduction, pag. 1, rows 31-32: please provide more information about the “Land-Use and Land-Cover Change” project;

In chp. 1. Introduction, pag. 2, row 57: please add the year when a reference is cited: e.g. Heiskanen et al. 2000). Please correct this to correct everywhere in the manuscript

In chp. 2. Study area and data, subchp. 2.1. Study area, pag. 3, rows 121-122: (Error! Reference source not found.). Please correct this everywhere in the manuscript.

In chp. 2. Study area and data, subchp. 2.3. Data preprocessing, pag. 8, rows180-181: please provide a number or a percent of missing pixel values.

Reviewer 3 Report

This manuscript compared four land use/land cover (LULC) dataset in Indochina Peninsula from four dimensions including similarity of type composition, degree of category confusion, spatial consistency, and reference accuracy. This manuscript can provide basic support for the study of spatial distribution patterns and dynamic changes of LULC. However, there are several critical defects in the manuscript.

My major concern as follow:

1. The manuscript is most focused on the differences of each dataset and lacks the comparison between each dataset and real LULC. The real accuracy should be the most important part of this article, instead of taking it as a deficiency of the article in line 436-438.
2. The author wrote a lot of unnecessary content in order to make the Section “3 Study method” look full. While in essence, it still hasn't changed the fact that the method is simple. It is not acceptable for journals like Land.
3. In section “4 Result analysis”, the author gives a detailed description of the research results. However, there are less discussion in this section and no clear viewpoint. For example, which datasets are better studied for a certain land use type or a certain subregion, it is the most valuable information that other researchers want to obtain. The author needs to extract more useful information from the results.
4. The legend “1, 2, 3, and 4”in Fig.4 are confusing, and which dataset they correspond to is not described clearly.
5. There are a number of grammatical mistakes in the manuscript. Also, first person narrative (language) should not be used in academic studies.

From above reasons, my decision is rejection of the paper due to the high level of Land. With some revision, it would fit well for some other journals that focusing on the LULC.