Analyzing Variations in Size and Intensities in Land Use Dynamics for Sustainable Land Use Management: A Case of the Coastal Landscapes of South-Western Ghana

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This work consists of a supervised classification that has been available for many years/decades for Land Use /Land Cover (LULC) Using Landsat Data Series (MSS, TM, ETM+, and OLI). In general, the overall structure and content are fine, but the study is still weak in reference to local stakeholder discussions and effects on the landscape in GHANA. 

 

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Line 48–50: I understand that author(s) mentioned the pressure on goods and services due to different socioeconomic factors and demand/dependency on natural resources in SSA. However, it would be better if author(s) could explain scientifically rather than general comments by considering the actual causes of these pressures using previous studies and facts. 

 

Line 49, Line 52, Line 55, Line 57, and Line 58: Sorry, I could not understand the keywords like mosaic landscape terrestrial surface, sustainable development of the local landscape, broader scale landscape sustainability discourses, smallholder dominated, coastal mosaic landscape? It is better if author(s) could explain these keywords in reference to GHANA.  

 

Line 136: I think figure 1 is confusing regarding study landscape and study district. It is better to insert physical characteristics to understand the Ahanta West Municipal Assembly in figure 1. 

 

Line 139: Landsat images of 1986, 2002, 2015, and 2020. Why did the author choose only this year? Is there any specific reasons except the availability and cloud cover concern? Please justify the selection processing for the "years" to understand the local land use system and its effect on the landscape. 

 

Line 152: Figure 2 can be improved more. 

 

Line 198: Is author (s) demonstrate figure 3 screenshots of land cover types used in the classification for dry-season? 

 

Line 244: landscape’s land cover stocks? What does it mean? 

 

Line 268: The accuracy assessment should mention immediate the text according to journal guidelines. I think the section on accuracy assessment and Land use/land cover maps of AWMA for 1986, 2002, 2015, and 2020 can be separated. 

 

Please make use of font size and type from figure 5 to figure 11.

 

Line 647: The Section 4.4. Effect of rapid land-use change on the mosaic landscape is very weak in this manuscript. The title of the manuscript makes it confusing that author(s) will demonstrate how the local land-use system will affect the landscape in the study area, but I could not find any solid evidence for such a study in the manuscript. 

 

Line 27-28: I could not find the local stakeholder discussions in the manuscript. 

 

Please avoid unnecessary and long sentences throughout the manuscript. 

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.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Lines 83-84: I do not understand " ..., reducing landscape values and functions-a proxy for socio-economic activities- is inappropriate to demonstrate the sustainability of the landscape".

Materials and Methods.

Some references about How stakeholders were interviewed, how are they representative of the community studied, etc. should be shown because the authors use the information provided by these people to discuss the results.

Lines 131-133. "Considering..." this paragraph does not belong to M and M.

 Conclusions.Line 684. Really, the conclusion should be: This study demonstrates that " the use of maximum likelihood supervised classification....  as good /accurate tool for..." (Or something similar).

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Land use and land cover change research is extremely popular nowadays. While the subject certainly has exceptional significance, with the wide stream of studies published each year, one starts to wonder: what is the novelty that each new paper brings to the table?

 

I think this paper has two such qualities which deserve our attention:

1) its case area is in the still less studied African continent,

2) it provides a richly detailed discussion about the process and drivers of land cover transformation between different agricultural activities.

 

The introduction provides some research background and helps to differentiate the study from the similar research conducted earlier. However, the preceding research results about the land cover processes of Ghana and Africa could have been explored in more detail (to provide building blocks for the discussion).

Its methodology is quite standard, correctly applied and understandably described in the Methodology section.

At the start of the Results section, the presentation of the accuracy assessment is a bit superficial. Besides the table, we got only two sentences, the table values are not evaluated, some abbreviations are not explained (only much earlier with is hard to connect). I understand that it is revisited in the discussion, but this way, the table and data are here barely without any context. I recommend more explanatory information in the results section too. The results section is very rich in details, but a bit too descriptive and monotonous, which makes it hard to grasp the most relevant findings. The results section is also richly illustrated, but some of the figures need improvement: e.g. the legends of Figure 7-11 are completely wrong and misguiding. Also, I am not sure we need so much figures: the information of Figure 5. could be given only in-text instead.

The Discussion section is the strongest point of the paper. It successfully gives context to the results section and gives a narrative sense of the land cover changes and possible drivers. Exploring the transitions and underlying motivations between the different agricultural land uses is the biggest merit of the paper (many studies only fucus natural surface – artificial surface transition to reach lacklustre conclusions). The aspect I still feel a bit neglected is how these findings align with other land cover research results in Ghana, Africa, and the developing world. A more detailed introduction could help better outlining this aspect too.

The language of the paper could be further refined. In some cases, the terminology felt forced and unnatural (e.g. dormant -active, target – avoid, gainer – lo(o)ser). Also, the end marks are often forgotten.

 

In my opinion, this paper brings some novel findings to the plethora of land cover change research, and I support its publication after some small modifications.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Content, methodology and writing are okay in this manuscript. However, I have concern about about figure 4. It seems that accuracy of images for 1986 and 2002 is very less to detect the accurate changes in landscape. Also If author(s) closely looks the figure 4 and compare between 2015 and 2020. You can find easily the error in change detection– from shrub to crop land, crop to shrub land, and shrub to crop land. Or do you think the figure 4  is correct to achieve the aim of this manuscript? I personally suggest to enhance the quality of figures 4, but it is up to author(s).

Author Response

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