Impact of Urban Land Expansion Efficiency on Ecosystem Services: A Case Study of the Three Major Urban Agglomerations along the Yangtze River Economic Belt
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 2)
Aim of the work is to monitor the urban land expansion efficiency (ULEE) and ecosystem services value (ESV) of the three urban agglomerations in the Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) from 2006 to 2020, and to explore the realistic impact characteristics. Some suggestions are provided in order to publish the article:
Abstract
Synthetize the main results and innovative contribution of the work
Introductio
the ES have been widely studied. Please, clarifly the innovative contribution of your work and the differences from the others. Moreover, add a table that mainly summarize the mentioned references and theri limitations. Some suggestions could be: Morano, P., Guarini, M. R., Sica, F., & Anelli, D. (2021, September). Ecosystem Services and Land Take. A Composite Indicator for the Assessment of Sustainable Urban Projects. In International Conference on Computational Science and Its Applications (pp. 210-225). Springer, Cham and Wang, X., Pan, T., Pan, R., Chi, W., Ma, C., Ning, L., ... & Zhang, J. (2022). Impact of Land Transition on Landscape and Ecosystem Service Value in Northeast Region of China from 2000–2020. Land, 11(5), 696.
Conclusions and suggestions
Add the future developments of the work, the main subjects that could be interested in the results and its applicability.
Author Response
Comment 1: Abstract. Synthetize the main results and innovative contribution of the work.
Response: Thank you very much for the comment. We have refined the abstract to further synthesize the purpose, significance, and contributions of the study, and to make the main findings more clearly presented.
Comment 2: Introduction. The ES have been widely studied. Please, clarifly the innovative contribution of your work and the differences from the others. Moreover, add a table that mainly summarize the mentioned references and theri limitations. Some suggestions could be: Morano, P., Guarini, M. R., Sica, F., & Anelli, D. (2021, September). Ecosystem Services and Land Take. A Composite Indicator for the Assessment of Sustainable Urban Projects. In International Conference on Computational Science and Its Applications (pp. 210-225). Springer, Cham and Wang, X., Pan, T., Pan, R., Chi, W., Ma, C., Ning, L., ... & Zhang, J. (2022). Impact of Land Transition on Landscape and Ecosystem Service Value in Northeast Region of China from 2000–2020. Land, 11(5), 696.
Response: Thank you very much for the comment. We have thoroughly read the relevant literature you have given, and as the comments, we have further clarified the differences and improvements between this paper and other studies on ecosystem services. We also have added a table summarizing the existing literature and its main limitations. In addition, we have further clarified the introduction to make the logic of the paper clearer and to further refine the main objectives, main contributions, and analytical framework of the study.
Comment 3: Conclusions and suggestions. Add the future developments of the work, the main subjects that could be interested in the results and its applicability.
Response: Thank you very much for the comment. We have added a paragraph at the end of the Conclusions and suggestions section to provide the current shortcomings of this paper as well as future research trends and research directions.
Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)
The whole manuscript is dedicated to the study of Impact of urban land expansion efficiency on ecosystem services: a case study of the three major urban agglomerations along the Yangtze River Economic Belt, the manuscript is very innovative, the workload is very high, the research design is more standardized and the study is very relevant, the main problems with the manuscript are as follows.
1. There are some minor writing problems with line 160.
2. Modify Fig. 1 by incorporating the entire theoretical framework into Fig. 1, so that the diagram can clearly express the content of the entire diagram. On the other hand, simplify the content of the entire theoretical framework.
3. The unit of study of the manuscript needs to be clearly explained.
4、Input indicators should mainly be construction land, output can be GDP, population, etc. It is not recommended to involve environmental indicators in the input and output, instead we believe that environmental factors can be used as control variables.
4、Incorrect expressions like "remote sensing image" need to be adjusted in the text.
5、The number of decimal places in the manuscript and in the tables needs to be standardised.
6、In the results and discussion section, the focus should be on "urban land expansion efficiency on ecosystem services", and the regression analysis should also focus on this point.
7、The whole manuscript should focus on the content mentioned in the title of the article. In particular, it should further focus on the measurement of urban land use efficiency and the regression analysis.
Author Response
Comment 1: There are some minor writing problems with line 160.
Response: Thank you very much for the comment. We have corrected the minor and removed the superfluous description.
Comment 2: Modify Fig. 1 by incorporating the entire theoretical framework into Fig. 1, so that the diagram can clearly express the content of the entire diagram. On the other hand, simplify the content of the entire theoretical framework.
Response: Thank you very much for the comment. We reorganized the logic structure of the theoretical framework, deleted some expressions with low relevance, and refined the overall theoretical framework. At the same time, we redrew Figure 1 to include the entire mechanic framework.
Comment 3: The unit of study of the manuscript needs to be clearly explained.
Response: Thank you very much for the comment. We have described the study scale and study units of this paper in detail in the Study Area section.
Comment 4: Input indicators should mainly be construction land, output can be GDP, population, etc. It is not recommended to involve environmental indicators in the input and output, instead we believe that environmental factors can be used as control variables.
Response: Thank you very much for the comment. We have carefully considered your valuable comments and also further reviewed the input-output indicator system of this study. It has been shown that inputs within a certain unit of land contain not only land itself but also very important input factors such as capital, labor, and technology, so we have selected input indicators in four dimensions: land, capital, labor, and technology. For the desired output indicators, we use GDP per land and income per capita to characterize the output benefits in terms of economy and population, respectively, we also consider that the environmental category indicator — NPP is not very suitable as an expected output here, so we exclude it. For the undesired output indicators, this study mainly uses the Super-SBM model that includes undesired output to measure the efficiency value, and the undesired output indicators here essentially have a similar role to the control variables, mainly to modify and support the original model, so SO2 and CO2 are actually included in the model as control indicators here, so these two are retained in this indicator system to fit the requirements of green development. Finally, the revised input-output index system of this paper contains 8 items in total.
Comment 5: Incorrect expressions like "remote sensing image" need to be adjusted in the text.
Response: Thank you very much for the comment. We have carefully checked the entire text and corrected inappropriate expressions such as "remote sensing image".
Comment 6: The number of decimal places in the manuscript and in the tables needs to be standardised.
Response: Thank you very much for the comment. We checked and corrected all decimal places in the manuscript, and the revised decimal places achieved uniformity and standardization.
Comment 7: In the results and discussion section, the focus should be on "urban land expansion efficiency on ecosystem services", and the regression analysis should also focus on this point.
Response: Thank you very much for the comment. We have rewritten the Results and Discussion section by reducing the content of the ecological service value measurement accordingly and adding the analysis of the efficiency of urban land expansion and its impact on ecosystem services, so that the content of this section is more focused on the theme of this study.
Comment 8: The whole manuscript should focus on the content mentioned in the title of the article. In particular, it should further focus on the measurement of urban land use efficiency and the regression analysis.
Response: Thank you very much for the comment. We further sorted out the content of the full text and further highlighted the regression analysis of ULEE measurement and its impact on ecosystem services in the Introduction, Theoretical Mechanism, Results and Discussion, making the research content more focused on the topic and more relevant to the article title.
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 2)
The efforts made by the Authors are apprecciated.
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
The manuscript attempts to evaluate the impacts of urban expansion on ecosystem services using multiple models. While the initial idea and goal seems important, the authors have failed to deliver and address the problem in proper and meaningful way. In general, the manuscript was hard to follow, and many sections and ideas were disconnected. Using different models to once evaluate urban expansion efficiency and other to evaluate the impacts of this expansion on ecosystem services values was distracting and unclear. I found the manuscript confusing and no one single idea is well addressed.
The method section was more of listing the models without even providing a solid background on them and how they were implemented in this research. In fact, I cannot see a notable method to follow and understand how the authors reached their results and findings. The methods section should allow the readers to replicate the steps and follow.
The results were again hard to comprehend and relate to each others. The ESs were not properly addressed and discussed as they were one major component of the title of this manuscript.
I would recommend to select one model and focus on the methodology. The authors should better state their research objectives and present smooth transitions throughout the manuscript.
Reviewer 2 Report
The aim of the work is to analyze the impact of Urban Land Expansion Efficiency on Ecosystem Services in Urban Agglomerations like the Yangtze River Economic Belt. The topic is extremely interesting but some suggestions are needed for publishing the paper:
1) Abstract
Please, add these missing points: clearly statement of the work's aim/s, clearly problems that it intends to fill/analyze/gives a contributions, synthesis of the main innovative contributions of the achived results that make the paper better than others on the same topic
2) Introduction
With regard to the urban land expansion/urban land efficiency may I propose some relevant references with which it is essential to refer? Morano, P., Tajani, F., & Anelli, D. (2021). Urban planning variants: A model for the division of the activated “plusvalue” between public and private subjects. Valori e Valutazioni, (28) and Manika, S., Karalidis, K., & Gospodini, A. (2022). Spatial Analysis of Economic Activities as a Tool for Effective Urban Policies. Smart Cities, 5(1), 276-293.
