Spatiotemporal Relationship between Ecological Restoration Space and Ecosystem Services in the Yellow River Basin, China
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This manuscript examines the relationship between ecological restoration and ecosystem services in the Yellow River Basin. While many manuscripts have explored this topic, this paper lacks novelty. Most of the conclusions can be found in previous literature, and the workload is average. Although there are no scientific errors, the author has not provided sufficient justification for publication. Therefore, I urge the author to address this issue in the revised manuscript and cover letter. I am interested in seeing how the author can enhance the manuscript's contribution to the field.
In addition, I suggest that the authors consider the following comments:
The manuscript's title is overly long, and the subtitle provides little additional information beyond the study area.
The citation formatting in Line 114 is incorrect, and similar errors can be found throughout the manuscript. Additionally, there are citation errors in some of the figures, such as in Line 249. The author should have carefully checked and corrected these issues before submitting the manuscript. The presence of such minor errors raises questions about the author's attention to detail.
The quality of Figures 6 and 7 needs improvement, as the distribution maps are difficult to read. This issue could be addressed by increasing the resolution or providing a larger scale image.
The author mentions three objectives of the study in the citation. I suggest that the author address each of them in the conclusion section. This will allow the author to fully demonstrate how these objectives were met or not met by the study.
Section 4.2 does not appear to be a recommendation section, as it contains too much content related to the results. I suggest that the author shorten this section and focus only on targeted recommendations based on the manuscript's main findings. It is important to note that the recommendations should correspond one-to-one with the primary findings of this study.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Overall, I think this is a useful paper that demonstrates an approach that gives important insights into land management priorities to restore ecosystems in ways that provide ecosystem services. Unfortunately, I found the level of English expression to be poor, making it difficult to comprehend the manuscript in places. Another consequence of this poor expression is that the key messages and insights are not always highly apparent. In my detailed comments below I identify examples and make suggestions for improvement.
In general, I found the objectives of this study to be important and well justified by the literature review. The methods appear to be state of the art and appropriate, although I am not expert in the analysis of remote land use data at these scales. I think that the reporting and interpretation of the data are valid and insightful, although I express some concerns below about the level of explanation in figure and table captions and the limited clarity of some conclusions.
Missing references to figures: It is disappointing that this manuscript was sent for reviewing with numerous errors in cross reference to figures, beginning at line 114.
Inappropriate words: Throughout, I found examples of incorrect use of words, or missing words, leading to lack of clarity or unintended meaning. I have not tried to identify all instances. I suggest that an editor should be employed to tidy up the English expression. Below are some examples.
Line 12: “a method employed an ecological restoration trajectories model was developed”. It appears that “employing” was intended instead of “employed”, but I suggest that “a method employed” could be deleted altogether.
Lines 13-14: “Besides, the InVEST model and geo-graphically weighted regression were to evaluate the key ecosystem services such as habitat quality(HQ), …”. “Besides” is not necessary and “used” should precede “evaluate”.
Line 54: Insert “was” in “which --- seen”
Line 75: I suggest that it is not appropriate, or intended, to describe HQ, CS, SC, WY and WP as “problems”.
Lines 141-142: “This study referred Du et al., (2022) temporal segmentation and change detection methods”. Either “referred to” or “used”.
These are minor issues. More important are statements that are either unclear or require further explanation. Examples are given below.
Line 21: It is not clear what “variation levels” means.
Lines 60-65: An unclear sentence that requires reading several times (by me, anyway).
Lines 65-66: I suggest that the authors should be explicit about what is meant by “ecological hot spots” and why the methods listed above can “effectively extract” them.
Lines 65-67: This sentence does not make sense. If we ignore the middle part, the sentence reads “... the indirect extraction method of ERS ... has new problems because of … indirect extraction method”.
Lines 67-70: The first sentence is difficult to interpret. It could be more clearly written as: “An ERS may be a new area created by an ecological restoration project (Zhai and Huang, 2022) but it may also be an area of outstanding ecological quality that already exists or has developed its quality without human intervention.” The meaning of the second sentence is not clear to me: “It may be biased to describe the regional restoration effect quantitatively”.
Line 73: I suggest deleting “and its impact on the ecosystem”. It is redundant because the sentence has already referred to the effects of ERS on ESs. Also, ESs only focus on some aspects of ecosystems.
Line 143: It is not clear to me what “interannual ERS dynamic identification research targets” are.
Line 144: I suggest that alternatives should be found to the terms "ecological and non-ecological land". All land is ecological is some way. Even a piece of apparently bare ground has an ecosystem.
Line 148: “froest” typo
Lines 157-158: Further explanation is needed here. It seems that an assumption has been made that forests are the preferred ecosystem in all places.
Lines 178-179: It is not clear to me how data to calculate habitat quality was obtained (I assume it was from CLCD). Table S1 only lists sensitivity data and these data are not explained in either the caption to the table or in the text. I found this table very difficult to understand.
Lines 213-214: Here and elsewhere, Moran’s I is not well explained. It is a measure of how random versus clumped the distribution of data is. My understanding is that “spatial autocorrelation” is more appropriate than simply “correlation” to describe this.
Lines 361-364: “By binary superposition of the cumulative area of ERS with the change values of ESs from 1990 to 2015, divided the YRB for ecological restoration and green development into several situations”. This is a key conclusion, but this sentence is not at all clear. I think that what it is saying is something like: Overlaying the cumulative area of ERS on the changing values of ESs from 1990 to 2015 (Figure 7), reveals several different situations with significance for land management. I suggest that the caption for Figure 7 could be expanded to explain the tables more clearly. It took me a long time to work out how to interpret them. Once I had worked it out, I found this a very interesting and useful figure.
Line 376: I suggest that the “lag effect of ERS on ESs deserves more explanation.
Lines 376-377: Please expand on is meant by this sentence.
Line 384-385: Please expand on is meant by this sentence.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The author has addressed all my concerns and I recommend it for publication on Land in its current form.
Author Response
We have corrected the misspellings in the manuscript. Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
