The Impact of Land Use and Land Cover Changes on Ecosystem Services Value in Laos between 2000 and 2020

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 1)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Title still has the "Coverage" term. Please change it with "Cover"

Author Response

Comments 1: [Title still has the "Coverage" term. Please change it with "Cover"]

Respinse 1 : [Thank you very much for your suggestion. We have changed "Coverage" to "Cover" in the title].

Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 2)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors' results highlight a decrease in forest areas that have been converted, for the most part, into cropland and pastures. The authors also estimate the monetary value of ES with forests making the largest contribution, followed by cropland and pastures. In addition, they show an increase in ES over the last 2 decades of about $3.94 million.

The authors use a widely used methodology for assessing the value of ecosystem services; a methodology already used in Robert Costanza's early works dating back to the late 90s.

In my opinion, if the goal is to make a picture of the value of ecosystem services in Laos with a widely tested methodology, the work is coherent. If, on the other hand, the objective is to provide a contribution to the advancement of theoretical-methodological reflection on the monetary evaluation of ESS, then the work is not sufficient.

As for the evaluation method, I would have these questions to ask the authors:

-        What is the Global Surface Cover Database's resolution for assessing land use change? Consider, for example, that in Europe, land use changes from satellite photos (Copernicus) are assessed on a 100 m * 100 m grid?

-        To better explain the meaning and role of Hot-spot analysis because I do not understand what considerations the authors can draw if a feature that has high value and is surrounded by features with high values is a hot-spot. In contrast, a feature that has low values and is 157 surrounded by features with low values is a cold spot … Significa, forse, che in quell’area possiamo supporre che siano prevalenti alcuni tipi di cambiamento dell’uso del suolo e non altri? If this were the case, would it not be an excessively deterministic approach to explain phenomena that are actually much more complex and that are decisively influenced by territorial development policies and planning choices? Among other things, in relation to figure 4 which highlights these changes within the 30 km x 30 km grids, it is not clear whether these are changes in percentage values or in absolute values. In addition, I would recommend using the same scale of values to which the colors of the changes correspond because, otherwise, we cannot make comparisons in the intensity of the changes in the soils.

 

Specific comments:

-        Par. 3.2 – I would suggest to better explain how the method of Xie et al. [23] was combined with the current LULC in Laos to identify the equivalent of each ESV function to obtain the table of ESV coefficients for Laos (Table 1). Can you clarify what it means that the value coefficient of the equivalent factor ESV is equal to 1/7 of the market value of 0.01 km2 yield in cereals grown in the region?

-        I did not understand the significance of the elasticity index that was used to measure the impact of the rate of change of LULC in a specific area. Could you clarify with some examples?

-        Lines 362-364: Increasing the value of ecosystem services in artificial areas? I ask you to better explain how this is possible?

-        Figure 6 It is not very clear what you want to highlight with the figure and the characters are too small and illegible

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report (Previous Reviewer 4)

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article has been revised and improved very well.Suggested references and bibliography https://doi.org/10.3390/su10103689 and https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19042432.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The English writing of the manuscript should be further improved to avoid some grammatical and low-level errors.

Author Response

Comments 1: [The article has been revised and improved very well.Suggested references and bibliography https://doi.org/10.3390/su10103689 and https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19042432.]

Respinse 1 : [Thank you very much for your suggestion, we have now cited these two references, references 7 and 35 (lines 43 and 142 in the revision).].

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

Comments and Suggestions for Authors ABSTRACT:

-        What does it mean first and second-level category? Please specify. Otherwise, write this part avoiding specific references that will be deepened later in the paper. This will allow the abstract to be clearer.

INTRODUCTION:

-        This part would benefit from a wider presentation of the actual methodologies from similar ESV studies.

METHODS:

-        Please further describe the way the transfer matrix works.

-        Further explain the first and second-level ESV. It is not clear to what these terms refer. I suggest the authors provide a more generic explanation of the main structure of the methodology (maybe in the first part of the section, also considering adding a sub-paragraph).

RESULTS:

-        In this section there are sometimes explanations of the results themselves. I suggest moving these parts to the proper section (discussion).

 

OTHER COMMENTS:

-        In the paper: Please change “land coverage” with the commonly used term “land cover” (also in the keywords)

-        Line 83 what is SEV? Do you mean ESV?

-        Line 128. Change “matric” into “matrix”

-        Line 142. Please erase the additional character “Construction of the l land use and land coverage change map”

-        Lines 250-253. It is suggested to move this part to the discussion section.

-        Line 173. what is meant by “fth second-level ESV”? And where it has been explained what are the first and the second levels? Deepening the methodology, I assume that the first level means the first category and the second level refers to the second category. If so, please use coherent terms (“level” or “category”).

-        Generally, try to avoid generic terms such as “significant increase”, “small amount”. “highest” etc. Instead, it is suggested to substitute these terms with the relative measures.

-        Figure 1. Please specify the DEM acronym in the figure caption

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper examines changes in land use in Laos between 2000 and 2020 and their effects on the value of ecosystem services using land use data from the Global Surface Cover Database for the period 2000-2020, ArcGIS technology, and the Constanta value coefficient table. The area of the forest has decreased significantly, while there have been increases in other types of soil, and the forest has been transformed into cropland and pasture. Ecosystem services were valued at around $25 140-150 billion, with forests contributing the most, followed by cropland and grassland. In addition, it shows an increase in ecosystem services over the last 2 decades of $3.94 million.

The methodology followed for the assessment is rather standard and does not highlight particular points of innovation in determining the value of ecosystem services.

I ask the authors to specify which classification method has been adopted for the ecosystem services assessed because it does not seem to me to have been made explicit in their work.

In the conclusions, perhaps, it would be appropriate to better develop what contribution their work can make to the implementation of policies oriented towards sustainable development and the efficient management of local environmental resources in Laos.

 

Specific comments:

Rows 143-150: I didn't really understand the transition from the 30x30 m raster maps used to identify the spatial variation of the area for each LULC class from 2000 to 2020 to the vector ones with a vector grid of 30 × 30 km with the Fishnet tool and how it was then possible to make zonal statistics to calculate the area of change of each class in each unit of the grid. Is it possible to clarify this point better?

Par. 3.2 - Explain better how the method of Xie et al. [23] was combined with the current LULC in Laos to locate the equivalent of each ESV function to obtain the table of ESV coefficients for Laos (Table 1). What does it mean that the value coefficient of the ESV equivalent factor is equal to 1/7 of the market value of 0.01 km2 yield in cereals grown in the region?

The natural breakpoint approach is a way of classifying data that is present in Arc-Gis?

I didn't quite understand the significance of the elasticity index that was used to measure the impact of the rate of change of LULC in a specific area. Could you clarify with some examples?

Table 2 to be better formatted because you don't read the values- The last row shows all positive values. Is that okay?

Figure 4 – What does it indicate? You can see the land use of the destination but not the starting land. Are these change values for 30*30 km2 grid? I would also suggest standardizing the classification scale for all maps otherwise because in maps, as they have been created now, the same colour does not always correspond to the same intensity of change ...

Rows 333-336: What does discontinuity mean? Positive and negative value change? What is high and low?

Rows 370-372-: Increase in the values of ecosystem services in artificial areas? Explain better how is this possible?

Table 4 – final row is missing the percentage change and there is a subtotal that I don't understand what does it refer to?

Figure 6 It's not very clear

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

1. This study lacks innovation and does not provide unique insights. The main research content and methods of the manuscript are not novel, only replicating existing methods and results within the framework of previous work. Please highlight the novelty of your research. What sets your study apart from existing research, and how does it contribute to the field?
2. A comprehensive literature is required for identifying the research gaps and highlights.

3. I did not observe any comparison of the authors' work's novelty index with the latest articles published in the field for the years from 2018 to 2023.

4. The research results section is cumbersome and not focused. It is recommended that the author streamline the content, focus on the most important results, and adopt a clear structure and concise expression to improve the readability and information dissemination of the paper.
5. The conclusion should emphasize the scientific significance and unique value of the manuscript, rather than duplicating the research results.

6. How to reflect the international significance of the study, rather than limiting it to one region.

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

1. The summary is suggested to be rewritten. The conclusion behind it is not concise enough.

2, 5.3 Discussion chapter, the discussion should be divided into points, now long and difficult to read, must be revised.

3, refer to the article "Spatio-Temporal Evolution, Prediction and Optimization of LUCC Based on CA-Markov and InVEST Models:A Case Study of Mentougou District, Beijing ".

4. The introduction is not enough to describe the domestic and foreign reviews, so add quotes and descriptions.

5, most of the pictures are not clear, re-submit clear pictures.

6. Check the language to avoid grammatical errors.

7. Check references.

8. The classification Cultivated land is proposed to be changed to Cropland.

9. Note the format of Figure 3.

10. Picture 6 is not clear.

11. It is recommended to abbreviate ecosystem service in the summary

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Overall grammar and expression need to be improved