Habitat Protection in Urban–Rural Fringes through Coordinated Ecological Network Construction and Territorial Planning

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

In their study, entitled "Habitat protection in urban-rural fringes through coordinated ecological network construction and territorial planning" Yuting Xie et al. map urban-rural fringes (URF) in Qingpu District using nighttime brightness to construct ecological networks (EN). This approach includes identifying both URF and non-URF ecological sources and building an EN from a resistance surface, aiming to enhance habitat connectivity and protection comprehensively.

I find the approach outlined in the manuscript by Yuting Xie et al. both interesting and pertinent, and I appreciate the potential of the proposed framework for conservation purposes. However, there are several concerns that need to be addressed before considering it for publication.

 

General comments:

 

1.     Methodological Justifications: Several methodological choices require further justification or explanation. Many of the parametrization choices seem arbitrary. A more thorough explanation of these choices, including any supporting data or literature, are necessary.

2.     Discussion: The discussion section could be more focused on analyzing how the findings compare with existing literature and should provide a deeper exploration of the potential ecological impacts of potential pertubation of URFs.

3.     Clarity: The manuscript often uses undefined acronyms and fails to specify key classification criteria clearly. This lack of clarity could hinder the reproducibility of the study and its understanding by a broader audience. All acronyms and classifications need to be explicitly defined at first use.

4.     Data transparency: The manuscript occasionally references results and data analyses without providing sufficient supporting data. I suggest the authors to provide these data or preliminary results as supplementary material. 

5.     Graphical representations: The figures and tables in the manuscript are not always self-explanatory.

6.     Consistency and relevance: There are inconsistencies in terminology and figure referencing which need to be addressed to avoid confusion. Moreover, some of the figures and sections do not directly contribute to the paper's core arguments and should be revised or moved to supplementary materials.

 

Line-specific comments:

- L. 15, 76 and 124. You should clarify that URFs are defined based on nighttime data.

- L. 104: Spell out LULC at first citation.

- L. 112: Specify the 11 classes.

- L. 146-147: Clarify the role of classifications in delineating URF to prevent guesswork by the reader.

- L. 153-164: Provide detailed explanations on how weights to threat factors and decay are set, given the variability in habitat suitability parameters across different land cover types. Permeability of landscape elements is species specific.

- L. 161-162: Clarify how sensitivity to threat sources was established. It is unclear how reference 51 was used for that purpose.

- L. 163: Justify the choice of five levels and include a citation for the natural break method.

- L. 173-175: Explain the rationale behind the optimal 40m edge width. Did you analyze the distribution for varying levels of habitats to guide your choice. The proportion of each habitat quality levels should be provided at least in the supplementary material., with results included in supplementary material.

- L. 175-180: Include results of analyses in supplementary material.

- L. 177-180: I don’t understand the rationale for considering a good thing that core areas represent only 0.4% of the total foreground area. Would it be really different if you used areas with a 2.0 hm2 threshold.

- L. 184: Explain the rationale for using dPC > 4 as a threshold for high-value habitats.

- L. 194: Define what constitutes an "appropriate" disturbance of local vegetation communities.

- L. 200: Provide basis for defining 0.4hm2 as the optimal minimum core area.

- L. 216-218: Discuss the reasoning behind the chosen number of categories; appears arbitrary.

- L. 218: Explicitly describe the summation process.

- L. 223: Ensure consistency in terminology concerning habitat quality levels. Here you refer to “relatively high” while used “moderately high) L. 217. 

- L. 225: What is the rationale behind setting an upper limit for the area of patches serving as stepping stones.

- L. 227: Recommend using a subjective criterion to define the threshold of the cumulative score.

- L. 230-235: Justify the selection of landscape elements for the resistance surface, considering species-specific permeability.

- L. 231: Clarify MSPA landscape types.

- L. 254: Correct 'Ens' to 'ENs'.

- L. 265-268: Provide data to support described results; cite the relevant figure.

- L. 270-271: Suggest removal as it reads like a conclusion, not a result.

- L. 276: Clarify the display of 22 high-value sources; confirm if referring to Fig. 4b or 4c.

- L. 278: Explain the specification of only three "sources" when eight are recognized.

- L. 279-286: Provide data and figures to substantiate statements.

- L. 287-288: Improve visibility of 50 corridors in Fig. 4 by using more contrasting colors; provide corridor length information.

- L. 290-292: Suggest removal; reads as a conclusion.

- L. 311-313: Move to the discussion section.

- L. 326-332: The k-means clustering algorithm is not by itself a solution. The emphasis here is too much on the analytical approach rather than on the categorization criteria, that is nighttime light. In addition, the study does not provide evidence that the approach used is superior to traditionally urban-rural gradient approaches. So, the section has no place in the discussion.

- L. 326-351: These are justifications for the chosen analytical approach. They should be included within the introduction or methods section. Focus the discussion on the evidence supporting the framework's utility.

- L. 359: Clarify that the study does not encompass all of China.

- L. 360-362: Simplify the statement for clarity.

- L. 362: I don’t find the relevance of Fig. 6 in supporting the statement.

- L. 366: Deepen the discussion on the ecological implications of construction plans.

- L. 370, Figure 8 and 9: Define how high-risk areas were determined.

- L. 371: Justify why those specific corridors require restoration.

- L. 373: Aim for a more detailed discussion on the potential disruption of corridors.

- L. 393-394: A more detailed discussion on the potential impact of losing critical URF areas is needed.

 

Comments on tables and figures:

- Figures and tables: Ensure all figures and tables are self-explanatory with all acronyms spelled out and abbreviations clearly defined in the legends. Please apply these changes consistently across all figures and tables. I do not list all specific cases here but they should be comprehensively reviewed.

- Fig. 1: Spell out LULC and clarify the dataset referenced.

- Table 2: Define LULC in the legend.

- Fig. 2, Step 2: Clarify the criteria for determining high-quality farmland (URF).

- Fig. 3: Spell out URF.

- Fig. 4: Legends should clarify symbols and colors; consider improving color choices for better distinction of ecological sources.

- Fig. 5. Only include in this figure the panels you are referring to in the text. Other panels should be placed in supplementary material. In fact, I suspect that you are not citing at all Figure 5 since the only citation in the results section seems to be a mistake (see comment on line 276). Why do you indicate that (c) is the InVEST habitat quality value map? The ecosystem service value map is not also InVEST?

Author Response

Response letter

 

Dear Editor and Reviewers,

 

We are grateful for the opportunity to revise and resubmit our manuscript, titled “Habitat protection in urban-rural fringes through coordinated ecological network construction and territorial planning” [land-2986082].

 

Thank you for your valuable feedback. In response to your comments, we have made revisions marked in red underline. Revisions addressing comments from the other two reviewers are highlighted in blue and green underlines. Detailed responses to all comments, including specific point-by-point responses, are provided in the attached Revision Report and the revised manuscript. We hope these revisions meet your approval.

 

 

 

Thank you and best regards.

 

Yours sincerely,

Corresponding author: Yonghua Li

E-mail: lyh_zju@126.com

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

In this article, k-means clustering algorithm was used to define URFs in Qingpu District, Shanghai, China.High-value URF ecological sources were identified using the InVEST model, MSPA, Integrated Habitat Value, Patch Importance, and Intermediacy Centrality Analysis, and ecological environments were generated using a circuit-theoretic model. The impacts of URF sources on network connectivity and construction costs are also assessed, and their conservation efficiency and future risks under current territorial planning are examined. The whole article is elaborated in detail, the overall framework of the article is reasonable, and the optimized research method is proposed, which has certain innovation and important real-world application value, meanwhile the ideas and methods are more scientific, which is of great significance to the protection of ecological environment. However, the article still has some deficiencies in details, which are presented here for the author's reference.

1. lines 88-90 defining the study area by administrative or urban development boundaries may lead to fragmentation of URF habitat along these boundaries, and whether expanding the study area to five areas in and around Qingpu District, but not expanding outward in the western portion of the study area, affects the integrity of URF extraction in the study area；

2. Traditional indicators of design resistance surfaces such as land use, slope, elevation, and normalized vegetation index (NDVI) cannot accurately characterize the complex environment of the URF, and two other resistance factors are introduced: distance to graded roads, and distance to point sources of pollution. In lines 118-121, by crawling the location data of 4576 factories from the website, after filtering the non-polluting and low-polluting factories for in-depth analysis, it is narrowed down to 2,802 points, how to filter the non-polluting and low-polluting factories here, and is there any criterion for judgment?

3. line 115 resampling of nighttime light data to 100 meters, is 100 meters too low a resolution because most URF habitats are finely grained, and does it make URF habitat identification errors larger；

4. Lines 144-147 refer to nighttime light levels from rural areas to urban centers being categorized into three modes, with no indication of how URFs are delineated based on these three modes.

5. 5.1 mentions that "the InVEST model ignores differences in habitat quality within a given LULC type", but should this also be taken into account when using the InVEST model to assess habitat quality in 3.2.1.

To summarize, this article builds the ecological environment of URF from multiple aspects and multiple indicators, and combines the current national policy to illustrate the necessity of the research, which provides a certain direction for the future development of ecological environmental protection, and the research is of great significance, but there are still defects in some details, so it is recommended to revise and reexamine.

 

 

Author Response

Response letter

 

Dear Editor and Reviewers,

 

We are grateful for the opportunity to revise and resubmit our manuscript, titled “Habitat protection in urban-rural fringes through coordinated ecological network construction and territorial planning” [land-2986082].

 

Thank you for your valuable feedback. In response to your comments, we have made revisions marked in blue underline. Revisions addressing comments from the other two reviewers are highlighted in red and green underlines. Detailed responses to all comments, including specific point-by-point responses, are provided in the attached Revision Report and the revised manuscript. We hope these revisions meet your approval.

 

 

 

Thank you and best regards.

 

Yours sincerely,

Corresponding author: Yonghua Li

E-mail: lyh_zju@126.com

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I think this study is very valuable. The research framework of this paper is reasonable. The research content of the paper is more solid, and the demonstration is more reasonable. In order to help this paper improve, I have a few questions. 1. The conclusion is too little and needs to be improved. 2. The references should be sorted in order. 3. Why use the InVEST model and MSPA? Finally, I think this paper can be published.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Minor editing of English language required

Author Response

Response letter

 

Dear Editor and Reviewers,

 

We are grateful for the opportunity to revise and resubmit our manuscript, titled “Habitat protection in urban-rural fringes through coordinated ecological network construction and territorial planning” [land-2986082].

 

Thank you for your valuable feedback. In response to your comments, we have made revisions marked in green underline. Revisions addressing comments from the other two reviewers are highlighted in red and blue underlines. Detailed responses to all comments, including specific point-by-point responses, are provided in the attached Revision Report and the revised manuscript. We hope these revisions meet your approval.

 

 

Thank you and best regards.

 

Yours sincerely,

Corresponding author: Yonghua Li

E-mail: lyh_zju@126.com

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors I commend the authors on the revision to their manuscript. The revised draft clearly addresses the comments that I had on the previous version. 

Author Response

Response letter

 

Dear Reviewer,

 

Thank you for your positive feedback on the revised version of our manuscript titled "Habitat Protection in Urban-Rural Fringes through Coordinated Ecological Network Construction and Territorial Planning" [land - 2986082]. We are delighted to hear that the revisions have satisfactorily addressed your previous comments.

 

Your insights and detailed reviews have been greatly appreciated and were crucial in enhancing our manuscript. We are grateful for your support and guidance throughout the revision process.

 

Thank you and best regards.

 

Yours sincerely,

Corresponding author: Yonghua Li

E-mail: lyh_zju@126.com

 

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

It can be seen that according to the reviewer's opinions, the author has carried out in-depth thinking and positive revisions, corrected the improper points in the original manuscript, and added references to enrich the content of the article. However, the figure in this paper is generally too small, such as Figure A4 and Figure A5, the image results in the figure are not clear enough and the legend in the figure is very vague. It is suggested to enlarge the result figure appropriately, which will help to express the data more intuitively. In addition, the top border in Figure 8 (b) are missing, which also needs attention.

Author Response

Response letter

 

Dear Reviewer,

 

We sincerely appreciate your thorough review and insightful comments on our manuscript titled "Habitat Protection in Urban-Rural Fringes through Coordinated Ecological Network Construction and Territorial Planning" [land - 2986082]. Your feedback has been invaluable in guiding our revisions, and we are pleased to inform you that we have addressed all the points you raised.

 

• Improvements to Figures:We have enlarged all figures in the manuscript, including Figure A4 and Figure A5, to ensure they are easily interpretable. The resolution of each figure has been enhanced to 300 dpi to improve clarity, and legends have been enlarged for better visibility. Additionally, we have ensured that all missing borders, such as the top border in Figure 8(b), have been corrected.

 

• Adjustments to Tables:We have reviewed all tables with page breaks, such as Table 3 and Table A3, and added headers to each page to ensure continuity and ease of understanding.

 

• Layout Adjustments:We have adjusted the layout of the manuscript to improve the overall presentation and ensure that the pages are neatly organized.

 

• Punctuation Corrections:In our thorough review of the manuscript's punctuation, we have replaced all straight apostrophes with typographic (curly) apostrophes to adhere to publishing standards and enhance readability.

 

We would like to express our gratitude for your detailed attention to the nuances of our work. Your suggestions have significantly improved the quality and clarity of our manuscript. We believe that these revisions have greatly enhanced the manuscript and hope that it now meets the standards for publication.

 

Thank you and best regards.

 

Yours sincerely,

Corresponding author: Yonghua Li

E-mail: lyh_zju@126.com

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf