Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear author, your work is of potential interest to readers and scientists who wish to integrate this methodology with other processes, as you highlighted in your paper. I consider it an interesting article; however, I recommend making adjustments to the text and completing the missing figures. I am attaching notes on your work for further details.
In the discussion section, you detail the benefits of working with this methodology; however, the results section doesn't explore these benefits very much. I recommend that you delve deeper into some of them, with particular emphasis on integration with other workflows (perhaps in Python). This could highlight the potential of your programming work.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thanks to Reviewer 1 for his valuable comments.

Please find our answers in the attached document.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The author presents a new, Python-based implementation of the Landscape Mosaic (LM) technique to characterize landscape patches along the three dimensions agricultural, developed, and/or natural.

Only one existing/competing tool is mentioned, GuidosToolbox. Please provide more information on the origin and sample applications of GTB and reconfirm that there is no other existing LM implementation. If there are LM tools or similar tools in ArcGIS, QGIS, other GIS packages, or e.g. FragStats or R, please mention them and include them in the justification for the need for your new implementation.

The abstract and the end of the introduction need to better outline the structure of this technical note, in particular the illustrative/sample application in Switzerland (Section 3), which is never mentioned. It is of course common practice to demonstrate the utility of a newly developed tool in such a case study, it just needs to be mentioned.

A formal data source and permission statement is needed for Fig. 1, Fig. 6, and possibly other figures that contain geospatial data from external sources.

The legends in Fig. 3 are hard to read, specifically the legend of the diversity map is covered by the background map. Maybe, these six maps should be arranged in two columns vertically or on a rotated page.

Fig. 4 should be turned into an actual heatmap -- Excel and LibreOffice Calc provide options to fill or shade cells in proportion to the cell values. Alternatively, Python can be used to create nice heatmaps (matrices, not cartographic heatmaps in this case).

The comparison with GTB is good to have. How did you compute the 0.2% difference? Could this be done most accurately on the basis of the heatmaps?

In Section 3.3, can you comment on the use of the LM metric at different scales, not just the comparison of the one-off LM case study with the authoritative land cover map that happens to be available at a different scale?

The discussion is great though its last two paragraphs could perhaps be condensed a bit given the technical nature of this short article. Instead, the possibility/approach to integrating PyLM into existing GIS software might be worth a mention.

There are some typos (e.g. "Altneratively", "refrnence") and issues with expression (e.g. "the entire Switzerland"). 

Author Response

Thanks to Reviewer 2 for his valuable comments.

Please find our answers in the attached document.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

An interesting article with a clear and good structure. I would prefer that the overall research design be accompanied by a graph showing the research steps.

I have one fundamental question: I am not convinced that software such ENVI ERDAS Arc GIS PRo ( image analyst), even GRASS ot TNT couldn't do it the proposed procedure. So the question is the following: Did the authors try the above software and find that have not have the capabilities to execute their proposal, or just want to do something open from scratch, knowing that already exists in commercial packages? 

Author Response

Thanks to Reviewer 3 for his valuable comments.

Please find our answers in the attached document.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

General assessment

The article addresses a topic of ongoing importance, namely the interplay between Land Use/Land Cover and ecosystems.

In terms of Land’s aims ‚It publishes reviews, regular research papers, perspective and discussion papers, short communications and research notes‘ I consider this article to be a mixture of a ‚perspective and discussion paper‘ (in particular with regard to chapter 4 Discussion) and a technical note (given the software PyLM designed by the author and his own labeling of his work).

In line 256 the author states ‚The aim of this technical note …‘, which is partly correct, as the article is largely a technical note. Does this format fit Land‘s publication policy? If so, the work can be published. If not, the author should be advised to submit this work to another journal.

In my opinion, the paper needs to be thoroughly revised to either make it a sound ‚Technical note‘ or take a different approach, again in line with Land’s aims

‚Welcome are:

• Manuscripts concerning summaries and surveys on research cooperation and projects (that are founded by national governments, the EU or others) providing information for a broad range of users‘

The author mentions ‚the European Union ‘Horizon Europe Program’ that funded the LandShift (Grant Agreement no. 101182007) and the MONALISA (Grant Agreement no. 101157867) projects as well as the Swiss National Science Foundation that funded the DynamicLand project (Grant no. 221323)‘. An explicitly detailed embedding of the author’s work in these overarching research projects could also provide a reason for publishing this article.

Both options, reworking the manuscript into a well-founded Technical note or ‚providing information for a broad range of users‘ require a considerable amount of work to ensure that the article fits into Lands‘ aims.

Some questions that should be answered in any revision of the manuscript

Why not contribute to the free and open-source software Guidos-Toolbox instead of developing something from scratch? A solid reasoning is required at this point. As for now, there is little justification for the presented work.

Guidos-Toolbox enjoys support of the European Commission; it was first published in 2007, and a comprehensive User Guide (88 pages) is available. In contrast, what about the sustainability, updating etc. of PyLM?

Since Guidos Toolbox is a mature project, wouldn’t it a good option to integrate the developed PyLM into Guidos Toolbox?

Figure 1: Source missing.

Lines 134ff: this paragraph describes the standard procedure for downloading software and can be omitted (Could be part of a user manual rather than a scientific article).

Figure 2: The meaning of the classes ahown can be found in the full text. However, this is not a useful approach. The explanation of the classes as an integral part of the Figure is a must.

Figure 3: insufficient legends (all text too small, LM – Developed, subfigure text incomplete, LM – Diversity, text not recognizable)

Figure 4: the rows and columns should be labeled in lien with the classes presented  in Figure 2 (what does A, B, C, mean,…, what does 1,2,3, … mean?)

Line 240 ‚2103‘ should read ‚2013‘ (cf line 246)

Figures 7 and 8: Source missing. Computed by Guido Toolbox or PyLM?

Chapter 4. Discussion does not contain much discussion of the results. Rather, it emphasizes the limitations of the methodology and highlights potential application areas.

The author should consider rearranging the text in this section. One option would be to divide the chapter into sections ‚Discussion of results

Comments on the Quality of English Language

very few imperfections only

Author Response

Thanks to Reviewer 4 for his valuable comments.

Please find our answers in the attached document.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The author has made an effort to improve his manuscript. He now convincingly justifies his approach of developing standalone software instead of integrating the Python code into existing software systems. The reference to the broader context of his work with regard to international projects is also helpful. Minor imperfections have been corrected.