The Impact of Urbanization on Cultivated Land Use Efficiency in the Yangtze River Economic Belt in China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 2)

Congratulations, the article is much better. I only have to add small changes, like:

1.      In the abstract (and in the manuscript) change the word “percent” to %. And abbreviate the 0.0592 to 0.06%

2.      Please change “GDP (Gross Domestic Product)” to Gross Domestic Product (GDP)

3.      Take off “which has spatial attributes” lines 132 and 133

4.      Insert in line 157 (Figure 1) “…Chongqing, Sichuan, Yunnan and Guizhou (Figure 1)” and in line 162: takes off “study area is shown in Figure 1.”

5.      I recommend inserting in fig 1 the symbol “north” and a legend explaining the different colors of red (lower, middle, and upper reaches).

6.      Please improve figure 1: “Figure 1. The study area“. Say where is the study area.

7.      What means ± in the map?

8.      Figure 2: I cannot read the values of the classes. I recommend putting the maps in portrait format instead of landscape format. This way, you can increase the figure’s size. And 2 or 3 decimal places are enough. In the classes of maps (a) writes SEM 2001, (b) writes SEM 2019 and (c) writes SEM (changes from 2001 to 2019).

9.      Lines from 290 to 298: The text “To find an appropriate spatial … urbanization on CLUE” is a description of the methodology. I recommend inserting this text in the Material and methods, section 2.5. Data analysis. Also, insert the reference of the software Stata 15.

10.  Figures 3 and 4: Please insert the units in the legend of maps and, in the values, 2 or 3 decimal places are enough.

11.  Figures 4: I recommend putting the maps in portrait format instead of landscape format.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 3)

The manuscript has been revised well and may be accepted now for publication. 

Author Response

Thank you very much for your approval of the revised manuscript. We have learned a lot from your valuable comments. Thanks again!

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 paper presents interesting work devoted to studying urbanisation's effect on cultivated land use efficiency. It is, however, type error exists from the abstract that the study period was noted as 2001 to 2009. It is later clarified in the data analysis section the study period is till 2019.

The methods adopted in the study, apart from several generations of updates in spatial panel data analysis, it is hard to identify the novelty of the methods. 

The analysis did provide some broad implications of urbanisation strategy for the country and regional development. It would be great to hint to the readers of the regional development strategies in the introduction.

It has been noted that the results format had been presented to readers in a rather confusing way. Several figures piled up with tables without illustrations. The current format makes it challenging for readers to follow.

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

This paper examines the spatial effect of urbanization on the cultivated land use efficiency in the Yangtze River Economic Belt.

The work is interesting, however, the article in its current form is immature and needs substantial improvement. The novelty of the article is not properly substantiated, and the objectives should be better defined. I believe the work would benefit from a description of the study area as well as a map. There are values in the results that are not represented on a map or in a table. The work does not have a discussion section. I think this is a serious flaw. The references are mostly from China. I think that it should include references from other countries since the problem of expanding urban areas into cultivated areas is not exclusive to the study area.

Abstract

The abstract should be rewritten. It does not give any information about the methodology, and only qualitative data are used throughout the abstract; I believe the work would benefit from quantitative data. I suggest the authors present the strong statements and novelty of the article.

Line 19: Please, write what the letter SBM means.

Introduction

Line 45: Please, write what the letter GDP means.

Line 107: “Second, urbanization and land use have spatial attributes, which are not fully recognized in previous studies,…” please explain what are the spatial attributes.

L112 – 119: The objectives must be improved and well explained.

Methodology

Why do you not include the study area section in the article? What is the total area studied? What is the main land uses? What are the urbanized areas that are expanding? I recommend adding a map with a study area.

Table 2. Variable selection. This description is insufficient; I recommend explaining better the content of the table.

Line 125: an introductory sentence explaining what SEM is and references are needed.

Line 133: you have the reference of table 2 and in line 167 the reference of table 1. Please put it in the correct order. The table must be right after the text.

Line 138 “where dij” I can not see the dij in the equation.

Line 145 “… Tone has developed…” You need insert the reference

Results

The results are merely descriptive without quantitative values.

Your references are in majority in China. If this problem occurred all over the world, why do you only focus on studies developed in China?

Figure 1: The map must have the locations (urban areas) referred to in lines 193 to 207 for a correct interpretation of the map. In the legend, the null must be in white because it is not a class and confuses the reader.

Also, in Fig. 1 is difficult to see the changes between 2001 and 2019. I recommend inserting a map of the changes between 2001 and 2019.

Line 211 and 212: The LM test and LR test must be explained in the methodology and software that were used.

Line 239 -253 Where are the percentage values referred to in the text? They must be represented on a map or table.

Line 259: Why is the effect of effective irrigation rate and multiple cropping index on CLUE not obvious in YREB during the sample period?

Line 266: The spatial heterogeneity analysis must be explained in the methodology.

Line 267 - 276 The cities and lower, middle, and upper reaches must be represented on the map (in the study area, for example).

Conclusion

L367 – 411: “Based on the conclusion, we propose the following policy implications:” I recommend putting the policy implications at the end of the discussion section.

Reviewer 3 Report

Journal: Agriculture [MDPI]

Article Title: The Impact of Urbanization on Cultivated Land Use Efficiency in Yangtze River Economic Belt in China” is well designed and unique

General comment: The article deals with an important consequence of urban expansion i.e. efficiency of cultivated land use. The methods are relevant and article is supported with very good justifications. Overall, the article is very interesting and has the potential to be published. However, the article has several issues which authors should check and incorporate. I recommend a major revision to the article.

Main comments:

1.     In keywords and in abstract, kindly write the full form of SBM.

2.     Please check the sentence in abstract ‘while land urbanization has inhibited it during the sample period in YREB’.

3.     As article deals with the ‘Impact of Urbanization on Cultivated Land Use Efficiency in Yangtze River’, I suggest authors to kindly add a sub-section about study area in the materials and method section. Also add a location figure of the study area.

4.     Data sources are missing. Authors should discuss from where the data was taken and how the data was arranged/processed. Kindly move section 2.3 as the first sub-heading of the section 2 (second after adding study area sub-section).

5.     A discussion is missing from the article. Authors should must add a separate discussion section and compare the outcomes of the article with the other articles, provide the causes and effects of significant findings and discuss the significance of this research for planning, policy making and for future researches.

6.     Beside this, authors may check following articles relevant to this article.

Zhou, X., Wu, D., Li, J., Liang, J., Zhang, D., & Chen, W. (2022). Cultivated land use efficiency and its driving factors in the Yellow River Basin, China. Ecological Indicators, 144, 109411.

Talukdar et al., (2022). Coupling geographic information system integrated fuzzy logic-analytical hierarchy process with global and machine learning based sensitivity analysis for agricultural suitability mapping. Agricultural Systems, 196, 103343.

Song, G., & Ren, G. (2022). Spatial response of cultivated land use efficiency to the maize structural adjustment policy in the" Sickle Bend" region of China: An empirical study from the cold area of northeast. Land Use Policy, 123, 106421.