The Impact of Urban Expansion on Land Use in Emerging Territorial Systems: Case Study Bucharest-Ilfov, Romania

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for the opportunity to review the publication.

The study provides a comprehensive analysis of urban expansion in the Bucharest-Ilfov region and its impact on land use. The research design is appropriate, and the methods used (GIS, Sankey diagrams, and statistical analysis) provide useful insights. However, several areas require improvement:
Lines 33-92 - background discussion is extensive but lacks specificity regarding Romania's urban expansion compared to other regions. A more focused introduction on Bucharest-Ilfov would strengthen the study.
The literature review is well-developed, but some references to recent works on urban expansion in Eastern Europe would be beneficial.
Lines 100-145 (Section 2: Materials and Methods) - lead with a brief justification of why QGIS was chosen rather than, for example, ArcGIS or other commercial GIS software. Was it a question of availability, cost or tool capability? It is also worth mentioning whether other approaches (e.g. spatial regression) could have provided additional information.
Lines 126-127 - add a brief justification why the Pulkovo 1942(58)/Stereo 70 datum (EPSG: 3844) was chosen. Is this the standard for urban analysis in Romania? What might be the limitations associated with this datum?
Lines 143-145 - clarify how flows between land categories should be interpreted. It is worth adding an example, e.g. does more land converted from agricultural to urban mean uncontrolled urban expansion or rather a coordinated urban policy?
Lines 146-227 (Section 3: Results) - focusing on the area of land change is one thing, but it is also worth mentioning the quality of conversion:
Is the new urbanised areas of high urban quality?
Is the land changes in line with the development plans?
Lines 120-125 - it is worth adding a sentence on potential land classification errors in the Corine Land Cover database and the possible impact of these errors on the survey results.
Lines 156-161 (refers to the GDP graph in Fig. 2) a brief analysis of the relationship between economic growth and urban expansion can be added. For example:
How strong is the correlation between economic growth and urbanisation?
Is urbanisation more the result of investment policies or spontaneous market changes?
Lines 187-196 - add a comment on the impact of road infrastructure expansion on the spatial layout of cities. Did the new roads encourage even development, or did they exacerbate suburbanisation and spatial chaos?
Lines 295-300 (Section 5: Conclusions) - add a proposal to extend research to include predictive models of urbanisation (e.g. Cellular Automata-Markov Chain) and studies of spatial quality (e.g. residents' perceptions, density analysis).

Please remove some of the self-citations which, in my opinion, do not fit thematically to the topic at hand.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you for the suggestions made. We have attached below our responses.

 

All the best

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

After a thorough review, I believe that the overall quality of the paper is commendable. However, there are several areas that could benefit from minor adjustments to enhance the clarity and precision of the paper. Below are my recommendations for improvement:

1. This study presents a research gap on the impact of urban expansion on land uses, especially in emerging regions, which is of great significance in the context of rapid urbanization. By analyzing the case of the Bucharest-Ilfov region in Romania, this study points out that agricultural land is under great pressure during the process of urban expansion. However, the specific mechanisms of different policies, economic development models and social and cultural factors on land use change have not been elaborated in detail, which may lead to an inaccurate definition of research gaps.

2. In terms of literature review, relevant studies on the impact of urban expansion on land use are comprehensively reviewed, but the application of some emerging research methods and technologies is rarely discussed. It is suggested to further supplement and analyze the application of new research methods and techniques in urban expansion and land use research in recent years, and explore the advantages and limitations of these methods.

3. The data source of this study is reasonable and Corine Land Cover database provided by Copernicus Land Monitoring Services is used. At the same time, QGIS open source software is used for data processing and analysis, and tools such as JupyterLab, Python, Pandas and Plotly are used to generate Sankey charts. The method selection is more scientific and reasonable. In the process of data processing and analysis, there may be classification errors or accuracy problems. The paper does not mention how to verify the data and evaluate the errors, which may affect the accuracy and reliability of the research results.

4 In the results and discussion section, this study quantitatively presents the specific situation of land use change in the Bucharest-Ilfov region, including urban expansion, decrease of agricultural land, increase of industrial and commercial land, etc. At the same time, the discussion part also combines the research questions and background knowledge, and discusses the influencing factors of urban expansion and the driving mechanism of land use change. However, the discussion is not deep enough. For example, the causal relationship between urban expansion and land use change is not deeply analyzed, and the specific mechanism is not discussed. In addition, the discussion on the policy implications and practical application value of the research results is also limited, and how to achieve sustainable land use and urban development through policy intervention is not fully elaborated.

In general, this study is innovative and of practical significance in analyzing the impact of urban expansion on land use, but there are still some shortcomings in the definition of research gaps, the depth of literature review, data validation and error analysis, comparative analysis with other methods, and the depth of discussion.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you for the suggestions made. We have attached below our responses.

 

All the best

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf