Construct the Framework for the Allocation of Resources Invested in Ecological Governance from the Urban–Rural Land Use Coupling
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This is a coherent and well-formulated paper, with a good introduction and conclusion. The topic is actual worldwide, the results have international relevance.
Author Response
Dear reviewer，
We have greatly appreciated the reviewers’ efforts. Comments and feedback were very constructive and able to improve the quality of the manuscript.
My Manuscript: forests-1846984
Article titled: "Construct the framework for the allocation of resources invested in ecological governance from the urban-rural land use coupling"
Modified parts of the manuscript have been shown in red font. The following is a summary of the reviewers' comments.
Sincerely,
Qingmu Su
Reviewer: 1
Suggestions:1. This is a coherent and well-formulated paper, with a good introduction and conclusion. The topic is actual worldwide, the results have international relevance.
Author reply: Thank you to the reviewer for your affirmation of the article, and I wish you all the best of luck.
Reviewer 2 Report
DETAILED COMMENT FOR TRANSMISSION TO THE AUTHORS
I really appreciated the opportunity to review the manuscript titled Construct the framework for the allocation of resources invested in ecological governance from the urban-rural land use coupling for Forestry Journal. Within their research, the Authors study the utilization and allocation of land resources in urban and rural areas that can directly and indirectly measure the balance between urban and rural land use and the overall spatial balance at multiple scales.
From my point of view, the topic of the research doesn’t fall within the aims of the journal Forests. My suggestion is Land journal which aims and scope are more appropriate for the content of this manuscript.
Nevertheless, I would like to point out some shortcomings of the work which could be, anyway, valuable for the authors to improve the structure and the content of the paper.
First or all, The title is too neutral and should be improved. Try to consider following questions: Why this research? What can we learn?
Introduction. There is no sufficient information about theoretical framework which must demonstrate your understanding of theories and concepts that are relevant to the topic of urban – rural linkages. Guided by a relevant theory and existing knowledge, you are given a basis for your hypotheses and choice of research methods. Missing relevant theory, which consequently causes weak hypotheses as well as inappropriate methodology.
On the line 53, Author declare that “ A large number of theories have been applied to study the urban-rural coupling. For example, in 1989, Ebenezer Howard tried to explore the coordinated relationship between urban development and rural ecological environment from the perspective of rational planning, and proposed the concept of “pastoral city” [5].“
When I try to find original literature, under the no 5 I have found out that is Song, J., K. Palmer, and B. Sun, Effects of inhaled nitric oxide and surfactant with extracorporeal life support in recovery phase of septic acute lung injury in piglets. Pulmonary Pharmacology & Therapeutics, 2010. 23(2): p. 78-87.
Ebenezer Howard was urbanist which original idea is ‘Garden City’. He formulated in 1898 in To-morrow! A Peaceful Path to Real Reform, as the simple idea/project of ‘marrying town and country’ - fusing together rural space and the urban nexus, or the urban nexus into rural space. My suggestion to Authors is to provide us with deeply insight into literature relevant for the concept of rural – urban. Authors should move from simply describing a phenomenon of urban rural continuum observed to generalizing about various aspects of that phenomenon. As long as I know that urban- rural continuum that become “a mix of rural and urban elements”, which are named differently in scientific and professional literature: “rurban”, „rural-urban” compact , “neorural” , “hybrid landscapes” , functional urban area , urban metropolitan zones.
On the line 131, Authors again refer to coupling theory but do not provide the reader with relevant literature. At the end, it is not clear what is research questiond?
Method chapter: The structure of the chapter is not clear. It is necessary to explain how the problem was studied step by step. On the line 153, there is no evidence why Authors decided to divide territory of Taiwan on urban and rural according to the density of construction land by threshold of 0.3. As mentioned previous, methodology responds to the question of how the problem was studied? But the problem is not clear.
Discussion focuses on the repetition of many concepts already proposed beforehand. Autors have to answer on question: Which gaps are filled in?
Section 5: some concepts presented in the discussion section are repeated, while information which is provided as the limitations seems obvious from the early beginning of the research (Due to the intensified globalization, especially the increased international trade, the research area does not have balanced land use in the real sense). My suggestion is to wrap up the main issues of this paper and open properly to further works.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
We have greatly appreciated the reviewers’ efforts. Comments and feedback were very constructive and able to improve the quality of the manuscript.
My Manuscript: forests-1846984
Article titled: "Construct the framework for the allocation of resources invested in ecological governance from the urban-rural land use coupling"
Modified parts of the manuscript have been shown in red font. The following is a summary of the reviewers' comments.
Sincerely,
Qingmu Su
Reviewer: 2
Suggestions:1. There is no sufficient information about theoretical framework which must demonstrate your understanding of theories and concepts that are relevant to the topic of urban – rural linkages. Guided by a relevant theory and existing knowledge, you are given a basis for your hypotheses and choice of research methods. Missing relevant theory, which consequently causes weak hypotheses as well as inappropriate methodology.
Author reply: Thanks to the reviewer for your suggestions. We have added related theories of urban-rural coupling to highlight the different characteristics of the study from the past. Such as Line 55-63, 113-128.
Line 55-63 “A large number of theories have been applied to study the urban-rural coupling. For example, in 1989, Ebenezer Howard tried to explore the coordinated relationship between urban development and rural ecological environment from the perspective of rational planning, and proposed the concept of “pastoral city” [6]. The “urban-rural linkage” proposed by Utopian socialists and Marxists focuses on the self-sufficient model of urban-rural land use. The “urban-rural dual structure” represented by the Lewis-Ranis-Fei model studied the issue of urban and rural independence [7]. Paolo Veneri et al. studied the benefits of distance between cities and villages from the perspective of population growth [8].”
Line 113-128 “In terms of research framework, there is currently an urban-rural gradient framework to study the impact of cities on the ecosystem and ecological research related to social welfare [20]; the urban-rural integration model explores the integrated development of urban and rural areas from the perspective of labor, consumption patterns and economic development sequence; the regional network model explores the overall development of the region from urban spatial expansion, spatial structure and pattern changes [7]; the metacoupling framework uses quantitative methods to evaluate the efficiency of regional water transfer [21]. It can be seen that previous related studies and framework failed to make clear the coupling of urban-rural land use changes. Therefore, it is still necessary to incorporate the coupling between urban and rural land use into the sustainability evaluation framework [22]. By exploring the system of coupling between urban and rural land use, theoretical basi s can be provided for further resource investment in ecological governance. The so-called ecological governance emphasizes the governance of ecological damage and environmental degradation caused by land development.”
Suggestions:2. On the line 53, Author declare that “ A large number of theories have been applied to study the urban-rural coupling. For example, in 1989, Ebenezer Howard tried to explore the coordinated relationship between urban development and rural ecological environment from the perspective of rational planning, and proposed the concept of “pastoral city” [5].“
When I try to find original literature, under the no 5 I have found out that is Song, J., K. Palmer, and B. Sun, Effects of inhaled nitric oxide and surfactant with extracorporeal life support in recovery phase of septic acute lung injury in piglets. Pulmonary Pharmacology & Therapeutics, 2010. 23(2): p. 78-87.
Ebenezer Howard was urbanist which original idea is ‘Garden City’. He formulated in 1898 in To-morrow! A Peaceful Path to Real Reform, as the simple idea/project of ‘marrying town and country’ - fusing together rural space and the urban nexus, or the urban nexus into rural space. My suggestion to Authors is to provide us with deeply insight into literature relevant for the concept of rural – urban.
On the line 131, Authors again refer to coupling theory but do not provide the reader with relevant literature. At the end, it is not clear what is research questiond?
Author reply: Thanks to the reviewer's reminder, we have revised the relevant literature and added some previous research on urban-rural relations. Such as Line 113-128.
“In terms of research framework, there is currently an urban-rural gradient framework to study the impact of cities on the ecosystem and ecological research related to social welfare [20]; the urban-rural integration model explores the integrated development of urban and rural areas from the perspective of labor, consumption patterns and economic development sequence; the regional network model explores the overall development of the region from urban spatial expansion, spatial structure and pattern changes [7]; the metacoupling framework uses quantitative methods to evaluate the efficiency of regional water transfer [21]. It can be seen that previous related studies and framework failed to make clear the coupling of urban-rural land use changes. Therefore, it is still necessary to incorporate the coupling between urban and rural land use into the sustainability evaluation framework [22]. By exploring the system of coupling between urban and rural land use, theoretical basis can be pro vided for further resource investment in ecological governance. The so-called ecological governance emphasizes the governance of ecological damage and environmental degradation caused by land development.”
Suggestions:3. Method chapter: The structure of the chapter is not clear. It is necessary to explain how the problem was studied step by step. On the line 153, there is no evidence why Authors decided to divide territory of Taiwan on urban and rural according to the density of construction land by threshold of 0.3. As mentioned previous, methodology responds to the question of how the problem was studied? But the problem is not clear.
Author reply: Thanks to the reviewer for your suggestions. We accordingly explain why we chose a threshold of 0.3. Such as line 169-174.
In the 2.2 research framework, we added the steps of using the formula to make it more intuitive to see the order of the research. And we added Figure 3 to further emphasize the coupling relationship between urban and rural areas.
"In this study, the administrative boundary of "district or township" is used as the basic analysis unit, and the ratio of the developed land to the total area in the analysis unit is used as the basis for judging the division of urban areas and rural areas. The area with a density of construction land greater than 0.3 was regarded as the urban area, and the area with a density less than 0.3 was classified as the rural area (The urban area covered by its value includes more than 90% of construction land).”
Suggestions:4. Discussion focuses on the repetition of many concepts already proposed beforehand. Autors have to answer on question: Which gaps are filled in?
Author reply: Thanks to the reviewer for your suggestions. We correspondingly added the differences between this study and previous studies and the contribution of this study, as well as the future application prospects of the urban-rural coupling model. Such as line 443-472.
“The urban-rural coupling framework is a powerful tool for analyzing the impact of urban development on the ecosystem, realizing the coordinated development of urban and rural areas, and achieving the balance of regional land use. Based on the theory of urban-rural coupling , a framework for the allocation of resources invested in ecological governance was built, which can fill the gaps in the research on the coordinated development of urban and rural areas. Most of the existing researches measured and evaluated the level and spatial pattern of the coupled development between urbanization and the ecological environment, but failed to study the factors that affect such coupled development and the impact mechanism. In addition, less attention has been paid to how the integration of land use system promotes the coordinated development of urban and rural areas [18 , 19]. The framework of this research made clear the urban-rural coupling relationship, effectively evaluated the balance of urba n land use from a specific perspective, and applied Gini coefficient to judge the overall imbalance in the region. Then, based on the unbalanced regional structure, the attribution of the responsibility for ecological governance was made clear, so that feasible and fair methods of input resource allocation can be formulated. This framework plays a vital role in balancing urban and rural development. Importantly, it allows local government agency to determine the environmental governance cost that it needs to bear when developing land.
Urban-rural coupling can be a very effective method for evaluating ecological costs in the process of urban peripheralization. It can provide a quantitative reference for research on the relationship between urban and rural areas, landscape urbanization, and the impact of urban peripheralization on ecosystem services . In developing countries in Asia, structural changes in urbanization and industrialization are encouraged. In this process, urban and rural areas are transforming from isolated areas to strong interconnected wholes [2]. Therefore, the urban-rural coupling model can play an important role in exploring future land use scenarios [37]. It can be used to detect the balance between urban and rural development in cities, regions, or globally, and it can also be used to review the sustainability of different types of development (such as landscape urbanization, compact cities, etc.).”
Suggestions:5. some concepts presented in the discussion section are repeated, while information which is provided as the limitations seems obvious from the early beginning of the research (Due to the intensified globalization, especially the increased international trade, the research area does not have balanced land use in the real sense). My suggestion is to wrap up the main issues of this paper and open properly to further works.
Author reply: This paper proposes further improvement directions for the existing problems. Such as line473-484.
“Although this research has made a certain contribution to the research on urban-rural coupling, this paper proposes further improvement directions for the existing problems in the future. (I) The increase in international trade makes the area of ​​this study not a real balance of land use. The global resource flow is also an important factor affecting the balance of land supply and demand. Therefore, the impact of globalization can be added to subsequent studies to quantify the impact on the urban-rural coupling. (II) The classification of urban and rural boundaries in this study is mainly based on administrative boundaries. Since government data statistics are often based on administrative regions, the division of urban and rural areas is mainly based on administrative boundaries [38]. Therefore, there is a certain error in defining the scope of urban and rural areas. If there are more specific data on urban and rural land and resource input, more accurate analysis results can be obtai ned.”
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear authors
Thank you very much for your research paper Construct the framework for the allocation of resources in vested in ecological governance from the urban-rural land use coupling.
Please add more references about urban rural linkage and other land use change issue and driving factors for reader.
Major comments
Please review more recent research paper about urban rural linkage and address the main issue Line 47-62). Following research and report may support your review process.
1. https://doi.org/10.1111/jors.12236
2. Rural urban partnership for economic development
3. Central place theory and other related theory
And Make clearer about gap analysis
Discussion section
In discussion section review about factors of urbanization of land use changes and other ecological issue too. Also discuss about hydraulic theory to address the issue of land use change.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
We have greatly appreciated the reviewers’ efforts. Comments and feedback were very constructive and able to improve the quality of the manuscript.
My Manuscript: forests-1846984
Article titled: "Construct the framework for the allocation of resources invested in ecological governance from the urban-rural land use coupling"
Modified parts of the manuscript have been shown in red font. The following is a summary of the reviewers' comments.
Sincerely,
Qingmu Su
Reviewer: 3
Suggestions:1. Please add more references about urban rural linkage and other land use change issue and driving factors for reader.
Author reply: Thanks to the reviewer for your suggestions. We have added related theories of urban-rural coupling to highlight the different characteristics of the study from the past. Such as Line 55-63, 113-128.
Line 55-63 “A large number of theories have been applied to study the urban-rural coupling. For example, in 1989, Ebenezer Howard tried to explore the coordinated relationship between urban development and rural ecological environment from the perspective of rational planning, and proposed the concept of “pastoral city” [6]. The “urban-rural linkage” proposed by Utopian socialists and Marxists focuses on the self-sufficient model of urban-rural land use. The “urban-rural dual structure” represented by the Lewis-Ranis-Fei model studied the issue of urban and rural independence [7]. Paolo Veneri et al. studied the benefits of distance between cities and villages from the perspective of population growth [8].”
Line 113-128 “In terms of research framework, there is currently an urban-rural gradient framework to study the impact of cities on the ecosystem and ecological research related to social welfare [20]; the urban-rural integration model explores the integrated development of urban and rural areas from the perspective of labor, consumption patterns and economic development sequence; the regional network model explores the overall development of the region from urban spatial expansion, spatial structure and pattern changes [7]; the metacoupling framework uses quantitative methods to evaluate the efficiency of regional water transfer [21]. It can be seen that previous related studies and framework failed to make clear the coupling of urban-rural land use changes. Therefore, it is still necessary to incorporate the coupling between urban and rural land use into the sustainability evaluation framework [22]. By exploring the system of coupling between urban and rural land use, theoretical basi s can be provided for further resource investment in ecological governance. The so-called ecological governance emphasizes the governance of ecological damage and environmental degradation caused by land development.”
Suggestions:2. Please review more recent research paper about urban rural linkage and address the main issue Line 47-62). Following research and report may support your review process.
- https://doi.org/10.1111/jors.12236
And Make clearer about gap analysis
Author reply: Thanks to the reviewers for providing such a high-quality article, which enriches our research. We will add it to the article. Such as line62-63.
“Paolo Veneri et al. studied the benefits of distance between cities and villages from the perspective of population growth [8].”
Suggestions:3. In discussion section review about factors of urbanization of land use changes and other ecological issue too.
Author reply: Thanks to the reviewer for your suggestions. We correspondingly added the differences between this study and previous studies and the contribution of this study, as well as the future application prospects of the urban-rural coupling model. Such as line 443-472.
“The urban-rural coupling framework is a powerful tool for analyzing the impact of urban development on the ecosystem, realizing the coordinated development of urban and rural areas, and achieving the balance of regional land use. Based on the theory of urban-rural coupling , a framework for the allocation of resources invested in ecological governance was built, which can fill the gaps in the research on the coordinated development of urban and rural areas. Most of the existing researches measured and evaluated the level and spatial pattern of the coupled development between urbanization and the ecological environment, but failed to study the factors that affect such coupled development and the impact mechanism. In addition, less attention has been paid to how the integration of land use system promotes the coordinated development of urban and rural areas [18 , 19]. The framework of this research made clear the urban-rural coupling relationship, effectively evaluated the balance of urba n land use from a specific perspective, and applied Gini coefficient to judge the overall imbalance in the region. Then, based on the unbalanced regional structure, the attribution of the responsibility for ecological governance was made clear, so that feasible and fair methods of input resource allocation can be formulated. This framework plays a vital role in balancing urban and rural development. Importantly, it allows local government agency to determine the environmental governance cost that it needs to bear when developing land.
Urban-rural coupling can be a very effective method for evaluating ecological costs in the process of urban peripheralization. It can provide a quantitative reference for research on the relationship between urban and rural areas, landscape urbanization, and the impact of urban peripheralization on ecosystem services . In developing countries in Asia, structural changes in urbanization and industrialization are encouraged. In this process, urban and rural areas are transforming from isolated areas to strong interconnected wholes [2]. Therefore, the urban-rural coupling model can play an important role in exploring future land use scenarios [37]. It can be used to detect the balance between urban and rural development in cities, regions, or globally, and it can also be used to review the sustainability of different types of development (such as landscape urbanization, compact cities, etc.).”
Reviewer 4 Report
1. First of all, it is important to point out that the current manuscript does not fit into the Journal ‘Forests’ Scope. The manuscript is about Rural and Urban ecological Governance – this clearly doesnot fit in the scope of the Journal
2. This study has established an analysis framework for multi-scale evaluation of multiple types of land use to provide a new perspective for the balanced structure and development of urban-rural land use and rationally allocate the resources for ecological governance according to the urban-rural coupling framework. This is a useful work and I find it very informative and interesting. However, I have a few suggestions that can help improve the quality of the manuscript:
A) Page1, line 40 L In addition, cities rely heavily on external land resources and need a large quantity of resources to meet their final needs, not just the available areas within the boundary (Han et al., 2019). Check the reference pattern here I suppose it should also be a number like other references.
B) Page 4, line 154 The area with a density of construction land greater than 0.3 was regarded as the urban area, and the area with a density less than 0.3 was classified as the rural area. – Please provide a scientific basis for this classification, which can be from any published literature i.e. cite an appropriate literature here.
C) Figure 1: Please provide a suitable figure Title rather than just writing “research scope”.
D) Introduction section needs a slight improvement in terms of documenting other studies in the region/ elsewhere in the world that have used Rural-Urban coupling, some discussion about what lacked in such studies would be interesting to visualize the net value addition from this particular work
E) Overall: The whole of the research article has just one very simplistic figure. As this article is about spatial coupling between rural and urban areas, a couple of figures demonstrating / mapping this coupling would have been very useful for reader’s perspective.
F) Page 4, line 173: Specify the year of data used
G) Generally, overall, English needs improvement throughout the manuscript.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
We have greatly appreciated the reviewers’ efforts. Comments and feedback were very constructive and able to improve the quality of the manuscript.
My Manuscript: forests-1846984
Article titled: "Construct the framework for the allocation of resources invested in ecological governance from the urban-rural land use coupling"
Modified parts of the manuscript have been shown in red font. The following is a summary of the reviewers' comments.
Sincerely,
Qingmu Su
Reviewer: 4
Suggestions:1. Page1, line 40 L In addition, cities rely heavily on external land resources and need a large quantity of resources to meet their final needs, not just the available areas within the boundary (Han et al., 2019). Check the reference pattern here I suppose it should also be a number like other references.
Author reply: Thanks to the reviewer for the reminder. We have modified it.
Suggestions:2. Page 4, line 154 The area with a density of construction land greater than 0.3 was regarded as the urban area, and the area with a density less than 0.3 was classified as the rural area. – Please provide a scientific basis for this classification, which can be from any published literature i.e. cite an appropriate literature here.
Author reply: Thanks to the reviewer for youur suggestions. We accordingly explain why we chose a threshold of 0.3. Such as line 169-174.
"In this study, the administrative boundary of "district or township" is used as the basic analysis unit, and the ratio of the developed land to the total area in the analysis unit is used as the basis for judging the division of urban areas and rural areas. The area with a density of construction land greater than 0.3 was regarded as the urban area, and the area with a density less than 0.3 was classified as the rural area (The urban area covered by its value includes more than 90% of construction land).”
Suggestions:3. Figure 1: Please provide a suitable figure Title rather than just writing “research scope”.
Author reply: Thanks to the reviewers for their suggestions. We changed Figure 1 to “Figure 1. The research scope of ecological governance of urban-rural coupling.”
Suggestions:4. Introduction section needs a slight improvement in terms of documenting other studies in the region/ elsewhere in the world that have used Rural-Urban coupling, some discussion about what lacked in such studies would be interesting to visualize the net value addition from this particular work。
Author reply: Thanks to the reviewer for your suggestions. We have added related theories of urban-rural coupling to highlight the different characteristics of the study from the past. Such as Line 55-63, 113-128.
Line 55-63 “A large number of theories have been applied to study the urban-rural coupling. For example, in 1989, Ebenezer Howard tried to explore the coordinated relationship between urban development and rural ecological environment from the perspective of rational planning, and proposed the concept of “pastoral city” [6]. The “urban-rural linkage” proposed by Utopian socialists and Marxists focuses on the self-sufficient model of urban-rural land use. The “urban-rural dual structure” represented by the Lewis-Ranis-Fei model studied the issue of urban and rural independence [7]. Paolo Veneri et al. studied the benefits of distance between cities and villages from the perspective of population growth [8].”
Line 113-128 “In terms of research framework, there is currently an urban-rural gradient framework to study the impact of cities on the ecosystem and ecological research related to social welfare [20]; the urban-rural integration model explores the integrated development of urban and rural areas from the perspective of labor, consumption patterns and economic development sequence; the regional network model explores the overall development of the region from urban spatial expansion, spatial structure and pattern changes [7]; the metacoupling framework uses quantitative methods to evaluate the efficiency of regional water transfer [21]. It can be seen that previous related studies and framework failed to make clear the coupling of urban-rural land use changes. Therefore, it is still necessary to incorporate the coupling between urban and rural land use into the sustainability evaluation framework [22]. By exploring the system of coupling between urban and rural land use, theoretical basi s can be provided for further resource investment in ecological governance. The so-called ecological governance emphasizes the governance of ecological damage and environmental degradation caused by land development.”
Suggestions:5. Overall: The whole of the research article has just one very simplistic figure. As this article is about spatial coupling between rural and urban areas, a couple of figures demonstrating / mapping this coupling would have been very useful for reader’s perspective.
Author reply: Thanks to the reviewer for your suggestions. We have added Figure 3 to further emphasize the coupling between urban and rural areas.
Suggestions:6. Page 4, line 173: Specify the year of data used.
Author reply: Thanks to the reviewer for your suggestions. We have made modifications such as Line 175-181
“The land use classification in this study comes from “Taiwan Land use survey results” (Land Surveying and Mapping Center, 2018). The first-level system of land use survey divides land use into eight categories: construction use, public use, transportation use, recreation use, forest use, water use, agricultural use, and mineral and salt use. The specific land development type data comes from the results of Taiwan's land use survey in 2018, and each analysis unit counts the area of eight types of land use types.”
Suggestions:7. Generally, overall, English needs improvement throughout the manuscript.
Author reply: We have gone through the full text and asked an English professional to help review it. If the article is accepted, we will check it further.
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear Authors
Thank you very much for your revised version of the manuscrip. Please verify the equation, equation number, table and refernence in the main text for minimise error (missing) part.
