The Effects of Land Use Zoning and Densification on Changes in Land Surface Temperature in Seoul

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

General comment:

The authors provide a new version of the manuscript, in which the revision has only partially improved the manuscript. My detailed comments are given below.

Specific comments:

Abstract:

-LST investigation: the source/sensor of the data for LST retrieval is not reported. I think that it is a very important information to provide in an abstract

Introduction:

-At the end, the sensors used, datasets, time interval and number of satellite images are missing. It is important reporting also here a sentence with these technical features.

Section 2:

-pag 4, line 156-176: this procedure is a standard procedure that any researcher processing the Landsat data performs (it is written in any data file descriptor and technical documents), from tens of years. Nowadays it is useless to write them. So, I suggest removing them If the authors want to report some equations, more interesting are the ones describing the atmospheric correction and emissivity computation applied.

Section 3:

-line 180: z-scoreⁱⁱⁱ: the reference to iii is not found in the text

-line 193: the parameter ZLST is introduced but it is not defined. It is more useful to explain what a Z-score is and how is computed in this case instead the formulas of pag. 4.

-Figure 1 and 2: the captions report ZLST, but the figures the LST. They are very different. Please, correct. Also, the LST has a unit of measurements.

-Figure 1 and 2: the lat/lon indications are missing

-Figure 2 caption: the source of the panel a and b is not reported

-figure 3: axis number and text are too small. Please, enlarge them. Why are the correlation coefficients not reported for each panel of Figure 3? The scatterplot are very dispersed, and the linear fitting can be not very significant

Author Response

Thank you for your valuable feedback on the article.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Paper can be accepted in its current form

Author Response

Thank you for your valuable feedback on the article.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

General comment:

The authors improved the manuscript, but further modifications are necessary to be publishable. Detailed comments are given in the comments below.

Specific comments:

-Line 168: the use of the “iii” should be preceded by “i” and “ii”. Please verify

-Line 170: maybe, it is better to write “Z-scored LST, known as a standard LST score (hereafter named ZLST), is computed…”. In this way, the footnote of Table 2 can be removed. Parcels for residential, commercial, and industrial use can be added in the table 2 caption

-Figure 1 caption: the central lat/lon should be added in the caption, as well as the km distance scale in the figure. The same for Figure 2. This information is important for the scientific soundness of the figure and their geographical references.

-Figure 3: the correlation coefficients should be reported in each panel. It is an important parameter, conveying different information from slope and intercept.

Reference list: the indent of the references is not uniform. Please, modify.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

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 introduction and discussion have not been developed well. The state of the art needs to be better described and the results discussed more, which have been little investigated. 

I suggest to better specify the areas analysed and why this work was carried out. for example, why are industrial seeds defined in this way? which industrial activities have the greatest impact?

and do industries follow certain protocols and regulations that affect and influence the results obtained?

The article does not follow the guidelines required by the magazine for its editing.

The language used is not scientific. It is advisable to revise English language intensively and to provide for an adequate scientific language.

Reviewer 2 Report

Revised form of the paper presents both of aim and findings too much better in comparison with previous one. Method was also explained in detail. It can be accepted to be published in Sustainability. 

Reviewer 3 Report

Very few changes (only marginal text) were considered in the new version of the paper, like a minor revision. The part added at pag 4 is not significant and does not clarify the question raised up in the first revision.

Specific comments:

Number of images: “The authors throughout the paper propose results for two years, but only two satellite images (i.e. two instantaneous scenes) were processed….”. The author response seems to be a way not to do further processing. If the authors are sure that, considering other images during the investigated years, the results do not change, they should process even more so other images to confirm their assumption. I think that this effort is a key point in order to reconsider the submission, otherwise it is like not considering the reviewer comments (of two reviewers, moreover). The scenes are acquired on June 2004 and September 2014: the months are different, increasing the different background climate effects and the doubts raised up.

-Pag 4: the points 1 and 2 are well known. It is not necessary to report these equations. Instead, the atmospheric correction method is the more interesting part to explain. But the authors do not consider the atmospheric correction and the emissivity problem, as pointed out in the previous review, also suggesting two papers that addressed this issue. The LST retrieval from at-sensor radiance measurements is not performed by the description at pag. 4,  i.e. the atmospheric correction by means of upwelling and downwelling atmospheric radiances, atmospheric transmissivity and emissivity computation. These technical aspects were highlighted in the first round, but the authors ignored them.

-Line 184: “Where zlst_t is the standardized land surface temperature”: what kind of standardization is performed to obtain zlst_t, used in eq.5? What is the formulation of such standardization, i.e what is the difference between LST and zlst_t? Why Dzlst is not used throughout the manuscript?

-line 186: the use of NDVI, introduced here, should be declared. Considering the reflective data, the atmospheric correction (different from the one to be performed for the LST retrieval) must be applied in order to obtain surface reflectivities. How was it performed?

-Table 2: The authors, before, introduced the parameters LST, zlst_t and Dzlst, (Dzlst is compted by eq. 5). But in table 2, only the LST is reported (without unit of measurements). It is difficult for a reader to understand what is the variable reported and its meaning: the meaning of LST is different with respect to zlst_t and Dzlst. The misleading use of symbols is kept throughout the manuscript

-Figure 3: the name of x and y axis are not readable. In this figure, if the LST of 2014 is reported as stated by the authors (not zlst_t and Dzlst), the values cannot be around 0. The authors should use proper symbol and descriptions. As requested in the previous revision, the reported scatterplots without any quantitative relation, RMSE and p values, have not scientific soundness. The dispersion is very high, therefore the quantitative evaluation of the regression is necessary to understand the meaning and usefulness of such relationships.

-The reference formatting is not correct and clear: the numbers should be used, since using numbers and alphabetical order makes no sense (it was also pointed out in the first round, but no changes were provided). Also the formatting of the text is not accurate.

-The definition of BCR and FAR should be embedded in the text, not as a footnote.

-line 213-215: the use of symbols like R-1, R-2 and R-3 is not clear: is it useful to increase the understanding?