Time-Series Evolution Patterns of Land Subsidence in the Eastern Beijing Plain, China
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper presents a case study of land subsidence monitoring and characterization in the eastern Beijing Plain, China using remote sensing (persistent scatterer interferometry) and statistical analyses (standard deviation ellipse and permutation entropy). Both spatial and temporal aspects of subsidence are investigated. A subsidence funnel is identified and its evolution is classified.
General Comments
English grammar needs some work. Almost every sentence in the manuscript needs to be edited for proper English language and style.
Examples in Abstract:
(1) Line 12: The first sentence of the Abstract begins awkwardly. Maybe replace with "Most previous research focuses on..."
(2) Line 13: Replace the comma with a semi-colon in the first sentence.
(3) Line 14: Change "acquire" to a term like "monitor" or "measure"
(4) Lines 15-16: Include the word "the" so the beginning of the sentence reads as follows: "Second, we adopt the standard deviation ellipse (SDE) method..."
(5) Lines 17-19: Replace the sentence that starts "The results suggested that..." with something like "The results suggest land subsidence developed mainly in the northwest-southeast direction until 2012 when it expanded in all directions."
(6) Lines 19-20: I am unsure what the authors are trying to say with the sentence that begins "And this is corresponded to the expansion..." It is an awkwardly-phrased sentence at that.
(7) Line 22: Another sentence begins with the word "And..." - a taboo in some circles.
(8) Lines 23-24: The sentence "The results show that the time-series..." is phrased awkwardly, particularly the last word.
(9) Line 24: Another sentence beginning with "And"... and that sentence makes no sense.
(10) Lines 25-26: Awkward final sentence of the abstract.
Thus, I strongly believe the grammar needs a lot of work. I recommend extensive editing of English language and style is required. Having acknowledged this point, I will ignore grammatical errors for the remainder of the manuscript unless they obstruct with my understanding of the content.
The authors refer to a subsidence "funnel area" and its "funnel edge" throughout the Introduction, yet never define what they mean by these terms. I presume subsidence funnel refers to the areal extent of subsidence, with the greatest subsidence occurring in the middle of this areal extent. It would be helpful to visualize if a figure were provided at this time.
Figure 1. The inset (b) is not shown in (a). This may not be necessary because the areal extent of (b) within (a) is pretty obvious and adding another box to (a) may clutter the image greatly.
Figure 8 was not available in my copy of the manuscript. It is supposed to be located in Line 334, but all I have is a large blank space. Although the authors do a nice job explaining the results from Figure 8 in the text, it would be beneficial to see Figure 8.
Line-by-Line Comments
Line 36: Add commas between citation numbers 14, 15, and 16 at the end of the paragraph.
Line 43: Change "serve" to "severe"
Line 45: Change "ware" with either "were" or "are"
Lines 52-53: Although SDE and PE were defined and spelled out in the abstract, they should also be spelled out here, as this is the first time either acronym is mentioned in the body of the paper.
Lines 60-63: I do not know the meaning of the sentences "The process of entropy permutation increase..." and "The process of entropy permutation decrease..."
Line 83: The authors use a tilde when providing the annual average temperature. Replace the tilde with a hyphen or dash.
Line 85: Is "(Beijing water resources bulletin)" a citation? If so, please provide a year and a citation in the References section.
Line 91: Authors use tilde instead of hyphen or dash when giving a range in values.
Line 97: Capitalize the word "chaobai."
Lines 108-111: There is a major inconsistency in this paragraph. The authors state 31 ENVISAT images with acquisition dates between June 2003 and August 2010 were obtained. Yet, Table 1 states 31 ENVISAT images from January 2007 to August 2010 were used. The authors also state 48 Radarsat-2 images from August 2010 to November 2015 were obtained, yet Table 1 states 48 Radarsat-2 images between October 2010 and November 2015 were used. My guess is the text in lines 108-111 is incorrect (based on what is written in the rest of the text), but I am not certain.
Line 113: Capitalize the word "table."
Line 124: The authors call the PSI technique "Permanent Scatterer Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar" here, but call it "Persistent Scatterer Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar" in the Abstract. Please choose one.
Line 127: Add a space between sentences.
Lines 127-128: Final sentence of this paragraph is not a completed sentence.
Line 133: The word "off" should be "of," but the sentence is awkward regardless of word choice.
Line 159: The word "fractal" is misspelled as "fractsl."
Line 159: The word "simpler" (I think) is misspelled as "simper."
Line 161-186: This section is littered with incomplete sentences.
Line 164: The text references formula 3 with variables m and l, but these variables are not in formula (or equation) 3. Variables m and l appear in equation 6.
Line 192: Figure 3 is referenced in the text before Figure 2 (referenced in Line 197). Please change figure order so that Figure 2 is mentioned first.
Line 195: What is CBD?
Line 197: "We select 11 leveling points in 2009 is selected to verify..." This is awkwardly written.
Lines 226, 236, and 237: Figure 4 and Table 2 show the same data. Is it necessary to show both graph and table? I do not think so.
Line 249: Figure 5. This figure is difficult to interpret. Why is north latitude on the horizontal axis and east longitude on the vertical axis? I believe it would be much easier to interpret if north latitude were on the vertical axis and east longitude were on the horizontal axis. The figure would more closely resemble a typical map. Right now I found myself turning my head...
Lines 268, 269, 272, 274, 276, 282: Should "ration" be "ratio"?
Line 284: The word "We" is capitalized in the middle of a sentence.
Lines 286 and 334: My copy of the manuscript did not include Figure 8. All I see is a large, blank space at Line 334 on page 15.
Line 335: Insert a space between sentences.
Line 288: The authors use a tilde when providing the annual average temperature. Replace the tilde with a hyphen or dash.
Line 294: A sentence includes the awkward phrase "...land subsidence development develops from..." Please fix.
Line 321: "The value of PE has been growing from 2009 to April 2009..." What does this mean? The dates are similar.
Line 341: The term "no-uniform" should probably be "non-uniform."
Line 372: Change "cray" to "clay"
Line 382: Figure 9. A few comments. (1) Incorrect spelling of "groundwater level" in the key. It is presently spelled "Groundwater levle (m)." (2) The gold lines are difficult to see in the colorful figure.
Lines 394-396: The two sentences in these lines (end of one paragraph and beginning of the next) are not complete sentences.
Line 398: The authors refer to "region a" in this sentence. Where is region a? (After sleuthing, it turns out region a corresponds to well JSL? I found this hint in Lines 336-337 - the caption to Figure 8. Why change the name from 'well JSL' to 'region a'?)
Lines 396-412: I do not understand the significance in the relationship between Permutation Entropy (PE) and Groundwater Depth. Figure 10 is explained in the text in lines 396-408. The authors state "This phenomenon is corresponded to the process of entropy increase in 2009 and 2010 and the process of entropy decrease in 2010 and 2012. It also explained in 2012 and 2015, why the PE is rising (sic)." I am uncertain which increases and decreases they are referring to, because PE values in Figure 10 basically range from 0.6 and 0.75 and any specific increases/decreases, which show up as minute changes in the graph, are not identified. Is there supposed to be a correlation between PE and Groundwater Depth? Or a correlation between PE and changes in Groundwater Depth? The exact relationship is unclear to me.
Line 418: I assume "point b" refers to well DFZ. The change in terminology is confusing here as well (see my comment for Line 398 above). The authors refer to this area as "point b" after referring to a previous area as "region a" after referring to these same two places as wells DFZ and JSL, respectively.
Lines 420-429: So PE decreases when "settlement changes of point b between 2009 and 2012 year faster than it in 2013 and 2015 year (sic)." This means a greater change in groundwater fluctuation results in lower PE. But then, "the groundwater fluctuation in 2013 and 2015 year was less than 1 m per year. Thus, during this period, the land subsidence rate fluctuated little, and the accumulative land subsidence showed slowly grow. This is expressed in the PE is that the entropy value returns to zero (sic)." So no change in groundwater fluctuation or subsidence results in even lower PE. How can both of these be true? And if they both are true, can the authors please explain the relationship between PE, groundwater fluctuations, and land subsidence at some point in the discussion?
Lines 430-443: I have the same comments about PE, groundwater fluctuation, and land subsidence in these lines as I did in lines 420-429 above.
Lines 448-449: Not a complete sentence.
Line 471: Change "patter" to "pattern"
Lines 476-478: What do you mean by these two sentences? "From 2009 to 2012, the land subsidence tends to be uniform. From 2012 to 2015, the land subsidence is more even than the previous period. (sic)" What is the difference between "uniform" and "more even"?
Lines 479, 481, 484: "Permutation entropy" is spelled out instead of using the acronym.
Lines 485-486: The final sentence feels like a summary of the conclusion, which is a summary of the paper. The idea proposed in this sentence should be expanded upon to make this last paragraph more than just one sentence.
Author Response
Dear editor,
My manuscript has been edited for English language and style use your journal English editing, and I have revised your suggestion. My revised manuscript has been uploaded, I hope you can check it.
kind regards,
Ms. Junjie Zuo.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear authors,
Here to you my comments:
- Lines 12-13, you have to specify here in which place there is the land subsidence!
- Lines 23-24, 'The results show that the time-series evolution pattern of land subsidence funnel
edge can be divided into three stage. And that of land subsidence funnel is divided into two stage.' Firstly, you missed the final 's' in stage but, more importantly, it is not cleare what is divided in three stages and what is divided in two stages, in both cases it looks like you are referring to the evolution of the subsidence funnel.
- Line 52 and 53, you have to specify again, in the main text following the abstract, the full extensions of both SDE and PE the first time you mention them.
- line 85, I think you need to specify at least a link for the Beijing water resources bulletin source.
- Line 125, I would say: The technique reduces the incoherence and atmospheric effects in the time and space domains.
- Section 4.2.1, any idea/suggestion on why in 2008 the land subsiding area decreased?
- Figures 9 and 10, please indicate in the caption to which datum the groundwater level change data are referrring to, for example meter above/below the ground level or something else.
- Lines 399-408 and 417-425, I think you in several occasions want to say, for example, between 2010 and 2012 (or between 2012 and 2015) but end up wrongly writing in 2010 and 2012 (or in 2012 and 2015).
Author Response
Dear editor,
I have revised your suggestion. My revised manuscript has been uploaded, I hope you can check it. Thanks for your patient guidance
kind regards,
Ms. Junjie Zuo.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
This is my second time looking at the manuscript by Zuo et al. entitled 'The time-series evolution pattern of land subsidence in eastern of Beijing Plain, China.' Overall, I believe the paper has improved significantly. Here are my few comments for the second review:
English. The paper reads much better now. However, I would still strongly recommend the authors find someone who specializes in English to review/edit the paper. There are many minor edits that can be made to wording and grammar. For instance, the first sentence of the Abstract reads as follows: "The land subsidence in the east of Beijing Plain has the longest history and is always series." I understand what the authors are trying to say here, but this sentence technically awkwardly-worded. There are still many sentences that are worded awkwardly in this paper. Instead of identifying every one, again, I recommend someone with an English language background read this paper; this will greatly improve the readability of the paper.
Section 2.2 Dataset. I appreciate the authors changing the acquisition times in the first paragraph. The text now matches the information in Table 1.
Figure 5. Switching the x- and y-axes makes this figure much easier to understand. I like this new version.
Figure 9. This figure was not in the original manuscript. The figure helps with results and interpretation. I do not have any comments on this figure.
Author Response
Dear editor:
I have corrected the mistakes of wording and grammar in my manuscript.
Here my revised manuscript。
Thanks for your patient guidance,
Kind regards.
Ms. Zuo.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
