Coupling and Coordination Relationships between Urban Expansion and Ecosystem Service Value in Kashgar City
, Alimujiang Kasimu 3, Aynur Mamat 4, Nuermaimaiti Aierken 5 and Qianli Chen 2Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Overall, this paper had language that was unacceptable for peer review. The authors editor, and journal should be extremely ashamed this made it to my desk. I have had better writing from university students. This paper needs a major rewrite before I read it again. Further, the message of the paper is redundant- that humans have expanded space over time. I'm surprised this passed the editor's desk, as I could not even understand the writing, nor get the message of the paper. I'm overall confused of the direction of the paper, the goal of the results, what the results were. The introduction was clearly not congruent with the rest of the paper. How does a table (Table 1) compile just lat and long? This is extremely unacceptable.
For the data set, line 142, why correlations. This is a very limited understanding of relationships. Further, I see no correlation table of results for this statement.
Line 222 "sofeware:- sent to peer review.
Abstract-
-Immediate indication of problematic English. A vs an, is vs are.
Introduction
Overall, the authors lost the reader in multiple facets. First, there was a lack of understanding of how to transition from the abstract to paragr
-Do not assume the use of abbreviations translates from the abstract to the rest of the paper! Please provide the full context and then the abbreviation- (I.e. Line 43 UE in introduction). Because the first sentence is “The most direct manifestation of UE is urban expansion”. Which means the most direct form of urban expansion is urban expansion. What is the reader to think?
-Line 45- expand on the metrological revolution or cite- this has no background information and is difficult to determine.
-Line 46- reference of the study- where is the reference? You can’t leave a sentence with a reference without a reference. That is an error my undergraduate freshman make.
-Line 47- Tense. Was the study done in the past?
-Line 54- “China has witnessed” change this term. I would suggest- it doesn’t imply that other countries have. I would suggest “China has experienced”. Otherwise, it suggest a very tough road.
-Line 55- Evolutionary characteristics? How does this fall in line with Darwin’s tenants?
Methods.
-Figure one has the city half way across China. How was this manuscript sent for peer review?
- Line 107- tense. Further, the understanding of a ‘typical oasis’ Is lost on an international reader.
-Line 226 tense
Line 131 statistics of what…
There were so many flaws, I just stopped. My family needed me more than what I could offer this paper
I stopped reading because I value my timeeeee.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper deals with a topical issue, focusing on the impact of urban development. The research objectives are set and clearly stated. The conclusions are solid and in line with the research objectives stated above. Small remarks on the topic of the sentences, I think it would be useful to further review the English topic of the paper.Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The study focuses on Kashgar City in Northwest China with the following goals: (1) Determine the UE of Kashgar’s long-term spatiotemporal dynamic processes and reveal the fundamental mechanism. (2) Analyze the changes of ES of each land use type and each ES caused by long-term UE processes. (3) Calculate the impact of UE in arid oasis cities on the ESv (4) Examine the link between UE and ESv in terms of coupling and coordination. Overall, this paper did a lot of work. However, this paper does not have some major contributions from the methods and data side. It is mainly an application via different spatiotemporal analyses.
- For the Introduction, please clearly demonstrate your contributions from the methods side.
- For the Data and Methods section, please draw a workflow to include the data and methods you used to help readers follow easily.
- Please read and revise the paper based on the journal template. The reference should be cited as [1], [2]…
- For Equation (2), U is the expanded land area? Please specify.
- Some tables can be changed to figures to easily visualize and analyze such as Table 9.
- For the Discussion, have you done some Statistical/Regression analysis? Not just present these numbers.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
I would suggest authors an extensive revision before reconsidering their manuscript in remote sensing MDPI. Revision should include a substantial rethinking of the manuscript in the direction of making clear and effective the value added of thsi study in the light of new approaches of remote sensing. In other words, I would state that Remote sensing is not a uniquely applied journal, while being theoretically based. This contribution is primarily applied. Application is very simple. I don't see any methodological novelty, it is just an exercise of land-use change in a relatively small area. However, I leave authors revised their paper in order to convince me about the importance and novelty of their study in the light of advanced theoretical and applied remote sensing. Thank you.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript is still poorly written and the authors did not pay a lot of attention to specific details when editing the manuscript. Throughout the paper, the tense is still incorrect, additions did not improve the paper, and still was lacking clear explanations. After reading the paper twice, I finally understand what the thrust of the paper is; however, it was poorly executed. the 'degree' aspects of the manuscript is still not explained until half way through the methods.
Line 28- CYN- no previous listing of acronym. I assume Chinies yen? If so, perhaps providing another currency value (i.e. US $ or Euro's) to make it more understandable for the larger audience.
Line 43-44- still confusing.
Line 45-50. Ok, so what does this mean.
The first paragraph still attempts at a theoretical framework, but still misses the mark. I read this and say "ok, so what"
Line 51- "For recent decades" is really awkward". Rephrase
Line 53-54- adding the word cities does not make it clear. It makes it more confusing. The problem is with the "UE has four types" - elaborate on that part or elaborate on the four items. The sentence does not make the authors point and is muddled.
Line 62. Started sentence/paragraph with acronym.
Line 64, why list out environment so many times. It is confusing.
Line 65-68. This is the crux of the paper, yet the authors have zero citations
Line 70- It is not clear how ecosystem service function and value differ. This needs to be made clear. Further, there is no citation for this important aspect of the paper.
Line 81- say extensive research without any citations!
Line 94- what does the added specific geographical location have to do with it? It is not clear how this made the paper better.
Line 106- tense.
Line 107- I might have missed it, but this is the first time that coupling and coordination degree are mention. They are not defined and is very difficult to follow
Study area- authors state it is hot, but the average temp is only 11C. I think the authors should remove sunshine length, because that seems irrelevant and was poorly written- as stated it seems like they messed up how much sunshine an area gets in military time- and focus on the temperature aspect.
Line126 and 132 and 140 - Tense
Line 137. The date range in acquisition time is confusing. It could be interpreted as 1990-1909. Or is it 1990-2009? Please fix.
Line 162-163- the time frame confinements are not clear. Needs to be updated. What is the study period?
Line 179 citations are confusing
Line194- what is the point of a new coupling degree model? Need a stronger description
Line 221 &330- WHY are there methods in the results section? This should have been explained in the methods! What results? I don't see any description of the results other than the map. This needs to be explained.
Figure 2 description needs to be elaborated. This is a weak description and makes the actual figure useless. Might as well delete the figure because I am not sure what this is telling me.
Figure 3. Statistics? What statistics.
These figure legends are high school level. I teach college students that can write better figure legends than this
Figure 4- The term construction land and increased construction land are confusing. Do the authors mean Red is area that already had construction and the blue is expanded UE? Why is 1990-2015 on the bottom and not on the top with the other 1990 time frame ranges?
Line 438- WHY are there methods in the discussion??? why are there results in the discussion? This section must be dedicated to the interpretation and synthesis of the results and the implications to the greater body of literature. Yet, where I am reading about methods and results..............
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
I am fine with the revisions.
Author Response
Thank you!
Reviewer 4 Report
Good revision overall, thank you.
Author Response
Thank you!
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.
