Analysis of the Spatial and Temporal Evolution Patterns of Grassland Health and Its Driving Factors in Xilingol
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
1. Due to the influence of weather and external factors, it should consider the quality control when using MODIS remote sensing products. This paper does not describe the quality control related processing when using MOD13A1 products.
2. When using the multi-source data, achieving the consistency of spatiotemporal resolution is a key step in data processing. Therefore, it should be detailed description the type of products used (such as DEM data, soil type data, land use type data) and related introductions (such as spatial resolution, etc.). In addition, the paper resamples the raster data to 1 km spatial resolution, what standard is used for processing, and has the quality inspection after resampling been considered?
3. Reasonable selection of driving factors is very important for the analysis of the driving mechanism of large-scale regional NDVI changes. This paper selects a total of 34 driving factors from the perspective of natural factors and human activities, and comprehensively considers the factors that affect the change of NDVI. The rationality and necessity of the selection of indicators should be further explained. Is there any overlap between some indicators? Like the temperature indicators in chapter 2.2.1, the annual average maximum temperature, the annual maximum temperature and the annual average minimum temperature are also selected. Are there any repeated or redundant analysis of indicators for temperature and annual minimum temperature, and is it instructive to analyze the influence of annual average maximum temperature and maximum temperature on the NDVI spatial scale at the same time?
4. The legend in Figure 3 only shows the highest and low values, and there is no accurate value, so it cannot accurately display the trend of NDVI. It is recommended to add specific values in the legend; the legends of Figures 5a and 5b should be unified, so that the spatial scale can be viewed intuitively. In addition, what does the green box in Figure 8 represent and what it means? It needs detailed. Questions like this in the text should be revised.
5. Most of the graphics and text in the article are in lower resolution and small fonts. It is recommended to make relevant adjustments according to the requirements of the journal.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thanks very much for taking your time to review this manuscript. I really appreciate all your comments and suggestions! At the same time I have made a lot of adjustments to the English language and style. Please find my itemized responses in below and my revisions/corrections in the re-submitted files.
Thanks again!
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear Authors,
you are presenting a manuscript covering the patio-temporal dynamics and their drivers of a large grasland ecosystem using NDVI time series.
Please find my suggestion below:
14: Explain natural climate change
18:34 covering natural environmental changes?
20: Only spatial variation?
21&23: Much detail for introduction
26: 'the factors'
28-29: Improve
Introduction
33-37: add references, what region?
40: rephrase
41-42: different methods – better explanation, this section needs to be extended and rephrased
43: a spacial vegetation type - natural factors like? Explain and add ref.
45: Birth density?
46-54: Update section, better describe the geodetector metric as it is the key to your research, probably in the methods section
50: rephrase
55-75: Some are methods, other parts need improvements and references:
58: obvious?
64: great impact?
66: serious hazards - reference?
71-75: there is something wrong or missing in this sentence
83: Can you summarize the elevation, climate,... for the three grassland types?
91-93: Repeating sentence
100-101: twice mainly - describe all data sources
118-119: confusing sentence
120-125: Make several sentences and explain better
127: what categories?
129-130: reference
Fig.2: Improve, the arrow from spatio-temporal characteristics to the Y NDVI boxes is confusing.
166-176: Better explain the geodetector model
171: What subregions?
178-181: Improve and remove errors
193: Are there references associated with the selection?
234-235: show the data
254: References in results?
272: For discussion?
286: use the same name for the detector model
Fig. 6: Order according to q-stat.
341-342: what other factors?
390: category value 8?
395: Type 5?
429-431: How do your results compare to the references?
459-471:Discussion?
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thanks very much for taking your time to review this manuscript. I really appreciate all your comments and suggestions! Please find my itemized responses in below and my revisions/corrections in the re-submitted files.
Thanks again!
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
This is a highly technical article that examines the relationship between NDVI and 34 variables in part of Mongolia. The article works its way through the analysis stages and the results clearly, and comes to conclusions that are supported by the evidence yet are not surprising.
The text mentions the target area as Xilinguole League but the abstract mentions XilinGol league. The text also has the two terms. They should be the same.
The references are odd. They should all give explicitly the source journals, but it seems that the source journals are given as initial letter abbreviations after the list of authors. The reference list needs to be revised to ensure it is explicit on the sources.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thanks very much for taking your time to review this manuscript. I really appreciate all your comments and suggestions! At the same time I have made adjustments to the sepll of English language, and added relevant references. Please find my itemized responses in below and my revisions/corrections in the re-submitted files.
Thanks again!
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Accept in present form.
