Ecosystem and Driving Force Evaluation of Northeast Forest Belt

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Review manuscript#land-1837668
The aim of the current study was to assess the long term dynamic changes of ecosystem services quality in the Northeast Forest Belt in China within a period from 2005 to 2015 and to evaluate the driving forces behind those changes. However, there are some issues that need further explanations. My comments are provided below.
General comments
1. The main shortage of the current study is the lack of statistical analysis. This part is limited only to descriptive statistics, leading to limitations as far as other similar areas is concerned. I suggest authors incorporate some simple inferential statistics in order to generalize their results. Otherwise, the study has rather local interest.
2. The application of the AHP has not been described adequately. Some vital information must be included, such as the number of the experts participated, the Consistency Index (CI) etc. Perhaps a simple statistical analysis can be applied in this part.
3. There are many iterations in the manuscript and they must be corrected. In addition, there is a high level of detail as far as the descriptive statistics is concerned and they must be simplified using, for example, relevant tables.  
Specific comments
L32 Some keywords are already mentioned in the title
L39 Please, add the relevant citation
L53 – 63 – 66 – 69 – 82 – 87 – 90 – 94 – 98 – 104 – 107 - 738  Please add the reference number after the name(s). For example “Sun [10] assessed the ….”
L59 What is the “C” abbreviation?
L88 Please correct the “index – LSESCI”
Figure 1 Please replace the “DEM” word with “Elevation (m)”
L200 Perhaps “stability” is better than “security”.
L204 – 223 – 234 – 240 – 246 – 260 – 269 – 284 – 303 – 313. Why those words are bolded? Please, revise.
L190 - 209 -  228 – 236 – 241 – 247 – 263 – 273 – 290 – 307 – 318 – 331. Please add the relevant reference(s).
L368 – 372 – 430 – 590 – 637. Please correct those lines.
L677 – 679 Please see the (3) general comment.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

 

 

This paper looks at the evolution of ecological quality in the Northeast Forest Belt of China from 2005-2015. While this is an interesting area of research, there are a number of major flaws, that have to be addressed, listed below. In particular there is insufficient detail given in Materials and methods to allow the paper to be replicated. Minor edits follow the major edits section.

 

Major corrections:

1) There is insufficient detail given as to the data sources You have a brief paragraph on data sources – but insufficient indication on what comes from where. For example, where does the data on GDP, population density, road, come from. Were they calculated or downloaded? How? from where? Resolution of input data should also be given.

2) There are insufficient citations, especially with regards to provenance of equations - example Equations 2-8.

3) There is insufficient detail given with regard to numbers used – what are the values of the coefficients given, in say, Equations 3-8.

4) Abbreviations must be defined on first occurrence. I've given a few examples below, but there are lots more. Furthermore, figure captions should explain all the abbreviations used in the figure, so readers don't have to search through the text

5) Your results do not read well – feeling like a repetition of numbers from accompanying tables, that is hard to make sense of. You should extract just the major points in the text.

 

 

Minor edits

 

Ln2 'soil conservation, habitat provision, water conservation...'

Ln25 . In contrast, the northeast...

Ln 59 NEP model????

Ln60'overall performance of C was carbon sinks' what does this mean?

Ln67 ES abbreviation

Ln68 'aboriginal aggregation distribution' I'm unfamiliar with this term – what does it mean?

Ln82 ISP abbreviation

Ln 86 SES abbreviation

Ln92 LSM abbreviation

Ln92 NDBSI abbrev

Ln 98 'comparatively early' compared to what?

Ln123 RS abbreviation

Ln140-144 This is repeated from Introduction

Ln158 comes from

Table 1 following sections should be in order given in table

 

 

Ln377'the area was about 537' Area of what? Is not clear what you are referring to

Table 3 Units?

Ln540HQ?

Ln560 what causes the sharp decline in C in the SW?

Ln616 middle

Ln618-618You don't need to repeat numbers that are in the table

Ln625-627 Again, this is just repeating what I can read in Table4

Ln640-642 this should be in materials and methods , not results

Ln657 'Secondly' what was firstly

Ln657 'NPP had always been in the top position of the ranking' don't understand this. What ranking?

Ln659'topographic factors of elevation and slope had been ahead' ahead of what ? These few lines are confusingly written and should be clarified

Fig 11 it would be clearer if similar factors were grouped together so GDP, popn density and road together, ;temperature, precipitation... together

Ln717-718 'driving force...more obvious' what does this mean?

Ln727 GDP density

Ln728 'road as the three human...'

Ln730'resulting in uncertainty in the final analysis of the results'

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

In this study, the Northeast Forest Belt was taken as the research area. The spatio-temporal changes of ecological quality from 2005 to 2015 and the main driving factors behind them were analyzed by constructing the ecosystem comprehensive evaluation index. The research method of this paper is reasonable. In addition, the research results and findings are of great significance to the protection and construction of Northeast Forest Belt. The paper still has some details to improve.

1. I suggest that all titles with abbreviations be changed to full names. For example, 2.3.2, 2.3.3, 3.3.1, 3.3.2, 3.3.3, 3.3.4, and 3.3.5.

2. There seems to be some errors in the figures' title name from Figure 5 to Figure 10.

For example,

‘Spatial distribution of three types of EQ at different levels.

in the NFB from 2005-2015’.

Should you put this sentence ‘ in the NFB from 2005-2015’ at the end of the sentence above? However, the above sentence has been ends with a full stop. Please read the headings of the figures and tables carefully.

3. The conclusion part should not be a summary of methods, results and discussions, but more about future research prospects.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors made all the suggested changes and the manuscript has improved significantly.

Reviewer 3 Report

I agree with the study for publication in this journal