PONE-D-21-24083New land use change scenarios for Brazil: refining global SSPs with a regional spatially-explicit allocation modelPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Silva Bezerra,

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Reviewers' comments:

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Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Partly

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: I Don't Know

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The paper entitled as "New land use change scenarios for Brazil: refining global SSPs with a regional spatially-explicit allocation model" present a downscaled spatial model for estimating future of land use and cover change in Brazil. The authors have used both global and regional parameters to estimate and train the transition models for projecting the LULC data until 2050.

The paper is well written and easy to follow, while the authors have provided many details regarding their data, models used and presenting intermediate results. The paper can be accepted for publication, I would only recommend to the authors to address some of the points given below:

1. Please elaborate further the Model performance and the results obtained in Figure 3. As the overall data are projections the validation with existing and simulated data remains a critical parameter that needs to be discussed. If possible please provide more details (per class) and more statistics in this section (probably using a table).

2. 2.2 Scenario assumptions: from global to regional and especially the paragraph after line 92. Please provide more details of how you have elaborated the downscaling approach moving from global to regional approach. Why and how did you selected the “ SSP1 RCP 1.9, SSP2 RCP 4.5 and SSP3 RCP 7.0—table 3). This is something that needs to be further elaborated and discussed.

3. Future work and research direction from the authors would be appreciated. What is missing in the current study, are there any steps for the future in terms of improvements of the model

Overall this is an interesting work.

Reviewer #2: This is an important topic. This study develops new land use change scenarios by including the global structure and local factors. The paper is well written and easy to follow.

Some comments:

1. Please add the definitions of “global”, “local”, and “balance” here. Take the study area, Brazil, as our example, does the global scale here mean real “global”, America, or Latin America? Giving examples of global or local factor can help our readers understand this research problems and focus on the key issues.

2. The authors can add explanations of their scenarios in the abstract. For example, sustainable development scenario for SPP1 RCP 1.9, middle of the road scenario for SPP2 RCP 4.5, and strong inequality scenario for SPP3 RCP 7.0. Also, what is the number meaning after RCP?

3. This study includes many abbreviations, such as LUCC, LuccMEBR, IBGE, IMAGE, LuccME, INLAND, LR, and PPAS. The authors can provide a list in the appendix.

4. There is a reference citation error on line 123 page 6.

5. In table one, the description of some classes are very detailed, but some are more generalized. Is there a specific reason?

6. For the study method, the authors used a validation matric (equation 5) to test the similarity between the real and simulated maps. Is this the most common method because the reference paper is 1989. Also, what is the range of this NS index and how to explain it?

7. Please increase resolution of figure 3 and 4.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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New land-use change scenarios for Brazil: refining global SSPs with a regional spatially-explicit allocation model

PONE-D-21-24083R1

Dear Dr. Gilney Silva Bezerra,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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Kind regards,

Eda Ustaoglu, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The authors have addressed all me previous comments, providing in this version further details regarding the statistical analysis (Table 5) and details (hypothesis) for the scenario selected. The paper can be accepted, as it will make significant contribution to the research area.

Reviewer #2: The Authors have addressed all of my concerns with the original manuscript. The revised manuscript is ready for publication.

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No