PONE-D-21-33010TOWARDS A CONCRETE LANDSCAPE? ASSESSMENT OF EFFICIENCY OF LAND CONSUMPTION IN GREATER ACCRA REGION, GHANAPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Osman,

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

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: Partly

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: 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

Reviewer #3: No

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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

Reviewer #3: 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: This paper raised a concern of low land consumption efficiency in Greater Accra Region, by mapping the land cover change in 30 years, the authors calculated the land consumption efficiency using UN habitat’s LCPC and found that the land consumption in the region was highly inefficient. By running random forest model, the authors also identified variables that are associated with land consumption and predicted the future land cover change. The paper has solid sections in background and data, but relative weak in terms of the method and result interpretations.

Overall, the paper may have significant implications for the urban development in Greater Accra Region, especially how to balance the development of urban and population growth. However, I would say that neither the method nor the concluding remarks offer significant contribution to the existing literature, neither in theoretical nor practical domain. For international readers, we would like some take-away from the paper, but I failed to do so. I would suggest put more focus on the interpretation of the associations between land consumption and the influencing factors, and what can we learn from the results. Also, I am not convinced by the prediction results from the random forest model, as the method and model are not well introduced, and the results still require more in-depth interpretation.

Some other questions or comments are as follow:

� Line 174: maybe give some brief introduction to each term, such as what is cultivated and managed terrestrial areas, or just provide a link to the FAO documents.

� Line 180, I don’t quite understand how you decided to use the 1987 and 2017 maps to detect land cover change, as you said the accuracy of 1987 is the weakest.

� Line 184: the efficiency of land is calculated here as the ratio between two growth rate, but why later was defined as population density (land consumption per capita)? Such as 1-150 people per hectare as inefficient. Also, I did not see the results of the LCRPGR in the rest of the paper, but only the LCPC.

� Line 204: although you listed the references that support the selection of independent variables, I suggest add some explanations, especially the theoretical underpinnings behind the potential associations.

� Line 237: should be Table 3.

� Line 247, use cumulative “AS”, and the number should be 106580.8

� Reformate Table 2 and Table 4 to fit the pages.

� Line 278: the random forest modelling should be provided with more details. I am not an expert on random forest model and correct me if I am wrong. I understand that you were using the random forest to regress the correlations between land cover change and the influencing factors, and then using such correlations to predict the future change of land cover under “business as usual” scenario, however, more information should be provided, such as what is the target year of your prediction, have you set any thresholds of the influencing factors, such as the population growth (such as the world population projected by UN), climate change (maybe also from UN’s climate report?).

� Line 283: the interpretation of the Fig 5, while I can tell from the Figure that population has the highest importance, but the text said poverty index has the highest level of importance.

� I have read paper using population projection to predict land use change, or verse vise, but why do you think a random forest that includes all factors in the model is better?

� Line 303: it should be “Leo-Breiman”.

� Line 342: the authors pointed out the planning and protection policies intensified the land consumption, but how to include such influences in the predicting model?

� What is the unit of analysis, especially when calculating the land efficiency? grid cells?

� Actually, you were using the land consumption per capita (LCPC) from UN Habitat (https://unhabitat.org/sites/default/files/2021/08/indicator_11.3.1_training_module_land_use_efficiency.pdf) to calculate the “land use efficiency”, rather than the LCRPGR you mentioned (whether the increase of urbanized land is compatible with the increase of population, line 184). In addition, I did not find the threshold of low, moderately and efficient from the reference you provided (line 188, https://apo.org.au/sites/default/files/resource-files/2018-07/apo-nid182836.pdf).

Reviewer #2: This manuscript “TOWARDS A CONCRETE LANDSCAPE? ASSESSMENT OF EFFICIENCY OF LAND CONSUMPTION IN GREATER ACCRA REGION, GHANA” assess the efficiency of land consumption based on population in the Greater Accra Region using classified Landsat imagery over 30 years. Based on the prediction, Artificial surfaces and Cultivated and Managed Terrestrial Areas will be the dominant terrestrial land types in the future. The authors used the Landsat images of Greater Accra Region of 1987, 2005 and 2017 and Resource Efficiency Theory presented the study. Though the results were relatively simple, the contents and thoughts were a bit interesting. After some revision, I would recommend it for publication in PLOS ONE. Detailed revision listed below.

In the abstract part, studied methods and studied years (1987, 2005 and 2017) were not presented.

Many minor problems need to be revised, such as the “Li, Ye, Song, 2020;” in line 47, “Fig 1” in line 139, “(Yan, Peng & Wu, 2020).” in line 111, “(Ahmad, Pandey, & Kumar, 2019).” In line 53, “Guo and Xiong, (2014)” in 114, “Liu et al,” in line 120, “Grekousis and Mountrakis, (2015)” in line 327, in line 349, “Fig 1: Map …” in line 147 and in all the figure captions.

Please unify the tense you used. Such as “Stewart and Haaga (2018) assert that increasing” in line 56-57, and all the primary tenses when you cited and described other reports.

This manuscript had two “Fig. 3” in line 207 and in line 252, respectively, pleased revise them as well as in the text.

In line 282-285, “…predicting land cover change by 13.91% while the least important variables were rainfall (9.53%) and slope (6.60%) …” why the data “13.91%, 9.53% and 6.60%” was disagreed with them in Fig. 5?

Line 251, delete the second “organic”

Line 289, please revise “in at the experimental site”

Reviewer #3: The manuscript is well-developed and well-organized. The article is well-written with the analyses quite useful to identify land consumption of an area. I think it is suitable to be published in PLOS ONE.

I am looking forward to reading the revised paper after the following suggest edits.

* For which year land cover trends is simulated need to be precisely stated.

* Future trends of land consumption is evaluated using “business as usual scenario”. Why business as usual scenario was chosen for the analysis need to be properly justified. Given that it is unlikely to continue the existing growth rate for prolonged time. And, this model is susceptible for portraying an upper bound benchmark for urban growth.

* Few caption of table and tables were misplaced. Need to be corrected.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: Yes: Farhan Asaf Abir

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: PONE review.docx

TOWARDS A CONCRETE LANDSCAPE: ASSESSMENT OF EFFICIENCY OF LAND CONSUMPTION IN GREATER ACCRA REGION, GHANA

PONE-D-21-33010R1

Dear Dr. Osman,

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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If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org.

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

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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

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

Reviewer #1: 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

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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

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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: In this revised manuscript, I think all comments have been well addressed, and I have no further questions.

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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