RETRACTED: Population growth poses a significant threat to forest ecosystems: A case study from the Hindukush-Himalayas of Pakistan

Naveed Alam; Zahid Ullah; Bilal Ahmad; Ahmad Ali; Kashmala Syed

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0302192

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionMarch 31, 2024
2 Jul 2024 Decision Letter - Gouranga Lal Dasvarma, Editor PONE-D-24-12983Editorial Manager Plos one Subject: Declaration of Interest in Submitting Manuscript “Population growth poses a significant threat to forest ecosystems: a case study from the Hindukush-Himalayas of Pakistan”PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Alam, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. Please submit your revised manuscript by Aug 16 2024 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labelled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labelled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labelled 'Manuscript'. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Gouranga Lal Dasvarma, PhD Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf 2. Thank you for stating the following financial disclosure: "Funded by Higher Education Commission of Pakistan (HEC) through Start-up Research Grant Program (SRGP) – R&D Division No: 21-1095/SRGP/R&D/HEC/2016" Please state what role the funders took in the study. If the funders had no role, please state: "The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript." If this statement is not correct you must amend it as needed. Please include this amended Role of Funder statement in your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. 3. Thank you for stating the following in the Acknowledgments Section of your manuscript: "We are grateful to the Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan for funding this research project through Start-up Research Grant Program (SRGP) – R&D Division No: 21-1095/SRGP/R&D/HEC/2016" We note that you have provided funding information that is not currently declared in your Funding Statement. However, funding information should not appear in the Acknowledgments section or other areas of your manuscript. We will only publish funding information present in the Funding Statement section of the online submission form. Please remove any funding-related text from the manuscript and let us know how you would like to update your Funding Statement. Currently, your Funding Statement reads as follows: "Funded by Higher Education Commission of Pakistan (HEC) through Start-up Research Grant Program (SRGP) – R&D Division No: 21-1095/SRGP/R&D/HEC/2016" Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. 4. Thank you for stating the following in the Competing Interests section: "Dear Editor, We, the authors of the manuscript entitled "Population growth poses a significant threat to forest ecosystems: a case study from the Hindukush-Himalayas of Pakistan," hereby express our collective agreement to submit this article for publication in PLOS ONE. We confirm that all authors have reviewed and approved the final version of the manuscript. We wish to declare that there are no competing interests among the authors regarding the publication of this article. Additionally, we would like to bring to your attention that our institutions are geographically located in Research 4 Life countries (Group B), thereby qualifying for inclusion in partnership models for various PLOS journals, including PLOS ONE. As such, researchers affiliated with these institutions are exempt from publication fees at PLOS ONE. Thank you for considering our submission. Sincerely, Dr. Naveed Alam Dr. Bilal Ahmad Dr. Ahmad Ali Dr.Zahid Ullah Kashmala Syed" Please confirm that this does not alter your adherence to all PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials, by including the following statement: "This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.” (as detailed online in our guide for authors http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/competing-interests). If there are restrictions on sharing of data and/or materials, please state these. Please note that we cannot proceed with consideration of your article until this information has been declared. Please include your updated Competing Interests statement in your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. 5. We note that your Data Availability Statement is currently as follows: [All relevant data are within the manuscript and its Supporting Information files.] Please confirm at this time whether or not your submission contains all raw data required to replicate the results of your study. Authors must share the “minimal data set” for their submission. PLOS defines the minimal data set to consist of the data required to replicate all study findings reported in the article, as well as related metadata and methods (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-minimal-data-set-definition). For example, authors should submit the following data: - The values behind the means, standard deviations and other measures reported; - The values used to build graphs; - The points extracted from images for analysis. Authors do not need to submit their entire data set if only a portion of the data was used in the reported study. If your submission does not contain these data, please either upload them as Supporting Information files or deposit them to a stable, public repository and provide us with the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers. For a list of recommended repositories, please see https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/recommended-repositories. If there are ethical or legal restrictions on sharing a de-identified data set, please explain them in detail (e.g., data contain potentially sensitive information, data are owned by a third-party organization, etc.) and who has imposed them (e.g., an ethics committee). Please also provide contact information for a data access committee, ethics committee, or other institutional body to which data requests may be sent. If data are owned by a third party, please indicate how others may request data access. 6. We note that [Figure 1] in your submission contain [map/satellite] images which may be copyrighted. All PLOS content is published under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which means that the manuscript, images, and Supporting Information files will be freely available online, and any third party is permitted to access, download, copy, distribute, and use these materials in any way, even commercially, with proper attribution. For these reasons, we cannot publish previously copyrighted maps or satellite images created using proprietary data, such as Google software (Google Maps, Street View, and Earth). For more information, see our copyright guidelines: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/licenses-and-copyright. We require you to either (1) present written permission from the copyright holder to publish these figures specifically under the CC BY 4.0 license, or (2) remove the figures from your submission: a. You may seek permission from the original copyright holder of Figure 1 to publish the content specifically under the CC BY 4.0 license. We recommend that you contact the original copyright holder with the Content Permission Form (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=7c09/content-permission-form.pdf) and the following text: “I request permission for the open-access journal PLOS ONE to publish XXX under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CCAL) CC BY 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Please be aware that this license allows unrestricted use and distribution, even commercially, by third parties. Please reply and provide explicit written permission to publish XXX under a CC BY license and complete the attached form.” Please upload the completed Content Permission Form or other proof of granted permissions as an "Other" file with your submission. In the figure caption of the copyrighted figure, please include the following text: “Reprinted from [ref] under a CC BY license, with permission from [name of publisher], original copyright [original copyright year].” b. If you are unable to obtain permission from the original copyright holder to publish these figures under the CC BY 4.0 license or if the copyright holder’s requirements are incompatible with the CC BY 4.0 license, please either i) remove the figure or ii) supply a replacement figure that complies with the CC BY 4.0 license. Please check copyright information on all replacement figures and update the figure caption with source information. If applicable, please specify in the figure caption text when a figure is similar but not identical to the original image and is therefore for illustrative purposes only. The following resources for replacing copyrighted map figures may be helpful: USGS National Map Viewer (public domain): http://viewer.nationalmap.gov/viewer/ The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth (public domain): http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/sseop/clickmap/ Maps at the CIA (public domain): https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html and https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/cia-maps-publications/index.html NASA Earth Observatory (public domain): http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/ Landsat: http://landsat.visibleearth.nasa.gov/ USGS EROS (Earth Resources Observatory and Science (EROS) Center) (public domain): http://eros.usgs.gov/# Natural Earth (public domain): http://www.naturalearthdata.com/ [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] 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 ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 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 ****** 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 ****** 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 author’s main argument is that population growth and associated increases in human activities negatively impact forest ecosystems. Their study site is Malam Jabba, in District Swat Pakistan’s Hindukush Himalayan temperate zone. -The authors need to define what administrative unit Malam Jabba represents, a town, a protected area, a region…? The authors examined deforestation in relation to increasing human population density in the area using RS and GIS. Vegetation was examined with NDVI from 1980 to 2020. Results show that, in ‘’the last two decades, the average rate of deforestation increased from 0.7% to 1.93% per year, while the human population of District Swat increased from 1.2 to 2.3 million at a rate of 9% per year.’’ -The paper could be greatly improved by including analytical methods that show explore the relationship between population and forest cover change rather than a simple bivariate correlation. -how do the authors explain that population growth exceeded deforestation by more than 4 fold? -The introduction should include some foundational population-forest change references from scholars such as Bilsborrow, Pan, Lopez-Carr, and Barbieri. -The conclusion does a good job of discussing policy implications but should also include a statement of limitations and implications for future work. Reviewer #2: A relevant study with novelty. Please see my comments in the text boxes embedded in the manuscript itself. 1. As introduction of your work, please give your specific research questions, your hypotheses based on these research questions and your specific research objectives. As a background of your work please cite earlier works related to decay model, its relevancy for your present work and the research gaps you intend to fill in with this research. 2. Please also give an account of population growth, grazing, agricultural expansion and growth of ecotourism in your study area in terms of quantitative data. 3.Refer the line 177. Please give the quantitative data of timber extraction and fuel wood collection of your study area. 4. In discussion section, please compare your results with other studies of your country and elsewhere related to the NDVI values and the GIS, RS and decay model used. 5. In your conclusion section please also give the implication of your study along with limitations if any and what need to be done like future research needs and recommendations. ****** 6. 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: Yes: Professor (Dr.) Sumit Chakravarty ******** [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: PONE-D-24-12983-30-06-2024.pdf https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0302192.r001
Revision 1
2 Oct 2024 Author Response Response to the Academic Editor 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming Dear Sir, carefully it was ensured in the revised version of the manuscript, to meet PLOS ONE style and format 2. Thank you for stating the following financial disclosure: "Funded by Higher Education Commission of Pakistan (HEC) through Start-up Research Grant Program (SRGP) – R&D Division No: 21-1095/SRGP/R&D/HEC/2016" Please state what role the funders took in the study. If the funders had no role, please state: "The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript." If this statement is not correct you must amend it as needed. Please include this amended Role of Funder statement in your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. Dear sir, thank you much for highlighting this important correction. The Funding section has been updated with the statement "The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.” Further, Kindly change the online submission form on my behalf, please 3. Thank you for stating the following in the Acknowledgments Section of your manuscript: "We are grateful to the Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan for funding this research project through Start-up Research Grant Program (SRGP) – R&D Division No: 21-1095/SRGP/R&D/HEC/2016" We note that you have provided funding information that is not currently declared in your Funding Statement. However, funding information should not appear in the Acknowledgments section or other areas of your manuscript. We will only publish funding information present in the Funding Statement section of the online submission form. Please remove any funding-related text from the manuscript and let us know how you would like to update your Funding Statement. Currently, your Funding Statement reads as follows: "Funded by Higher Education Commission of Pakistan (HEC) through Start-up Research Grant Program (SRGP) – R&D Division No: 21-1095/SRGP/R&D/HEC/2016" Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. Dear Editor, Thank you very much for highlighting this important correction. The acknowledgement section has been changed in the revised manuscript, with the statement that “We are thankful to the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for providing free access to Landsat data. We appreciate their commitment to open data policies.” Further, Kindly include the amended acknowledgment statement in cover letter; on our behalf. 4. Thank you for stating the following in the Competing Interests section: "Dear Editor, We, the authors of the manuscript entitled "Population growth poses a significant threat to forest ecosystems: a case study from the Hindukush-Himalayas of Pakistan," hereby express our collective agreement to submit this article for publication in PLOS ONE. We confirm that all authors have reviewed and approved the final version of the manuscript. We wish to declare that there are no competing interests among the authors regarding the publication of this article. Additionally, we would like to bring to your attention that our institutions are geographically located in Research 4 Life countries (Group B), thereby qualifying for inclusion in partnership models for various PLOS journals, including PLOS ONE. As such, researchers affiliated with these institutions are exempt from publication fees at PLOS ONE. Thank you for considering our submission. Sincerely, Dr. Naveed Alam Dr. Bilal Ahmad Dr. Ahmad Ali Dr.Zahid Ullah Kashmala Syed" Please confirm that this does not alter your adherence to all PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials, by including the following statement: "This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.” (as detailed online in our guide for authors http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/competing-interests). If there are restrictions on sharing of data and/or materials, please state these. Please note that we cannot proceed with consideration of your article until this information has been declared. Please include your updated Competing Interests statement in your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. Dear Editor, We have no competing interests and we confirm that we will follow PLOS ONE's rules about sharing research data and materials "This does not change our commitment to PLOS ONE's policies on sharing data and materials." 5. We note that your Data Availability Statement is currently as follows: [All relevant data are within the manuscript and its Supporting Information files.] Please confirm at this time whether or not your submission contains all raw data required to replicate the results of your study. Authors must share the “minimal data set” for their submission. PLOS defines the minimal data set to consist of the data required to replicate all study findings reported in the article, as well as related metadata and methods (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/data-availability#loc-minimal-data-set-definition). For example, authors should submit the following data: - The values behind the means, standard deviations and other measures reported; - The values used to build graphs; - The points extracted from images for analysis. Authors do not need to submit their entire data set if only a portion of the data was used in the reported study. If your submission does not contain these data, please either upload them as Supporting Information files or deposit them to a stable, public repository and provide us with the relevant URLs, DOIs, or accession numbers. For a list of recommended repositories, please see https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/recommended-repositories. If there are ethical or legal restrictions on sharing a de-identified data set, please explain them in detail (e.g., data contain potentially sensitive information, data are owned by a third-party organization, etc.) and who has imposed them (e.g., an ethics committee). Please also provide contact information for a data access committee, ethics committee, or other institutional body to which data requests may be sent. If data are owned by a third party, please indicate how others may request data access. Dear Editor, Thank you for your inquiry. We confirm that all relevant data are available the manuscript. The values behind the reported measures and graphs are explained in the manuscript text. We have made use of publicly available Landsat data, accessible through the USGS Earth Explorer portal, which is cited in the manuscript. All data are freely available and no ethical or legal restrictions apply. We have ensured compliance with PLOS ONE's data availability policy. Additionally, we have attached the supplementary data in separate word file. 6. We note that [Figure 1] in your submission contain [map/satellite] images which may be copyrighted. All PLOS content is published under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which means that the manuscript, images, and Supporting Information files will be freely available online, and any third party is permitted to access, download, copy, distribute, and use these materials in any way, even commercially, with proper attribution. For these reasons, we cannot publish previously copyrighted maps or satellite images created using proprietary data, such as Google software (Google Maps, Street View, and Earth). For more information, see our copyright guidelines: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/licenses-and-copyright. We require you to either (1) present written permission from the copyright holder to publish these figures specifically under the CC BY 4.0 license, or (2) remove the figures from your submission: Dear Editor, Thank you for bringing this to our attention. Response to Reviewer # 1 Comments Dear Reviewer Worldwide the rate of deforestation has been studies using GIS and RS, however in the current study MATLAB program was used to predict future forest cover in relation to the population growth which represent novelty of the current study. Followings are the responses of your comments please. 1. The author’s main argument is that population growth and associated increases in human activities negatively impact forest ecosystems. Their study site is Malam Jabba, in District Swat Pakistan’s Hindukush Himalayan temperate zone. -The authors need to define what administrative unit Malam Jabba represents, a town, a protected area, a region…? Dear Sir, We appreciate your comment. Malam Jabba is a union council in Swat District, comprising 14 villages and approximately 23,000 inhabitants. However, Malam Jabba Forest faces severe deforestation pressures from the nearby city of Mingora and surrounding villages of District Swat. These information's have been provided in the revised manuscript line no. 90-93 The authors examined deforestation in relation to increasing human population density in the area using RS and GIS. Vegetation was examined with NDVI from 1980 to 2020. Results show that, in ‘’the last two decades, the average rate of deforestation increased from 0.7% to 1.93% per year, while the human population of District Swat increased from 1.2 to 2.3 million at a rate of 9% per year.’’ The paper could be greatly improved by including analytical methods that show explore the relationship between population and forest cover change rather than a simple bivariate correlation. Dear Sir, Thank you for your suggestion. We analysed forest cover and deforestation data from Landsat images spanning 1981-2000, 2001-2020, and predicted future trends for 2021-2040 using MATLAB software. Population growth data was obtained from the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics. Figure 4 illustrates the correlation between population growth and forest cover, while Figures 5 and 6 present the novel decay model, which demonstrates the impact of population growth on forest cover. Although we attempted analytical analysis, the limited dataset restricted the accuracy of our results. Nevertheless, our approach provides a valuable contribution to understanding the relationship between population growth and forest cover degradation -how do the authors explain that population growth exceeded deforestation by more than 4 fold? Dear Sir, Thank you very much for this important question. Population of District Swat increases 4 fold as compared to the deforestation rate, because the main population hub of District Swat is Mingora city and nearby villages, which are not totally dependent on Malam Jabba forests. There is parallel pressure on the other forests too, like kalam valley and Elum mountain forests. These forests are also located in close proximity to the Mingora city. -The introduction should include some foundational population-forest change references from scholars Dear Sir, Thank you very much. The needful has been done and new references has been added. The conclusion does a good job of discussing policy implications but should also include a statement of limitations and implications for future work. Dear Sir, Thank you very much for the important correction. Statement of limitations and implications for future work, has been added at the end of conclusion. Please see line 357-359 Response to Reviewer # 2 Comments 1. As introduction of your work, please give your specific research questions, your hypotheses based on these research questions and your specific research objectives. As a background of your work please cite earlier works related to decay model, its relevancy for your present work and the research gaps you intend to fill in with this research. Dear Sir, Thank You very much for highlighting the deficiency in introduction section. The needful has been done. Please read line 100-116. 2. Please also give an account of population growth, grazing, agricultural expansion and growth of ecotourism in your study area in terms of quantitative data. Dear Sir, Unfortunately quantitative data is not available for grazing, agriculture expansion and growth of ecotourism in the study area. However, relevant research work has been cited ( 26-29) 26. Sher H, Al_yemeni M. Economically and ecologically important plant communities in high altitude coniferous forest of Malam Jabba, Swat, Pakistan. Saudi Journal of Biological Sciences. 2011;18(1):53-61. 27. Ali S, Jan BH, Ali A, Tariq M . Sociological analysis of threat to biodiversity and agricultural land conversion into commercial use due to tourism in district Swat, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Remittances Review. 2024; 9(2): 355–376. 28. Iqbal I, Hamayun M (2004) Studies on the traditional uses of plants of Malam Jabba valley, District Swat, Pakistan. Ethnobotanical Leaflets. 2004; (1): 15. 29. Rashid A, Swati MF, Sher H, Al-Yemeni MN. Phytoecological evaluation with detailed floristic appraisal of the vegetation around Malam Jabba, Swat, Pakistan. Asian Pacific Journal of Tropical Biomedicine. 2011; 1(6): 461–467. 3. Refer the line 177. Please give the quantitative data of timber extraction and fuel wood collection of your study area. Dear Sir, Thank you for highlighting this statement. The statement has been corrected. 4. In discussion section, please compare your results with other studies of your country and elsewhere related to the NDVI values and the GIS, RS and decay model used. Dear Sir Thank you very much for your valuable comment. The needful has been done. GIS and RS, NDVI studies were already discussed, however, for decay model citations have been added. Please see line 236-340 5. In your conclusion section please also give the implication of your study along with limitations if any and what need to be done like future research needs and recommendations. Dear Sir, Thank you very much for the important correction. Statement of limitations and implications for future work, has been added at the end of conclusion. Please see line 357-359 Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to reviewers comments.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0302192.r002
4 Oct 2024 Decision Letter - Gouranga Lal Dasvarma, Editor Population growth poses a significant threat to forest ecosystems: a case study from the Hindukush-Himalayas of Pakistan PONE-D-24-12983R1 Dear Dr. Naveed Alam, 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. An invoice will be generated when your article is formally accepted. Please note, if your institution has a publishing partnership with PLOS and your article meets the relevant criteria, all or part of your publication costs will be covered. Please make sure your user information is up-to-date by logging into Editorial Manager at Editorial Manager® and clicking the ‘Update My Information' link at the top of the page. If you have any questions relating to publication charges, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. 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, Gouranga Lal Dasvarma, PhD Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0302192.r003
Formally Accepted
13 Nov 2024 Acceptance Letter - Gouranga Lal Dasvarma, Editor PONE-D-24-12983R1 PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Alam, I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now being handed over to our production team. At this stage, our production department will prepare your paper for publication. This includes ensuring the following: * All references, tables, and figures are properly cited * All relevant supporting information is included in the manuscript submission, * There are no issues that prevent the paper from being properly typeset If revisions are needed, the production department will contact you directly to resolve them. If no revisions are needed, you will receive an email when the publication date has been set. At this time, we do not offer pre-publication proofs to authors during production of the accepted work. Please keep in mind that we are working through a large volume of accepted articles, so please give us a few weeks to review your paper and let you know the next and final steps. Lastly, if your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. 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. If we can help with anything else, please email us at customercare@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Gouranga Lal Dasvarma Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0302192.r004

Open letter on the publication of peer review reports

PLOS recognizes the benefits of transparency in the peer review process. Therefore, we enable the publication of all of the content of peer review and author responses alongside final, published articles. Reviewers remain anonymous, unless they choose to reveal their names.

We encourage other journals to join us in this initiative. We hope that our action inspires the community, including researchers, research funders, and research institutions, to recognize the benefits of published peer review reports for all parts of the research system.

Learn more at ASAPbio .