PONE-D-24-16627Climate change and Land Use/Land Cover Change (LUCC) leading to spatial shifts in Net Primary Productivity in Anhui Province, ChinaPLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

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Reviewer #1: Based on NPP data, climate data, and LUCC data, this study analyzed the spatiotemporal variation characteristics of NPP and its response to climate change in Anhui Province. The research results may contribute to further understand the relationship between NPP change and climate change. However, there are some concerns that the authors should address before it can be considered for publication.

1. Lines 32-34, I suggest the authors add more relevant references to back "It is the main factor to determine the carbon source and sink of the ecosystem and regulate the ecological process and is one of the important contents in the study of the carbon cycle process of the terrestrial ecosystem.

2. Where are the sources of data for descriptions of meteorological environmental factors in the study area?

3. How do the authors account for missing values in meteorological data?

4. I suggest the authors add a diagram about the spatial distribution of meteorological stations in Anhui Province.

5. How does the authors account for the inconsistency of spatial resolution between different data sets?

6. More mechanistic explanations should be added to further explain the relationship between NPP and climate factors.

7. In the uncertainty, I suggest the authors further discuss the uncertainty of remote sensing data including NPP data (e.g., Shen et al., 2022; Ma et al., 2022) which may affect the research results.

8. In order to further highlight the innovation of this article, it is better to compare the results of this study with some related studies.

9. Why does the authors not consider the partial correlation method to measure the correlation between meteorological factors and NPP?

References:

Asymmetric impacts of diurnal warming on vegetation carbon sequestration of marshes in the Qinghai Tibet Plateau. Global Biogeochemical Cycles, 2022, 36(7): e2022GB007396.

Spatiotemporal change of net primary productivity and its response to climate change in temperate grasslands of China. Frontiers in Plant Science, 2022, 13: 899800.

Reviewer #2: Overall, this paper has a clear research framework and is a well-structured academic paper. However, I have a few main questions:

My biggest question is, since the author uses MODIS NPP data to validate the results of the CASA model, why not directly use the MODIS product?

Furthermore, there are many similar studies, even on national and global scales. What is the significance or innovation of this study? This needs to be highlighted in the introduction and fully referenced in the discussion section. For example:

Du, Z.; Liu, X.; Wu, Z.; Zhang, H.; Zhao, J. Responses of Forest Net Primary Productivity to Climatic Factors in China during 1982–2015. Plants 2022, 11, 2932. https://doi.org/10.3390/plants11212932;

Shang, E.; Xu, E.; Zhang, H.; Liu, F. Analysis of Spatiotemporal Dynamics of the Chinese Vegetation Net Primary Productivity from the 1960s to the 2000s. Remote Sens. 2018, 10, 860;

Li, J.; Wang, Z.; Lai, C.; Wu, X.; Zeng, Z.; Chen, X.; Lian, Y. Response of net primary production to land use and land cover change in mainland China since the late 1980s. Sci. Total Environ. 2018, 639, 237–247.

Is the land use data dynamic? How did the author consider Land Cover Change as an independent variable?

The research methods section should provide specific methods for "Climate change and Land Use/Land Cover Change leading to spatial shifts in Net Primary Productivity."

Figures 1, 5, and 9 in the text should be numbered, and the p-value should be provided in Figure 5.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Climate change and Land Use/Land Cover Change (LUCC) leading to spatial shifts in Net Primary Productivity in Anhui Province, China

PONE-D-24-16627R1

Dear Dr. Yuan,

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.

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Kind regards,

Dafeng Hui, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

The authors have made great efforts and addressed the reviewers' concerns.

Reviewers' comments: