Effects of Different Native Plants on Soil Remediation and Microbial Diversity in Jiulong Iron Tailings Area, Jiangxi
and Lingyu Hou 1,2,*
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript entitled" Effects of different native plants on soil remediation and microbial diversity in Jiulong iron tailings area, Jiangxi" is an interesting investigation and of great interest of journal readers. The novelty of the study is it is first investigation on filed scale to assess which addresses the influence of native plants and microbial communities on remediation of contaminated soil. This is also interesting to understand dynamics of microbial communities in the rhizosphere of various plant species.
1. English need intensive revision and spacing between words is main issue.
2. The key issue in the interpretation of data and data representation. The author must keep legend description with each table and figure instead of refering the table 1 as it is hard for the author to interpret data whlie checking description on other location.
3. Discussion section is more like a review of literature and it is most weak section the author must discuss more their results and justify with literature discussion. for example section 4.2 it is more like review
4. The conclusions are not direct what the author have found in the study instead the give general statements. I think conclusion must be supported with findings of the study e.g. which plant specie and microbe has positive correlation and which has negative. What are the key limitation and strengths of this approach to remediate heavy metal contaminated soil.
5. Some references are not properly formatted please check journal formatting style.
Author Response
Thank you for your comments. The manuscript has been revised according to the suggestion. Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The topic of plant impact to microbial diversity and element content in soil is of general interest but the paper is focused on an narrow spectra of potential toxic elements. The paper reflects the present state of knowledge and there are presented relevant aspects of the topic, the literature being sufficiently critical, current, and internationally evaluated. The size of the article is appropriate to the contents and the text is well structured and without undesirable repetitions, being presented in a manner that scientists in other disciplines will understand in a certain extend.
However, some extra effort is needed to make the article publishable. Please find below some specific comments.
Page #1 Row 20. misprint “uncontaminated”
Page #2 Row 49-51. It is very difficult to follow the meaning of the phrase. Please reformulate.
Page #3 Rows 107-109. It is very difficult to follow the meaning of the phrase. Please reformulate.
Page #5 Rows 225. “had significantly higher…” what?
Line numbering starts again at 1 on page #8.
Page #12 Figure 5B. Explanation for the left arrow is missing.
Page #13 Figure 6. The representation is made by circles, but by discs. It is almost impossible to distinguish *, **, *** on discs. It would be much better to use circles instead of discs. The stars will be visible on the white background of the circle. It is not obvious what information the disk size transmits.
Page #14 Row 170. misprint “not enough”
Page #18. Rows 368-371. the same reference is given three times and each time it is not complete
Moreover, Zn was not discussed at all. If not relevant, it must be deleted from the table.
Author Response
Thank you for your comments. The manuscript has been revised according to the suggestion. Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
Row 34 - Sui, Fatichi, Burlando, Weber, & Battista, 2021 –in the text is better to use ET AL.,
USE et al. in Rows 34, 39 , 47, 48, 63 , 68, ………………..etc.
Row -83 – 86 Plants and MO are without author abbreviation; ( L.) for example
Row 93 and 145 Biolog EcoPlate (Biolog Inc,USA) – please give correct citation or ISO of research method.
Row 108 -The – capita letter?
Row 147 - Classen et al.(Classen, Boyle, Haskins, Overby, & Hart, 2003) -strange citation
Row 247 – Table 1 – SOC – no measuring units
The citation is so confusing – sometimes it is - et al. , sometimes – all authors are citied – Why ?
Why studied soil samples have high potash and nitrogen content but low organic carbon content – please explain.
Author Response
Thank you for your comments. The manuscript has been revised according to the suggestion. Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The comments are incorporated and addressed.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Most of the comments received an appropriate response.
It is still not clear why in Fig. 6 the disks are of different sizes if the degree of correlation is shown using different colors.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
