Study on the Response of Vegetation Water Use Efficiency to Drought in the Manas River Basin, Xinjiang, China
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsReview on the manuscript ID: forests-2774702
Study on the Response of Vegetation Water Use Efficiency to Drought in the Manas River Basin
Abstract
- Line 13 the authors should mention the name of the country of their study also it should appear in the title of the article.
- From line 13 to 19 these sentences need to be rephrased.
In general abstract should be strong and has a very good language.
Introduction:
- Line 37 the abbreviation of WUE should be defined at the first mention after the abstract. Please do it for all abbreviations.
- Needs to language improvement.
Overview of the study area:
- Line 68 also the author did not mention the country??
Results and Analyses:
- This part need to be rephrased.
- Line 251 is repeated.
- Try to follow one writing style for figures caption.
- Figure 6 is not clear and confusing.
Discussion:
- This part also needs English revision.
Generally, the authors were selected the years from 2001 to 2020 for the study the Response of Vegetation Water Use Efficiency to Drought in the Manas River Basin, China. This period is about a 19 years, I think the authors have a good data and variations due to these many years, but they focus only about the sum of the seasonal effects, so the variations will not be clear and cannot follow up the changing during years.
Comments on the Quality of English LanguageExtensive editing of English language required
Author Response
Thank you for the teacher's comments. Please refer to the attached document for detailed revision instructions。
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsDear Authors,
The topic of drought is an essential element in assessing the state of our climate and its changes. Articles on drought are an important element. The popular SPEI index was used in the work, although research by Wang et al. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2019.02.023 shows that a better index for assessing drought would be the SPERI index. Of course, this does not mean that the article's authors made a mistake here. Limitations in this respect could include, among others: limited access to data. Nevertheless, the work was performed by the rules. It contains all the necessary elements that make a good article. The work is interesting and apart from minor substantive and punctuation remarks (in text), it does not contain any major errors. Taking into account my comments, I recommend the work for publication.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Thank you for the teacher's comments. Please refer to the attached document for detailed revision instructions.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe Authors conducted an interesting study of the forest and grassland WUE response to drought conditions in the Manas River Basin, Xinjiang using multiyear remote sensing datasets. They showed different effects of drought on the grassland and forested areas as well as different time delays of these effects. Even though the study looks interesting for publication, there are important questions below that should be addressed and clarified further to improve its understanding.
The introduction looks rather incomplete. In addition to the introduction subject extension, it would be good to outline clear hypotheses and addressed questions as well as the clear method outlines.
Figure 1 - it would be better to clearly highlight the scale magnification sequence over the maps. Consider to re-focus the Figure.
It is not clear how the WUE definition used in the paper (NPP/ET, Equation 1) is related to the standard WUE definitions (photosynthetic water-use efficiency GPP/ET) or (water-use efficiency of productivity NEP/ET).
Equation 3 is unclear. What are the timeseries involved in the calculations?
In the Pearson correlation coefficient, what are the SPEIi?
Equation 11 - looks opposite as the WUE in "the droughtiest year" should be much smaller than the "the mean annual WUE". Please clarify.
The following statement (lines 345-348) is unclear and looks contradictory: "The maximum correlation of the 6-month scale was 0.31, the correlation of the 12-month scale was the lowest, and the maximum correlation was only 0.27. The correlation coefficient of the 6- and 12-month scales was the highest, while the maximum correlation coefficient of the 3- and 6-month scales was the highest."
In the Conclusions (lines 472-474) - this statement looks counterintuitive: "The frequency of droughts was high in areas dominated by grasslands, while that in forests was lower and the WUE was higher." Please clarify. This could be the remote sensing artifact and not the real situation on the ground.
Kind regards,
Author Response
Thank you for the teacher's comments. Please refer to the attached document for detailed revision instructions
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsI would like to thank the authors for paying attention to questions and suggestions. The corrections they made improved the text consistency and understandability of the manuscript.
I think the manuscript is significantly improved and owing to the overall quality and interest in the subject of study is worth to be published in its current form.
Kind regards,
