Chemical Recalcitrance Rather Than Soil Microbial Community Determined Short-Term Biochar Stability in a Poplar Plantation Soil

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Review of the article: “Chemical recalcitrance rather than soil microbial community determined short-term biochar stability in a poplar plantation soil.”

The article is devoted to the current topic of assessing the stability of biochar in the soil of a poplar plantation due to chemical resistance or the soil microbial community.

Firstly, the title of the article is not correct: it sounds like part of a discussion and analysis. It should be made more concise and sound.

A clear purpose of the study should be added in the introduction.

Features should be added to the specific soil type that was examined.

Links to formulas should be added to the Calculations section.

In the list of references, more than 40% are sources older than 2014.

Author Response

Please see the attachment. Thank you.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Line 101-104. Please give the name of soil according to the World reference base soil resources (WRB). Define TC, TN, IC, pH (water extraction?).

 Line 131. Please define DOC and TOC.

 2.4. Soil extracellular enzyme activities. Maybe we should have looked at catalase activity, too?

 3.4. Soil hot water extractable OC. Why in hot water and what was the water temperature?

 Line 260. The relatively low MRTs observed in this study might be  attributed to the short incubation duration of 60 days, since previous evidence has shown that MRTs of biochar increased with longer incubation periods [38]. Maybe we should have extended the experiment?

 What was the carbonate content of the soil of the experiment?

Author Response

Please see the attachment. Thank you.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The current research entitled ‘Chemical recalcitrance rather than soil microbial community determined short-term biochar stability in a poplar plantation soil’’ with a clear and comprehensive abstract included an introduction, method, result, conclusion, and suggestion. This research investigated the decomposition dynamics of 300 °C and 500 °C biochar and aimed to determine the relative importance of biochar chemical recalcitrance and soil microbial community in controlling biochar stability. There are some comments, please see them as below:

Lines 38-39: ‘’The C loss rate of biochar ranged from 3%-26% per 100 a, with a half-life of 10²-10⁷ a’’. -- > Unclear sentence, please rewrite.

Line 40, 42: --- 314-713 a and 567-978 a … -- > what is mean of a?!!!

I would suggest that the authors add some information about the different feedstock and pyrolysis temperatures on biochar characteristics in paragraph two. Here is a recently published that you can use it to improve the introduction: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enconman.2023.117924

The introduction needs to be improved and the innovation of study should be clear at the end of this section. The background of the research is not enough. Line 60: ‘’However, other studies …. ‘’ -- > Please add some of them and compare them with your study? What is the gap of knowledge, and explain how the current research can fill this gap?

Line 257: …. 231 a,… -- > ???

Table 2 should move to the result section.

The main problem of this paper is related to the discussion. The discussion is not well done; it is also very short. To interpretation of those, you need to compare them with other studies. What is the strength or weakness of your results? What is your interpretation for them? Make your interpretation strong with other works.

The conclusion section is not enough, the conclusion should be written with illustrations of the lack of knowledge, novelty of work, and achievement of the research. Please rewrite the conclusion.

Minor editing of English language required

Author Response

Please see the attachment. Thank you.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf