Water Environment Quality Evaluation and Pollutant Source Analysis in Tuojiang River Basin, China
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript "Water Environment Quality Evaluation and Pollutant Source Analysis in Tuojiang River Basin, China" could make a contribution to the scientific community. To date it needs substantial changes. Enclosed is possible to find my comments.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Review of the submission sustainability-1821117 entitled as “Water Environment Quality Evaluation and Pollutant Source Analysis in Tuojiang River Basin, China”. The submission itself looks of reasonable interest to the readers, but contains some issues to correct before it could be accepted:
1. Figures 1 and 10 – the font size is too small to read comfortably.
2. Row 177 – “17.3:32.8:59.9” isn’t it better, than to say close to “ close to 17:33:50”?
3. Eq.(5) – Maybe it is better to use square root instead of index ½?
4. Figure 3 – Maybe it is better to use logarithmic scale?
5. Row 493 – What is that supposed to mean?
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Point 6: Line142: Why not BOD? Or heavy metals?
Response 6: Thank you for your comments. Due to the large lack of BOD data (2014 and 2015 in S3 and S5, and 2014-2019 in S6), it was impossible to make an overall evaluation of the BOD in the Tuojiang River Basin. In addition, both BOD and COD can reflect the degree of organic pollution in water, so we chose COD as the research object. During the analysis of water quality data at selected sections, we found that heavy metal(cadmium, mercury, chromium, lead, etc.) content had a very low over-standard rate. So we did not take BOD and heavy metals as research objects.
R2: There are different between BOD and COD. Why the authors analyze only the organic compound and not only the biodegradable?
the authors must improve the english form
Author Response
Dear teacher,
Thank you for the feedback and giving us opportunity to improve our manuscript (sustainability-1821117) entitled “Water Environment Quality Evaluation and Pollutant Source Analysis in Tuojiang River Basin, China”. Below, we have responded to the reviewer’s comments point-by-point. Line numbers denoted in the responses are consistent with the newly revised manuscript.
(1) There are different between BOD and COD. Why the authors analyze only the organic compound and not only the biodegradable?
Reply: Thank you very much for your comment. When statistics and analysis of the data, we found that 10 years of BOD data were missing from the study sections. We made an effort to collect missing data, but unfortunately they were not found. If the BOD index of each section was studied from 2014 to 2020, the accuracy and reliability of the overall evaluation would be greatly affected. Because there were too many missing. Finally we did not take BOD as the research object of the article. This was consistent with the research objects of some Tuojiang studies [1,2].
1.Zhang, M.; Chen, X.L.; Yang, S.H.; Song, Z.; Wang, Y.G.; Yu, Q. Basin-scale pollution loads analyzed based on coupled empirical models and numerical models. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2021, 18(23), 12481.
2.Hu, Y.Y.; Wang, Y.D.; Li, T.X.; Zheng, Z.C.; Pu, Y. Characteristics analysis of agricultural non-point source pollution on Tuojiang River basin. Sci. Agric. Sin. 2015, 48(18), 3654-3665.
(2) The authors must improve the English form.
Reply: Thank you very much for the reminder, we have re-polished the article and improved many language forms.
New revision: see “Introduction” on L33, L40, L48, “Materials and Methods” on L222, L236, L376, L438, L467 and “Conclusions” on L497, L510, L513 in the revised manuscript.
