Soil Potassium Balance in the Hilly Region of Central Sichuan, China, Based on Crop Distribution
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
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Minor editing of the English language required
Author Response
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Reviewer 2 Report
Wang et al., submitted the paper entitled “Soil potassium balance in the hilly region of central Sichuan, China, based on crop distribution” to publish in “Sustainability (I. F = 3.9)”. In this paper, author presented the potassium balance in the hilly region of central Sichuan. It can be accepted after addressing the queries.
1. In the introduction, deliver the justification for why author chosen “the hilly region of central Sichuan, China”, currently, this is falls short.
2. Equations 1-4 requires more clarification with proper discussion.
3. Discussion section falls short, it should be expanded for the readers.
4. Conclusion section must be concise with merits, limitations and future scope.
5. Boost the reference section with many latest literatures.
Minor editing required
Author Response
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Reviewer 3 Report
This research is devoted to investigation of soil potassium balance in a hilly region of Sichuan. Authors analyzed content of available potassium in soil of a certain area, potassium input and output and tried to find correlations of soil potassium balance with different natural and anthropogenic factors. Also, authors analyzed soil potassium balance for different cropping patterns, that varied among crops. However, some moments of the research are not clear:
1.How the correlation of the soil potassium balance with different factors was evaluated? Part 2.6.2 of materials and methods says that the whole area was graded to generate grid pattern and the correlation was determined within the grid. It means that each grid has its own mean of potassium balance and the correlation was evaluated for each grid. The way of obtaining table 4 is not clear. What does it present? It this average mean of balances for each grid and its correlation?
2. According results 79,2 % of potassium balance variation remains unexplained. How do you think what is the amount of crop species contribution in this variation? Each crop is characterized by its own needs of potassium, and that is why the input and output and the balance in different crop patterns varies.
3. the results of part 3.3 should be discussed. The discussion takes deal only with parts 3.2 and 3.4, however parts 3.3 presents useful results.
Small comments for the text:
Uniform corn or maize.
Line 348 – I guess it should be figure 6
Figure 3 – give the definitions for these two pictures
Figure 6 – give the definition of a and b in the caption
Check the style of reference 1
Author Response
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Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
The text of the article has been improved. The part of materials and methods and the discussion are comprehensive now. The result are clearly presented.
The word ‘corn’ is still used in figure 4. Change it to ‘maize’.
Line 319 – I guess it should be figure 6 c
In my own opinion, conclusions might be shorter. There are too many details now.
Author Response
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