Interactive Influence of Soil Erosion and Cropland Revegetation on Soil Enzyme Activities and Microbial Nutrient Limitations in the Loess Hilly-Gully Region of China
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear authors,
in the manuscript you took into consideration many factors (land use, vegetation, soil depth, and erosion) thus trying to work at a large scale and trying better understand the variation of the microbial metabolism related to C, N, and P due to all these factors.
I really appreciate the choice of considering stechiometric ratios and the tentative to putting them all together. However, I have several concerns mainly related to the results, discussion, and conclusion sections. Indeed, I have found that the results were not clearly presented either in the text or in the plots/tables; the discussion is poor and most of it is a repetition of the results without a real debate on the effects due to the interactions of the factors considered. I have found the same also in the conclusion section.
You could find line-by-line comments and suggestions in the pdf file.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Manuscript Number: Agronomy-1980892
Title: Interactive influence of soil erosion and cropland revegetation on soil enzyme activities and microbial nutrient limitations in the Loess hilly-gully region of China
Reviewer`s comments
The topic is within the scope of the Journal (Agronomy). The manuscript is good and it is addressing an important aspect of agronomy in China. The interaction effect of soil and re-vegetation of farmland on soil enzyme and microbe activities evaluation is necessary especially on a sloping land. But I have some reservations as follows:
The conclusion aspect of the abstract needs to be modified to precisely address the objective of the study (L30-34). Presently, the author is only explaining the results presented in the abstract.
L48-49 Soil erosion leads to the distribution of soil particles and nutrients and alters microclimate conditions, … How can soil erosion alter microclimate? This is not clear. Erosion can only modify soil conditions especially at surface level. Climate can regulate soil erosion but the reverse is not possible.
L55 … enzyme activities are lower in erosion than in deposition landscapes. This statement is confusing. Are you referring to runoff or soil loss because erosion is a process? Or better “eroded site”. I think the author(s) need to correct some grammatical and technical errors throughout the manuscript.
The materials and methods are well detailed. Readers can easily replicate the experiment.
Result: Fig 1 (a), the analysis and separation of means is not correct. For instance, under ES from FL, 0-10 cm soil depth was about three times higher in MBC (mg kg-1) than 180-200 cm soil depth, yet no significant difference? This is not possible. The respected authors should check their data and rerun the analysis. I also suggest that the authors should add unit to the legend i.e. 0-10 cm, 10-20 cm etc. Where is 80-180 cm soil depth? This layer is missing. What happen?
Table 1: The authors need to modify the caption for Table 1: “Soil enzymatic, microbial C, N, P, Threshold Elemental Ratio and microbial nutrient limitations as affected by landform position (P), land-use type (L), soil depth (D) and their interactions.” Let this “Bold values indicate a statistical significance (P < 0.05).” be under the Table 1. Then go ahead to correct other captions.
Please, check your Fig. 2 data very well. There are some errors.
In Fig. 5, what does this ** represent?
Conclusion: The respected authors need to rewrite the conclusion of the work. Presently, this is summary of your results.
I wish to recommend that the manuscript should be accepted for publication after effecting all corrections.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Thank you for the revisions.
I have only one last concern regarding figures 1-2-3 as in many of them the statistical reports overlap the error bars. Please, correct this by making figures bigger for example...
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
L60： Please replace "erosion" and "deposion" with "eroded" and "deposited". And correct them in full text.
After the minor revision, the manuscript will be accepted.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.docx
