Combination of GIS and Multivariate Analysis to Assess the Soil Heavy Metal Contamination in Some Arid Zones

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript is devoted to describing the results of studying the concentrations of six chemical elements and four soil parameters in fifteen soil profiles in one of the sections of the Nile Delta. There are a number of issues.

 

Abstract.

Lines 15-16: Please clarify how the estimation of heavy metal concentrations can reduce the high concentrations of heavy metal in soils?

 

Keywords.

Please, do not repeat words from the title, and add new ones that are not indicated in the title.

 

1. Introduction.

Lines 69-76: Please, decipher EC, SOM, I-geo, CF, Pn, and PERI. Task number 2 is listed twice. The objectives are formulated in such a way that it is not clear why each of them should be performed, for instance, for what purpose is it planned to conduct a PCA (what is planned to be obtained from the results of the analysis), etc.?

 

2. Materials and Methods

Lines 85-88: This is a repeat from lines 81-85.

Lines 78-96: What principles or parameters are used as the basis for drawing the boundaries of the study area, are they municipal boundaries, boundaries of agricultural fields, or is the territory limited by other geographical objects? What is shown in red and blue in Figure 1, is it the results of remote sensing in the infrared range? Please clarify.

Lines 100-103: What geomorphological areas have been studied? What is shown in different colors in Figure 2, geomorphological units? Decipher what is shown in color in Figure 2 in the legend to Figure 2.

Please describe in more detail how the soil samples were taken: how many soil samples were taken from each profile, were the samples taken from each soil horizon or were they taken at regular intervals in the profile (every 15 cm, every 30 cm or otherwise), in how many repetitions, what types of areas are studied (whether just agricultural fields or any other areas), what crops are cultivated on the soils at each point (same or not), etc. What types of soils have been studied according to the World Reference Base WRB?

Line 110: “in addition particle size distribution was conducted”, by what method and with what instruments was this analysis carried out?

Line 113: What is the reason for the choice of these six chemical elements for analysis? Why haven't the “classical” dangerous Pb, Cd, Cr been studied?

It's probably more logical to bring section 2.3.2 before section 2.3.1.

Line 135-136: “the geochemical background concentration as observed in the average shale of the heavy metal element”, what data are used as background concentrations? Provide a reference, if it is not the data of the authors. If this is the authors' data, where were the shale samples taken? Give the concentrations of the studied six elements used as a background. If the data from (Wedepohl 1995) from Table 1 (for the upper continental crust or for the shale?) are used as a background, is it correct to compare the pseudo-total concentrations of metals in soils (aqua regia extraction) with the total content of chemical elements by Wedepohl?

Line 146: “the contamination factor as mentioned above”, it was not specified above how a contamination factor is considered. Therefore, it is probably better to bring section 2.3.4 before 2.3.3.

Equations 6-9: Check the correctness of the equations, what is indicated in the last brackets in each equation, the rule for applying the equations?

Line 157: “The contamination index (Pi) and integrated contamination index (Pc)”, these coefficients were not further calculated and analyzed in the manuscript.

Line 161-162: “Xa is the no-contaminated threshold value, Xb is the lowly contaminated threshold value and Xc is the highly contaminated threshold", where did the data on the threshold values come from? What are these variables, they are not specified in the manuscript. If Pn grades were used, then there are seven grades for Pn, which ones are used as threshold?

Section 2.3.7: Why was the IDW method used to interpolate metal concentrations in soils, but the boundaries of geomorphological regions from Figure 2 were not taken into account?

 

3. Results and discussion

Line 186: Please, decipher “HMs”.

Lines 189-191: What sources supply arsenic in this area? Why is the reference given to the document on mercury and not arsenic?

Line 200: “particularly in insecticides used in vineyards and orchards”, are there vineyards or orchards in the studied areas?

Lines 229-236: What can the correlations between soil properties and metal content be related to, and what do they show?

Line 244:  “Given that the KMO value was > 0.6”, in the section describing the research methods, the gradation KMO > 0.5 is given. Please clarify.

For PCA, 10 variables were used (concentrations of 6 metals and 4 soil parameters). However, these parameters and concentrations of elements have a significantly different range. For example, the pH values ​​change by only 0.93, while the range of Zn concentrations is almost 400 mg/kg. Is it correct to use non-normalized data for PCA? Why was the data not normalized before PCA, such as Z-normalization, which would remove the problem of large differences in the ranges between variables? In addition, the PCA results (Table 3) are presented by the Component Score Coefficient, while component loadings are usually used. Please provide the results of component loadings. Probably, the list of elements in each of the principal components will not be the same as given in Table 3 and the text. In addition, it is not clear by what criterion As (Component Score Coefficient = 0.24) got into the same principal component with pH (Component Score Coefficient = -0.04) and OM (Component Score Coefficient = -0.20). What do the selected components indicate, what is the conclusion?

Lines 251-253: It is not clear why the data on the content of metals in the soils of India were used, please explain.

Figure 5: Why was this analysis carried out, what was revealed by its results? What is the conclusion from this analysis?

Figure 6: What method was used to highlight the levels in the legend? In addition, a reverse color scale is usually used when mapping soil pH: higher values correspond to blue, lower ones correspond to red.

Section 3.4: Only integrated indices have been analyzed; it is not clear from the manuscript which of the studied elements is characterized by the highest level of pollution?

Figure 7: Why do the same territories refer to high contamination levels of soils by Pn, but to low contamination by PERI (for example, areas in the northwest and in the south of the territory)? The figure must be stretched.

 

5. Conclusions

“Additionally, the combination of PCA and HCA produced high-accuracy findings in the division of the study area into two zones”, what zones are meant, they are not shown on the maps; also, the reasons for their occurrence are not explained. The conclusions do not contain most of the findings and are largely inconsistent with the previous text. The conclusion must be rewritten. Have the aims been completed? What's new learned?

 

Extensive grammar and spell checks are required.

 

Thus, the manuscript requires major revisions.

Author Response

First of all we would like thank reviewer we would like to thank the reviewer for their insightful comments that helped us strengthen our manuscript.

Reviewer 1

The manuscript is devoted to describing the results of studying the concentrations of six chemical elements and four soil parameters in fifteen soil profiles in one of the sections of the Nile Delta. There are a number of issues.

Abstract.

 

Lines 15-16: Please clarify how the estimation of heavy metal concentrations can reduce the high concentrations of heavy metal in soils?

We explained it kindly see lines 16-18

Keywords.

 

Please, do not repeat words from the title, and add new ones that are not indicated in the title.

Thank you, we did it as recommended, kindly see lines 45 and 46

 

1. Introduction.

 

Lines 69-76: Please, decipher EC, SOM, I-geo, CF, Pn, and PERI. Task number 2 is listed twice. The objectives are formulated in such a way that it is not clear why each of them should be performed, for instance, for what purpose is it planned to conduct a PCA (what is planned to be obtained from the results of the analysis), etc.?

We explained, kindly see lines from 91 to 102

2. Materials and Methods

Lines 85-88: This is a repeat from lines 81-85.

We removed it.

 

Lines 78-96: What principles or parameters are used as the basis for drawing the boundaries of the study area, are they municipal boundaries, boundaries of agricultural fields, or is the territory limited by other geographical objects? What is shown in red and blue in Figure 1, is it the results of remote sensing in the infrared range? Please clarify.

Boundaries are related to geomorphological units. Change to true colors to be more clear. Kindly see line 140.

 

Lines 100-103: What geomorphological areas have been studied? What is shown in different colors in Figure 2, geomorphological units? Decipher what is shown in color in Figure 2 in the legend to Figure 2.

We added all units with their areas in the text and the legend of the map as well. Kindly see lines 136-146

Please describe in more detail how the soil samples were taken: how many soil samples were taken from each profile, were the samples taken from each soil horizon or were they taken at regular intervals in the profile (every 15 cm, every 30 cm or otherwise), in how many repetitions, what types of areas are studied (whether just agricultural fields or any other areas), what crops are cultivated on the soils at each point (same or not), etc. What types of soils have been studied according to the World Reference Base WRB?

All details were added kindly see lines from 146 to 150 and from 124-127. We used USDA for soil classification, kindly see lines 127-129.

Line 110: “in addition particle size distribution was conducted”, by what method and with what instruments was this analysis carried out?

Particle size distribution of soil was done by the method described by Rowell (1995).

Rowell, D.L. (1995). Soil Science Methods & Applications. Library of Congress Cataloging Publication Data, New York, NY10158. USA.

Line 113: What is the reason for the choice of these six chemical elements for analysis? Why haven't the “classical” dangerous Pb, Cd, Cr been studied?

These elements are in the highest concentration of the study area and some other elements where out of the dedication and there are a lot of sources for these elements of the study area.

 

It's probably more logical to bring section 2.3.2 before section 2.3.1.

It has been done as recommended

Line 135-136: “the geochemical background concentration as observed in the average shale of the heavy metal element”, what data are used as background concentrations? Provide a reference, if it is not the data of the authors. If this is the authors' data, where were the shale samples taken? Give the concentrations of the studied six elements used as a background. If the data from (Wedepohl 1995) from Table 1 (for the upper continental crust or for the shale?) are used as a background, is it correct to compare the pseudo-total concentrations of metals in soils (aqua regia extraction) with the total content of chemical elements by Wedepohl?

 We corrected it to upper crust, yes it is correct to make comparison as soil is a part of the layer of the Earth’s crust and its chemical composition is related to that of the crust (Rahman et al., 2012). Kindly see lines 186-189.

Line 146: “the contamination factor as mentioned above”, it was not specified above how a contamination factor is considered. Therefore, it is probably better to bring section 2.3.4 before 2.3.3.

It has been done as recommended

 

Equations 6-9: Check the correctness of the equations, what is indicated in the last brackets in each equation, the rule for applying the equations?

We carefully checked these equation from original reference Huang (1987)  and found that these equations are applied just for some individual indices and we used by mistake for integrated indices, as a result we removed it and make our evaluation according classes which recommended by :

The Pn was classified into the same seven classes of Igeo with different ranges (Rahman et al., 2012; Guan et al., 2014) and the evaluated criteria of PERI are classified (Guan et al., 2014).

Huang R (1987) Environmental peodology. Higher Education Press, Beijing (in Chinese)

Rahman, S.; Khanam, D.; Adyel, T.; Islam, M.S.; Mohammad Ahsan, A.; Akbor, M.A. Assessment of heavy metal contamination of agricultural soil around Dhaka Export Processing Zone (DEPZ), Bangladesh: Implication of seasonal variation and indices. Appl. Sci. 2012, 2, 584–601

 

Guan, Y.; Shao, C.; and Ju, M. Heavy metal contamination assessment and partition for industrial and mining gathering areas. Int. J. Env. Res. Pub. He. 2014, 11, 7286–7303.

 

Line 157: “The contamination index (Pi) and integrated contamination index (Pc)”, these coefficients were not further calculated and analyzed in the manuscript.

We carefully checked these equation from original reference Huang (1987)  and found that these equations are applied just for some individual indices and we used by mistake for integrated indices, as a result we removed it and make our evaluation according classes which recommended by :

The Pn was classified into the same seven classes of Igeo with different ranges (Rahman et al., 2012; Guan et al., 2014) and the evaluated criteria of PERI are classified (Guan et al., 2014).

Huang R (1987) Environmental peodology. Higher Education Press, Beijing (in Chinese)

Rahman, S.; Khanam, D.; Adyel, T.; Islam, M.S.; Mohammad Ahsan, A.; Akbor, M.A. Assessment of heavy metal contamination of agricultural soil around Dhaka Export Processing Zone (DEPZ), Bangladesh: Implication of seasonal variation and indices. Appl. Sci. 2012, 2, 584–601

 

Guan, Y.; Shao, C.; and Ju, M. Heavy metal contamination assessment and partition for industrial and mining gathering areas. Int. J. Env. Res. Pub. He. 2014, 11, 7286–7303.

 

Line 161-162: “Xa is the no-contaminated threshold value, Xb is the lowly contaminated threshold value and Xc is the highly contaminated threshold", where did the data on the threshold values come from? What are these variables, they are not specified in the manuscript. If Pn grades were used, then there are seven grades for Pn, which ones are used as threshold?

We carefully checked these equation from original reference Huang (1987)  and found that these equations are applied just for some individual indices and we used by mistake for integrated indices, as a result we removed it and make our evaluation according classes which recommended by :

The Pn was classified into the same seven classes of Igeo with different ranges (Rahman et al., 2012; Guan et al., 2014) and the evaluated criteria of PERI are classified (Guan et al., 2014).

Huang R (1987) Environmental peodology. Higher Education Press, Beijing (in Chinese)

Rahman, S.; Khanam, D.; Adyel, T.; Islam, M.S.; Mohammad Ahsan, A.; Akbor, M.A. Assessment of heavy metal contamination of agricultural soil around Dhaka Export Processing Zone (DEPZ), Bangladesh: Implication of seasonal variation and indices. Appl. Sci. 2012, 2, 584–601

 

Guan, Y.; Shao, C.; and Ju, M. Heavy metal contamination assessment and partition for industrial and mining gathering areas. Int. J. Env. Res. Pub. He. 2014, 11, 7286–7303.

 

Section 2.3.7: Why was the IDW method used to interpolate metal concentrations in soils, but the boundaries of geomorphological regions from Figure 2 were not taken into account?

In this research, agricultural and industrial drainage are directly impact the elements present in soil at a certain concentration, which fluctuates depending on the distance from the source, thus it is preferable to choose this IDW technique (Abowaly et al 2021). Kindly see lines 290-293

 but the boundaries of geomorphological were used to ensure that soil profiles represent the different units of study area.

3. Results and discussion

 

Line 186: Please, decipher “HMs”.

It has been done as recommended

Lines 189-191: What sources supply arsenic in this area? Why is the reference given to the document on mercury and not arsenic?

Many thanks for your accurate comment, we changed it to correct reference. ATSDR (United States Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry). Toxicological profile for arsenic. US Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, 2000,428.

Line 200: “particularly in insecticides used in vineyards and orchards”, are there vineyards or orchards in the studied areas?

Yes there are orchards kindly see lines 125 and 127

Lines 229-236: What can the correlations between soil properties and metal content be related to, and what do they show?

It can be show that PCA is suitable for our work as there are linear regression between them and confirm that concentration of heavy metals are affected by selected soil properties

Line 244:  “Given that the KMO value was > 0.6”, in the section describing the research methods, the gradation KMO > 0.5 is given. Please clarify.

We corrected it to 0.6 and added the original reference

Barrett, K.; Morgan, G. SPSS for Intermediate Statistics; Use and Interpretation; Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers: Mahwah, NJ, USA; London, UK, 2005.

 

For PCA, 10 variables were used (concentrations of 6 metals and 4 soil parameters). However, these parameters and concentrations of elements have a significantly different range. For example, the pH values ​​change by only 0.93, while the range of Zn concentrations is almost 400 mg/kg. Is it correct to use non-normalized data for PCA? Why was the data not normalized before PCA, such as Z-normalization, which would remove the problem of large differences in the ranges between variables? In addition, the PCA results (Table 3) are presented by the Component Score Coefficient, while component loadings are usually used. Please provide the results of component loadings. Probably, the list of elements in each of the principal components will not be the same as given in Table 3 and the text. In addition, it is not clear by what criterion As (Component Score Coefficient = 0.24) got into the same principal component with pH (Component Score Coefficient = -0.04) and OM (Component Score Coefficient = -0.20). What do the selected components indicate, what is the conclusion?

We used SPSS for statistical analysis which calculate-scores automatically before applying PCA. We added the following sentences. Kindly see lines 356,357

 We changed it to component loadings, kindly see Table (3) line 384

We discussed the results of PCA in details kindly see lines 368-380

 

Lines 251-253: It is not clear why the data on the content of metals in the soils of India were used, please explain.

We just need to confirm that cluster analysis was used in other laces of the world, however we deleted it to remove any confuses

 

Figure 5: Why was this analysis carried out, what was revealed by its results? What is the conclusion from this analysis?

We discussed it in details, kindly see lines 368 to 380

 

Figure 6: What method was used to highlight the levels in the legend? In addition, a reverse color scale is usually used when mapping soil pH: higher values correspond to blue, lower ones correspond to red.

We used IDW which based on the data input (mean weighted values of different variables) and predict the un -sampled area then make classification. The colors were changed  as recomended

 

Section 3.4: Only integrated indices have been analyzed; it is not clear from the manuscript which of the studied elements is characterized by the highest level of pollution?

The individual indices such as I-geo and Cf were discussed, kindly see lines 413-426

 

Figure 7: Why do the same territories refer to high contamination levels of soils by Pn, but to low contamination by PERI (for example, areas in the northwest and in the south of the territory)? The figure must be stretched.

It depends on ranges of each class so it differs from index to another. However, the majority of the research region (71.9%) was made up of a class of moderately to heavily polluted areas. Additionally, the majority of the study region (49.17%) has a very high risk of contamination, per the results of the PERI index and you can see that there are common sites that suffer from high degree of contamination.

5. Conclusions

“Additionally, the combination of PCA and HCA produced high-accuracy findings in the division of the study area into two zones”, what zones are meant, they are not shown on the maps; also, the reasons for their occurrence are not explained. The conclusions do not contain most of the findings and are largely inconsistent with the previous text. The conclusion must be rewritten. Have the aims been completed? What's new learned?

We rewritten it as recommended, kindly see lines 467-480

Extensive grammar and spell checks are required.

The manuscript has been reviewed by Expert in English language

Dr. Nermin Ibrahim

Ph.D in Applied Linguistics

Lecturer in Linguistics

Department of English language and literature

Faculty of Arts

Menofia University

Egypt

Email nermeen.ibrahim@art.menofia.edu.eg

 

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Interesting research has been conducted dealing with soil contamination as an increasing problem for health security. Methods are explained but it is required some corrections to provide a more fluent reading to the target audience. Results are clearly exposed but more discussion is needed. Similarly, conclusions should be complemented.

 

Abstract: PERI is used and defined, but later PER index is also used. Is it the same?

Objectives: I-geo is not introduced or defined. CF is not introduced or defined

Line 113: there is a wrong punctuation after "measure"

2.3.1. Is this Improved Pn a transformation of the Pn index? Is it something you are testing in your work? If so, then explain please. In objectives you talk about new PERI and Pn index.

Equation 1: Igeo is used but not introduced in the text until next point. I suggest introducing and explaining first Igeo (equation 2) and then go to equation 1. Furthermore, in Objectives, I-geo has been used, whereas here Igeo is used. Is it the same? Unify criteria.

Line 188: Please unify criteria about superscripts in the whole text (example: -1 in kg). Also, in some cases the author uses Kg and others kg.

Table 1: I suggest highlighting the mean values since it is what it needs to be compared with the Background levels and Recommended concentrations from DEA.

Line 251: This sentence referring to reference 63 is not bringing information to the present section. It is confusing when then next sentence starts with "in this study". Is it your study or the one performed in reference 63?

Table 3: I suggest changing it by a PCA plot showing the data organization as well as the features (scores and loading plot)

Figure 5: What is X and Y axis? It needs some more explanation to understand this plot.

Figure 6: Caption could be modifiet and change "some soil parameters" by "studied soil parameters".

Figure 7: It is not of sufficient quality. The height-width ratio is wrong and it appears elongated. Values in the pie chart are not clearly visible. Furthermore, no decimals should be used when representing values in the range of hundreds (or at least, no need of two decimal points) since the signification of these decimal points are very low as compared with the value that wants to be represented.

conclusions: Interesting work has been done and represented in maps and it is not present in the conclusions.

Author Response

First of all we would like thank reviewer we would like to thank the reviewer for their insightful comments that helped us strengthen our manuscript.

Reviewer 2

Interesting research has been conducted dealing with soil contamination as an increasing problem for health security. Methods are explained but it is required some corrections to provide a more fluent reading to the target audience. Results are clearly exposed but more discussion is needed. Similarly, conclusions should be complemented.

Abstract: PERI is used and defined, but later PER index is also used. Is it the same?

We Unified criteria to be PERI

Objectives: I-geo is not introduced or defined. CF is not introduced or defined

We introduced them kindly find the following paragraph

There are currently a plethora of contamination indices and measurement methods available for assessing soil contamination, such as the geoaccumulation index (I-geo). Because I-geo intuitively reflects the effects of human activities on trace elements as well as the impact of trace elements on the environment, it is excellent for assessing and analyzing trace element levels in soil [Shui et al.,2020]. One of the most used quantitative techniques for assessing the level of heavy metal contamination is the Contamination Factor (CF) [Shokr et al 2016].

Line 113: there is a wrong punctuation after "measure"

We corrected as recommended

2.3.1. Is this Improved Pn a transformation of the Pn index? Is it something you are testing in your work? If so, then explain please. In objectives you talk about new PERI and Pn index.

We carefully checked these equation from original reference Huang (1987)  and found that these equations are applied just for some individual indices and we used by mistake for integrated indices, as a result we removed it and make our evaluation according classes which recommended by :

The Pn was classified into the same seven classes of Igeo with different ranges (Rahman et al., 2012; Guan et al., 2014) and the evaluated criteria of PERI are classified (Guan et al., 2014).

Huang R (1987) Environmental peodology. Higher Education Press, Beijing (in Chinese)

Rahman, S.; Khanam, D.; Adyel, T.; Islam, M.S.; Mohammad Ahsan, A.; Akbor, M.A. Assessment of heavy metal contamination of agricultural soil around Dhaka Export Processing Zone (DEPZ), Bangladesh: Implication of seasonal variation and indices. Appl. Sci. 2012, 2, 584–601

 

Guan, Y.; Shao, C.; and Ju, M. Heavy metal contamination assessment and partition for industrial and mining gathering areas. Int. J. Env. Res. Pub. He. 2014, 11, 7286–7303.

 

Equation 1: Igeo is used but not introduced in the text until next point. I suggest introducing and explaining first Igeo (equation 2) and then go to equation 1. Furthermore, in Objectives, I-geo has been used, whereas here Igeo is used. Is it the same? Unify criteria.

We unified the criteria

 

Line 188: Please unify criteria about superscripts in the whole text (example: -1 in kg). Also, in some cases the author uses Kg and others kg.

We unified all units

 

Table 1: I suggest highlighting the mean values since it is what it needs to be compared with the Background levels and Recommended concentrations from DEA.

We highlighted them

 

Line 251: This sentence referring to reference 63 is not bringing information to the present section. It is confusing when then next sentence starts with "in this study". Is it your study or the one performed in reference 63?

We removed it

 

Table 3: I suggest changing it by a PCA plot showing the data organization as well as the features (scores and loading plot)

We changed the values to component loadings which are usually used

 

Figure 5: What is X and Y axis? It needs some more explanation to understand this plot.

We improved it and discussed in lines from 368 to 380

 

Figure 6: Caption could be modifiet and change "some soil parameters" by "studied soil parameters".

We modified as recommended

 

Figure 7: It is not of sufficient quality. The height-width ratio is wrong and it appears elongated. Values in the pie chart are not clearly visible. Furthermore, no decimals should be used when representing values in the range of hundreds (or at least, no need of two decimal points) since the signification of these decimal points are very low as compared with the value that wants to be represented.

We improved it as recommended

 

conclusions: Interesting work has been done and represented in maps and it is not present in the conclusions.

We rewritten it and add more details, kindly see lines 467-485

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript brings interesting contribution to soil quality evaluation in Egypt. Despite of its relevance, there are some aspects that must be verified. Firstly, it does not seems appropriate do mention "food security" in the Title, as the manuscript refers to soil characterization. Information regarding pollutants loads and their spatial distribution could be included, to cross validate soil quality patterns. There are some elements to be provided. Information of profiles (depths, number of sampling layers); source of the unit map- geomorphologic units (FIgure 2). What are the distances between profile locations? Is the number of profiles (15) really representative? The statistical analysis is adequate and well discussed, and brings contribution to future management plans in the area.

Author Response

Reviewer 3

 Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript brings interesting contribution to soil quality evaluation in Egypt. Despite of its relevance, there are some aspects that must be verified. Firstly, it does not seems appropriate do mention "food security" in the Title, as the manuscript refers to soil characterization. Information regarding pollutants loads and their spatial distribution could be included, to cross validate soil quality patterns. There are some elements to be provided. Information of profiles (depths, number of sampling layers); source of the unit map- geomorphologic units (FIgure 2). What are the distances between profile locations? Is the number of profiles (15) really representative? The statistical analysis is adequate and well discussed, and brings contribution to future management plans in the area.

First of all, we would like to thank the reviewer for their insightful comments that helped us strengthen our manuscript.

• We agree and we removed the food security from title
• We explained the effect of contamination on soil quality, kindly see lines 54-56.
• We added all details about soil profiles and geomorphologic units, kindly see lines 136-166. Yes 15 profiles are sufficient and give us acceptable results before in the field of soil capability and suitability according to

 El Behairy, R.A.; El Baroudy, A.A.; Ibrahim, M.M.; Mohamed, E.S.; Kucher, D.E.; Shokr, M.S. Assessment of Soil Capability and Crop Suitability Using Integrated Multivariate and GIS Approaches toward Agricultural Sustainability. Land 2022, 11, 1027. https://doi.org/10.3390/land11071027.

In addition, we used IDW techniques which is suitable for prediction of un-sampled areas specially when profiles are used to overcome the lack of samples number.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors fully responded to my comments and made the required corrections to the text. Therefore, the manuscript can be accepted for publication in its current form.

Author Response

Many thanks for your valuable revision.

All the best,

Authors

Reviewer 2 Report

Interesting research has been conducted dealing with soil contamination as an increasing problem for health security. All comments have been correctly reviewed.  Besides, please attention must be paid to the figures to ensure that they are in high quality.

Author Response

Interesting research has been conducted dealing with soil contamination as an increasing problem for health security. All comments have been correctly reviewed.  Besides, please attention must be paid to the figures to ensure that they are in high quality.

Many thanks for your accurate comment, we have checked all figures.

Kindly see figure 6 (b,g) and figure 7a, we have changed resolution to 300 dpi