Mineralization and Fixed Stable Carbon Isotopic Characteristics of Organic Carbon in Cotton Fields with Different Continuous Cropping Years

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I have reviewd the manuscript with good interest in it. The authors have done a good job however, a lot of gramar mistakes, false statements and language expressions are there, whichhg needs improvement. I attached annotated file with my comments. 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

I’ve read your interesting contribution critically, and I tend to judge it very positively. It addresses an urgent, internationally appealing problem, based on in-depth research project with solid methodology, and well-communicated (I mean the quality of structure, style, and language), it bears useful illustrations and enough amount of references. Indeed, it deserves publication in the journal, although some amendments are necessary.

1)      Title: shorten, please,

2)      Title and Abstract: please, reflect, which oases and where you deal with. You mention in the abstract the Alar (in the text, this is spelled as Aral – so, be consistent) reclamation area, which means nothing to the majority of the readers.

3)      Key words: please, avoid the words form the title.

4)      Subsection 2.1: what does mean “reaches X”?

5)      Section 3 to be named “Results”. This section should bear only direct outcomes, and not their further interpretations (the latter should be placed to “Discussion”); the outcomes should be reported in the same order as the methodology is explained – as you may guess my concern is about the factors: it’s good these are interpreted, but it seems this information is more relevant to “Discussion” (alternatively, you have to give the related methodological explanations in the methodological section).

6)      I recommend to re-organize “Conclusions” as follows: a simple introductory phrase, numbered list of the main findings (2-3 from “Results”) and interpretations (2-3 from “Discussion”), theoretical and practical contributions, limitations, perspectives for further research.

7)      Please, try to enlarge all drawings to make the details well visible.

8)      Can you provide some photographs of your area and your samples?

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors,

thank you very much for your interesting contribution within this problematic. Before the manuscript would be accepted for publication, I have some comments and suggestions that might improve the quality of the presented paper:

1. I would suggest to rewrite the first sentence in the abstract part. It is too long and confusing.

2. I miss the lines numbering, but I will try to explain the placing of my comments. page 2, second paragraph. The conversion of soil organic carbon.......yes, this is very important process, but I also miss the information that there are many CO2 loss from the soil and that this process need to be commented. What conditions and factors are needed to make this possible. Which factors make it imposible in detail.

3. In material and method part I would recomment to add the map of the study site with the sampling points.

4. The last sentence of the results part states that also microbial amount of carbon was the factor.....can you explain on the base of what you can say that? Do you mean respiration in general as a part of microbial population activities?

 

Good luck with your research, Sinerely

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx