Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

Your article is interesting to me. However, I really missed that you did not document the calibration and validation process in your article. Therefore, please mention it. It would also be great if you can make some comparisons with your observed values. Other than that I have made a few minor comments on your article which you can find in the pdf document.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 1 Comments

 

Dear Editors and Reviewers,

 

Thank you for your letter and for the reviewers’ comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Evolution Pattern of Tailings Flow from Dam Failure and the Buffering Effect of Debris Blocking Dams” (water-596092). The comments from the Reviewer 1 have been carefully concerned and addressed in the revision. The revised parts are highlighted in yellow in the revision. Please find the “comments and corresponding response” below. The English in the revision has been checked carefully, and we have had the manuscript polished with a professional assistance in English writing.

Please find the attached document.

We tried our best to improve the manuscript and made some changes in the manuscript, and hope that the correction will meet with approval. Thank you very much for your comments and suggestions.

With kind regards,

Sen Tian

Corresponding author

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This is a very interesting topic. However, I suggest that you think about revising the paper to make it clearer for the readers.

Following comments:

37: Plural? Tailings ponds are ...

38: might instead of will??

45/46: plural, not only one tailings pond

71: m a.sl.?

Figures: Maybe you can remove the "/" in your axis labels

Figure 1: What is that hydrograph? Where does it come from? Where is the location of the hydrograph? Desribe!

82/83: You increase e.g 5% with the result of 9.2%???? What does that mean?

82/83: How did you decide the change of inclinations? Why 5% and 10%? Any reason for that?

87: Describe methodology more detailed. Which software, which turbulence model? how many elements, ...

Table 1: Why is the line "density" bold letters?

141: Village I, ... Maybe you can add a figure where we can see the locations of the villages and the blocking dams better.

142: What means 4.97m. Where is that?

Figures 5 and following: Please use the same scale for all three pictures. As you did in Figure 9. That makes it easier to compare.

163 following: Why not in methodology. These are no results

Eq.4: Describe the variables, e.g. l, e. ...

186: Are the blocking dams installed at the same time? Or did you do different simulations? How do the dams look like? You mentioned the height, not the width. ???

Figure 7: Except the inundated range I do not see any difference between a, b and c. What do we see here?

Figure 8: show the location of the blocking dams. The legend is unclear. Eg. the text is the same for different lines. You have to improve that significantly

209: .. decrease... Where do i see that?

212: What means "crossing over"?

213: .. setup distance. What is that: Please re-think this.

225: Same heading as 3.1.3??

 

 

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you very much for making the necessary changes as per my suggestions. I agree with the modifications you made.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer, Thank you so much for your support and help. And wish you all the best. Sen Tian Chongqing University Corresponding author: Name: Sen Tian E-mail: sentian@cqu.edu.cn

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors, you neglected many comments of mine. Please rework on that.

73. is the crest really 2005 m high or do you mean meter above sea level?

Figure1: Again, where is this Figure valid? Which flow hydrograph is this?

82/83: You increase e.g 5% with the result of 9.2%???? What does that mean? PLEASE DESCRIBE MORE CLEARLY!!!!

142: What means 4.97m. Where is that?

Eq.4: Describe the variables, e.g. l, e. ...

......I do not want to read further, because you neglected so many of my remarks.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

First the paper title get my attention. However, once read the content, I have not seen the new information from this study. 

there are several major issues:

1) There is no calibration and validation of the selected model.

2) The data is not so reliable. (what is DEM resolution? no boundary conditions ? not enough information for study area?)

3) The methodology is too simple and the model can not be used without validation, particularly for hydrodynamic model.

With above weakness, I cannot recommend this paper for Water.

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 1 Comments

 

Dear Editors and Reviewers,

Thank you for your letter and for the reviewers’ comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Evolution Pattern of Tailings Flow from Dam Failure and the Buffering Effect of Debris Blocking Dams” (water-566736). Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. We have studied comments carefully and have made correction which we hope meet with approval. Revised portion are marked in red in the paper. The English in the revision has been checked carefully, and we have had the manuscript polished with a professional assistance in English writing. 

The main corrections in the paper and the response to the reviewer’s comments are enclosed in the attachment, please find them.

We appreciate for Editors and Reviewers’ warm work earnestly, and hope that the correction will meet with approval. Once again, thank you very much for your comments and suggestions.

With kind regards,

Sen Tian 

Corresponding author

 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Can you please state the research gap and why you need this study? I mean it is not clear for me in the last paragraphs of your introduction Page 2 line 70: the units of such large digital values (3,996,000) should be expressed in millions. Figures need to be improved. They look like a screenshot. They must look professional Figure 1 page 2: please put units within parenthesis. Label at x-axis (Time/min) presents an impression that you are dividing time by minute. I even did not conceive why you are dividing discharge with discharge units Figure 1 page 2: the hydrograph shows that the dam will be empty within one hour. Is it physically true? It will also discharge 3,500 m3/s within the first five minutes. Figure 2 page 3: can you read the labels in this figure? Figure 3 page 4: figure needs to be improved. Figure 4 page 5 need to be improved. I mean what is the legend of the top first line which starts from 2250 at y-axis? The font size of captions in all figures should be uniform Figure 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, can you please increase the font sizes of the colour scale. At least it should be readable. Equation 3 page 6: what is the limits of impact coefficient K. Please document it in the text. Page 7, lines 181-185: why you selected only these locations. Please explain in the text. I mean it is really challenging to understand as the figures are not very much clear to me.

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 2 Comments

 

Dear Editors and Reviewers,

 

The comments from the Reviewer 2 have been carefully concerned and addressed in the revision. The revised parts are marked as red color in the revision. Please find the “comments and corresponding response” below. The English in the revision has been checked carefully, and we have had the manuscript polished with a professional assistance in English writing.

The main corrections in the paper and the response to the reviewer’s comments are enclosed in the attachment, please find them.

We tried our best to improve the manuscript and made some changes in the manuscript, and hope that the correction will meet with approval. Thank you very much for your comments and suggestions.

With kind regards,

Sen Tian 

Corresponding author

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors, 

Actually, I am very much disappointed that you did not even consider my last comments. I mean can you please read the text in figure 3 or figure 7. Last time, I have also mentioned that the quality of your all figure is low. It looks that you have just taken a screenshot. Therefore, I am unable to review your article again for the same things I mentioned in my previous comments.