The Impact of Vegetation Successional Status on Slope Runoff Erosion in the Loess Plateau of China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

You did a tremendous job and basically it can be published later on.

I stuck at the Discussion part that includes a lot of results. Now the discussion part is more than 25% of the text! 

My suggestion is (besides what I added in the sticky notes of the pdf I attached) is that you should really consider separating the results from your discussion chapter, put it in the results section and prepare a real discussion for the article. There is some nice discussions where you compare your results with others but there are tables with results that should really go to the result chapter and then you can discuss in the discussion part.

I also suggest to check the text to make it more clear all over the article!

My other suggestions are in the pdf.

Best regards, Reviewer X

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you for your letter and for the reviewer’s comments concerning our manuscript. Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper. We have revised the errors raised in all comments and improved the English language of the manuscript. We hope it will meet with approval.

1.We have revised all the notes in the PDF

2.According to the requirements, we added the section of 3.4 results, and made the results of grey correlation analysis a separate section

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

After careful reading, I believe that in its actual form it is a very interesting and well-conducted research on soil erosion under restoration conditions. Almos all aspects were well covered and the analysis of the results has been done in-depth. In general, I do not have any comment that would improve this excellent manuscript.  

I also believe that this paper will be of great interest to the readers involved in soil conservation practices. 

Author Response

We thank you for your love of this research, and we will make further efforts in the future.

Reviewer 3 Report

The general proposal for research makes sense and the results appear to be what one would expect. I think that the topic is also of interest, particularly if it turns out to be possible to make useful generalizations from it.

The root structure of perennial plants should be larger, denser, and more pervasive than that of annuals. Thus, perennial plants should generate more resistance to overland flow than annuals, as the authors determine. Moreover, perennials should probably also transpire more, meaning that less water would be available for run-off. This combination of reasons certainly supports the hypothesis of the authors, but not unambiguously, since a reduction in water available for surface fluxes will tend to slow the erosion rates all around. Nevertheless, the results and discussion sections do not give any fundamental surprises that could make one suspect problems. I am not really a good referee for evaluation of the experimental methods and protocols. But, to me, the chief questions are: 1) to how many sites worldwide could this technique be applied? 2) are there any problems in the analysis or the setting up of control variables that could invalidate the conclusions? I am not a great candidate for evaluating these questions either, but I will try to provide a little bit of useful information.

Some statistics at the beginning don’t obviously make sense to me. First, the reduction of sediment transport by a factor roughly 10 in the Yellow River, but only a much smaller change in that component arriving from the Loess Plateau. I had thought that the vast majority of the sediment derived from the Loess Plateau, thus I would have thought that the fractions would be more nearly compatible.

Some smaller comments.

“Rainfall, however, does not directly generate runoff.”

Should be automatically rather than directly.

“The vegetation community, at the same time, began to take place species succession with the extension of restoration years.”

Should be rewritten for clarity.

“Successional dynamics in the Loess Plateau typically follow a pattern of Artemisia plants giving way to perennial rhizome grasses, and finally to perennial arbuscular herbs on the Loess Plateau.”

Remove redundancy (Loess Plateau).

“Likewise, soil physical and chemical properties undergone predictable dynamics as well.”

Likewise is redundant. Undergone should be replaced by undergo.

“the root structure gradually became complex and complete.”

The meaning of complete is not clear.

“affecting the slope separation process, and is also the basic parameter”

What does “lope separation process” mean? Is should be replace by are (and parameter pluralized).

“We expect that results from this study will provide scientific guidance for future research on water erosion dynamic mechanisms and vegetation regulation principles in the Loess Plateau.”

This is probably an honest assessment. However, it might mean that the relevance of the study is too restricted for publication in a journal like Water. If the authors see a good reason to expect relevance for other areas, such as the Palouse in Washington State, USA, or elsewhere, they should at least mention the possibility. If vegetation succession is sufficiently different in different areas, however, that the changes in erodibility are everywhere greatly different, then I think that the study loses some interest, as it may only apply to one geographic region with its particular climate and plant communities.

“This method of selection can be regarded as a method of a spatial sequence equivalent to vegetation succession time series.”

This is an important sentence, which may be quite correct. But the reader will wonder if all variables are controlled in this comparison. It is, however, a good and reasonable avenue for the research.

Author Response

Thank you for your letter and for the reviewer’s comments concerning our manuscript. Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper. We have revised the errors raised in all comments and improved the English language of the manuscript. We hope it will meet with approval.

1.This technology can give useful information to the scholars who study soil erosion in the Loess Plateau. There are about 50 thousands scholars studying soil erosion in the Loess Plateau in China.

2.It is true that the setting of control variables will lead to different results, but we are very strict in the selection of experimental areas. And our experiment is a repeated experiment, so it can greatly improve the reliability of the conclusion.

3. ‘Some smaller comments.’ has been revised one by one.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

I see that you made most of the changes.

Some remained, like upper cases are missing in some of the cases but I guess the technical editor will deal with it.

I am still curious abot Humus thickness in Table one, it is expressed in cm and the thickness is below 1 cm while you talk about 20 cm humus layer in the text.

Otherwise, I see that you made all necessary changes, so I suggest publication after very minor changes.

Regards, Reviewer X