Effects of Deforestation on Water Flow in the Vadose Zone

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is a good article and is comprehensive in its coverage of the "Spatiotemporal Changes in Sequential and Preferential Flow Occurrence after Partial Deforestation".

The title is accurate, the main research topic of the manuscript is of interest for many researchers, and relevant to current issues in “water”, so, the paper is relevant to the aims and scope of the journal.

The paper is well structured and the conclusions are quite accorded with the results and discussion and it is consistent with other studies.

In order to improve the article, we present some suggestions:

- research design 

In addition to what the authors mentioned (“… root water uptake, canopy interception and by the water stress characteristics of plants …”), the spatio-temporal variability of soil moisture is also influenced by microclimatic changes (following deforestation), compaction or alteration of the soil structure (depending on the deforestation techniques used), leftover material from tree felling and removal (which also depends on the species and their age), … .

In this sense, it is important that the authors take these variables into account, in particular changes in the annual amount, annual distribution and intensity of precipitation and changes of the soil structure.

It is very important to know the annual distribution of precipitation, its intensity and whether or not there is snow, which allows a different infiltration than rain.

It is also important to know the techniques and machinery used in cutting and removing trees.

(…)

- Originality

Part of the work has already been published, for example, in the Journal of Hydrology.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper is well-structured and clear. All the goals are addressed and reflected in the text. I suggest only for Figure 2 not using log scale (it is difficult to interpret the magnitude of this data). In my opinion, the paper could be accepted in this form

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

This paper discussed the effects of deforestation on surface and subsurface downstream hydrology.

The study is overall interesting and discusses potentially relevant implication for policies related to landuse changes and natural ecosystems.

It is very well written, however, even though I understand the paper is mainly directed to the hydrological community, I would suggest the authors to make an additional effort in limiting of explaining the technical language in order to make the article more accessible to a wider community.

It might be a personal opinion, but the first line of my review report could sound more appealing than the title chosen by the authors, albeit it is certainly more precise, and probably easier to appear in the results of web searches

sequential, preferential and piston flow should be defined much earlier in the paper, maybe already in the abstract

the authors could spend some more words on the implication of their research for natural ecosystems, freshwater dynamics, land degradation, soil carbon allocation, etc.

The Discussion should be separated by the Results section, and should contain the interpretation of the results in comparison with others studies that now it's merger with the Results and the implications that I was mentioning above.

besides these aspects and the minor comments listed below, this is a high quality study that deserves to be published soon

minor comments:

line 40-41: ".. energy and water exchange between the surface 40 and the atmosphere [e.g. 7, 8-12]" here the authors might cite also Zampieri et al. (2012) Improving the representation of river–groundwater interactions in land surface modeling at the regional scale: Observational evidence and parameterization applied in the Community Land Model, Journal of hydrology 420, 72-86

line 41-42: ".. infiltration and subsurface stormflow play a crucial role in 41 discharge generation [e.g. 13]" here the authors might also cite Wu et al. (2014) Improving the surface‐ground water interactions in the Community Land Model: Case study in the Blue Nile Basin, Water Resources Research 50 (10), 8015-8033

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors responded satisfactorily to the reviewers' questions.