Managed Aquifer Recharge of Monsoon Runoff Using Village Ponds: Performance Assessment of a Pilot Trial in the Ramganga Basin, India
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
I enjoyed reading the paper and congratulate its authors. It describes in a clear way an excellent pilot study on managed aquifer recharge, both in terms of conducting the field experiment and interpreting the field observations.
In the sections 1 through 5, there is very limited need for amendments, except for correcting some minor spelling and linguistic errors, as well as a few minor inconsistencies in numbers or units, and it should be checked whether or not P1 and P5 have been swapped in Figure 5 (if not, then it should be explained why a more remote piezometer would show a more strongly rising groundwater level than a nearby one).
However, the sections 6.3 and 6.4 are difficult to understand and need amendments. It starts with an obviously wrongly reproduced Figure 7 (two figures superimposed by mistake?), which causes that it cannot really underpin the text (although the text sounds plausible). More difficulties, however, are encountered when reading section 6.4 and its subsections.
Here the reader needs in particular a better description of the upscaling.
First, for upscaling from pilot scale to village scale, one would like to know what this exactly means in terms of area considered (km2), surface water volumes diverted for recharge and number of ponds and recharge wells. Lack of grasping these basics preclude also to understand Figure 8 (the right-most cluster of bars (Pilot scale) can be understood, but the labels under the two other clusters are confusing (possible incorrect?). The subsection 6.4.1 relies apparently much on reference [11], but the paper should at least in conceptual terms describe the overall setting, goal, assumptions and results of that modelling exercise. In the second upscaling step, the reader has a need to get similar information on upscaling from village scale (or pilot scale) to basin scale: (a) What is the size (km2) of the pilot scheme, the village and the entire basin? (b) Are the conditions in the pilot scheme area perfectly representative for the entire basin, or are any corrections needed before extrapolating? (c) How is the surface water quantity allocated over the entire basin (uniformly?)?
In the list of references there is apparently a shift in numbering compared to refence numbers on the text (by one unit).
More specific comments/suggestions can be found in the commented pdf document.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Please see the attachment for point-by-point response to reviewer comments.
In addition, edits/comments as suggested by reviewer 1 in the manuscript has been incorporated in the revised manuscript.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
I have one major concern about the paper — namely its title, and repeated use of the ‘UTFI expression’. The technique described is a variant of what is generally known by hydrogeologists as ’Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR)’. I do not find it helpful or clear to introduce ‘UTFI’, although the use of recharge wells in ponds is legitimate and novel, and for the non-specialist it is probably helpful to introduce a non-technical expression for this such as ‘subsurface storage of monsoon run-off’. I would thus recommend substituting this expression for UTFI, especially since the conclusion reached is that the contribution to ‘flood reduction’ is minimal, and the value of the technique is essentially for ‘water-resource conservation’.
I also noticed a high incidence of minor English language errors in places in the paper (especially on pages 1-4), which need to be rectified. Additionally ‘Hantush’ should always be written with a capital ‘H’.
Author Response
Reviewer has one main comment on manuscript title.
Now, the title has been changed to “Managed aquifer recharge of monsoon runoff: Performance assessment of a pilot trial in the Ramganga basin, India ” to make it more general in nature and thus clearer to a wider audience. However, the concept on Underground Transfer of flood for Irrigation (UTFI) has been published and presented sufficiently over last 6 or so years that we feel we can safely us we retain safely retain this term knowing that the literature contains sufficient material for readers to find out more about UTFI as needed.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
