Diagnosis of Basin Eco-Hydrological Variation Based on Index Sensitivity of Similar Years: A Case Study in the Hanjiang River Basin

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I appreciate that the authors responded to most of the comments and suggestions. I thank and congratulate them for their effort.

There are still some small remarks that I mentioned in the attached manuscript.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

请参阅附件。

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper with the subject Diagnosis of Basin Eco-hydrological variation based on index sensitivity of similar years has an interesting topic and methodology but before be accepted to be published in this journal needs some minor modification.

Specific comment

1. the abstract must be improved to reveal the correlation between the methodology used and the results obtained

2. at the end of the introduction the authors must clearly specific the scientific objectives of the paper and the novelty of the research made

3. in this stage the discussion part is just a continuing results part without any correlation between the results obtained in this research and other research in the same area or topic. Also in the discussion part the authors must describe the limitations of the methodology used.

4. in the conclusion part needs significant improvement, generally, it is recommended to address this section in at least three separate and brief paragraphs the following: i) main findings and novelty of the paper; ii) broader impacts (what others in the field or different fields can do with the findings presented in this work).

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

This is a paper of a quite good quality, mainly of methodological interest. It proposes a methodology for diagnosis of the watershed hydrological variation, by using the extraction of the most Ecologically Relevant Hydrogeological Indicators (ERHIs), based on similar year sensitive indicators (which ensures that the selected indicators are highly representative and sensitive), and the diagnosis method of variation period. The proposed methodology was applied in the Hanjiang River Basin at Ankang gauging station.

The research is generally conducted correctly and the results are clearly presented and discussed. The discussion section should be more developed.

Several comments/suggestions are made in the attached manuscript.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript presents very interesting analysis of time series of discharge data from one site. However my major concerns are following:

1. The explanation of changes in river is based on one site, there is no proof that the selected data and site are representative for whole river basin.

2. Key standards on open science are missing.

3. There is no proof that the set of indices for given river basin are sufficient for remaining parts of the basin.

Due to these facts I must recommend to reject the article. I highly recommend to authors to add more time series into the analysis and improve manuscript.

Additional remarks

• very weak discussion - almost none
• some pictures are unreadable see fig 3
• tables 4,  figures 5 are not so important
• few typing errors for example see page 3 " anerage precipitation "
• some terms are not defined like:  Variation intensity see page 11, variational point (Conclusion 2nd paragraph), 
• precise definition of hydrological variation is missing