Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Although the manuscript has the potential to advance our understanding of hydrological modeling and the water balance of the Upper Blue Nile Basin, the explanation and figure require extensive revision. Please address the comments to improve the quality of your article.

1. In the abstract authors mentioned '... to assess the implications of watershed management (WSM) on water availability in the Aba Gerima watershed...' does not make any sense to me! Please specify your objective in a short sentence.

2. In the first line of introduction, "Watersheds are biophysical systems that define the land surface that drains water and waterborne sediments, nutrients, and chemical constituents to a point in a stream channel or a river defined by topographic boundaries". I recommend that the authors provide the following references: s: (a) Sarker et al. (2019), Critical Nodes in River Networks, Scientific Reports. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-47292-4, (b) Sarker, Shiblu, "Investigating Topologic and Geometric Properties of Synthetic and Natural River Networks under Changing Climate" (2021). Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-. 965. https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd2020/965

3. The map of the study area (figure 1) should be improved. Please remove the watermark from the axis labels. There are numerous tutorials on how to create publication-quality maps using ArcGIS.

4. Please add a paragraph on "Hydrus 1D" model in your method section.

5. Figure 2 is awful! I would use Python, MATLAB, or some other professional software to generate quality figures.

6. Figure 3 is extremely challenging to read! Please revise.

7. Figure 4 is horrible! Please do not capture the screen. Utilize some professional software to produce accurate figures.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper titled "Implications of Watershed Management Practices on Water Availability Using Hydrus 1D Model in Aba Gerima Watershed, Upper Blue Nile basin, Ethiopia" provides some insight into watershed management based on hydrology. Several things still need to be addressed for the journal's readership. 

1) The map (Figure 1) of the watershed boundary and elevation profile seems not to match; what is the source of the watershed boundary? If it was delineated in the ArcMap tool, please provide details. If available, add a river network to the map.

2) Line 22: R2 should be superscript.

3) Line 22~24: Rearrange text and rewrite accordingly. Discussion of model calibration details or considerations should be before model statistics.

4) Line 139: Methods should be renamed by "Hydrus model setup."

5) Major part of the result section should move into a method. For example, line 175 to line 187 was mostly method. In the current text, only a couple of sentences can be in the result section.

6) Table 2 should be split into two parts - flux and water balance. In the case of water balance - all the fluxes should convert to volume so that the whole water balance can be seen in the same unit and easily interpreted. 

7) Table 3 should follow the standard practice for numeric precision. 

8) Figure 2 - Please mention which are simulated and measured, which will help to understand the plot.

9) what are the N1, N2, D2, etc. please mention in the text or figure caption

10) Line 229-251 should move into the method section.  

11) Line 216-217 and Line 252-253 are redundant. Please fix.

12) Table 4 - please use standard numeric precision values; you can use up to two-digit decimal values. 

13) Line 285: the statement of land management practices in the watershed greatly influence, did not correctly discuss. Soil-physical property results were discussed, but how they influenced land management practices were unclear. 

14) Line 290-297 is the result - as a major part of the result should be moved into the method section, the author can combine the result and discussion into one section. 

15) Figure 3 and Figure 4 did not mention in the main text. Please mention it in the corresponding text. 

16) Figure 3: axis title should be fixed (superscript)

17) Line 334-366: all the units of the value mentioned in mm should be consistent with the tables and figures.

18) A major drawback of the study, no site-specific land use summary was provided or discussed in the paper. Land use details of each drainage area of the sites would be valuable to understand the impact of land management on water availability. Then how can we interpret the site-specific results in land management?

 19) Line 376-380: please remove; no introduction is necessary.

20) Line 386-390: please fix the grammar of the sentence.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thanks for the revision. 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors have satisfactorily addressed my previous comments.  The edits have led to a small handful of additional remaining minor comments that the authors should consider:

1. Please add the heading "Statistical analysis" on line 211 in the track changes manuscript. 

2. Figure 4: please revise the text "Soil water storage (SWS)" to match the figure legend.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx