Rice Terraces Enhanced the Hydrological Stability of Small Watershed with LUCC—A Case Study of Xinhua Basin

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

In the manuscript entitled “Rice Terraces Enhanced the Hydrological Stability of Small Watershed with LUCC—A Case Study of Xinhua Basin”  a hydrological assessment tool SWAT is applied to a watershed in an area with rice-terraces to assess the influence of land-use change. 

The paper presents valuable results that would be interesting to a wide audience.  The manuscript is well written, although maybe in a slightly too technical way, but still understandable.  I would only recommend adding to conclusions a short explanation of the broader significance of the study. 

My only specific comment would be that it is necessary to explain the abbreviation the first time it is used.  Also, please avoid using abbreviations in the figures, rather provide full explanation.

Please provide explanation what type of correlation was used (linear, logarithmic, exponential…) in Figures 9 and 10. 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

 

1)Why was the Xinhua Basin chosen, and what are the typical characteristics and representativeness of the study area?

2) The relevance of the hydrological cycle process to the study's content raises the question of whether this process is specific to the study area or applicable to all regions. If it applies to all areas, there is no need for a diagram, and there is a lack of corresponding textual explanations.

3) Please carefully adjust the format according to the requirements of the manuscript and improve the formatting of references.

4) The 1 km resolution soil data used in the article appear to be too coarse for use at the county scale. Could they be replaced with observational point data or sampling data?

5) Figure 4 suggests further improvement by labeling the exact order of the four figures as a, b, c, and d, and adjusting the width of the horizontal axis labels.

6) Where can the 35 subregions with a decreasing trend in the area of paddy fields be found in section 3.3.2? It is recommended to include additional spatial information to describe changes in land use within the watershed, along with an explanation for this suggestion.

 

7) Please consider providing more details about the significance and innovation of the study.

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

1.      Line 125: As of 2020, the area covered by terraced fields in the watershed is approximately 117,593.76 hectares, accounting for about 25% of the total watershed area. How about other land use and land cover? Which one is most dominant in the study area?

2.      Line 141: SWAT model is a distributed hydrological model consisting of a constant time-step simulation tool. However, there are some other suitable hydrological models for this hilly mountainous area. It is necessary to explain why to choose SWAT model, and comparing with other models.

3.      Line 188: The data was from meteorological and hydrological bureaus of Xinhua County covering continuous daily data from 1990 to 2009. Do you have current data from 2010 to 2020? It is better to understand the climate change recently.

4.      Line 243: Is it overestimating or underestimating for streamflow simulation for the calibration period (1992-2001) and validation period (2002-2009) in Figure 2 (a)?

5.      Line 263: Based on the land use transfer analysis, the Xinhua Basin has seen a general trend of decreasing paddy fields and drylands, with increasing areas of forests and construction land. Please explain more detail for this interesting transit. What is the most important driving force? Why?

6.      Line 380: In Figure 9 and Table 1, it indicates that the proportions of paddy, forest, and built-up areas in the basin are the main factors influencing sub-basin runoff. Please briefly describe which is positive or negative influences.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors,

I am enclosing my comments on your article.

Kind regards

Reviewer

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

English is fine, minor language editing is required.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf