Spatial and Temporal Patterns of Carbon and Water Use Efficiency on the Loess Plateau and Their Influencing Factors
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear Authors
The work requires many corrections and additions. There is no comment as to the scope of simplifications in which considerations have been made - this is very important for a better understanding of the subject. It seems that the adopted concept is a far simplification of reality. My comments below.
all the best
Reviewer.
1. The abbreviations CUE WUE and other letter abbreviations should be thoroughly explained - these abbreviations have already been used by the Authors in the abstract and are not understandable at this stage. Abstract for thorough re-editing.
Briefly describe what is important, how the important results were achieved and what they are useful for. .
2. How to understand the presented values: CUE 0.001/10a and WUE 0.047/10a - this requires explanation.
3. In the last paragraph of the Introduction chapter, it should be clearly and concisely written what research the authors intend to present, what sources they use and why these studies are needed.
4. Chapter 2.2. Date - reword for better understanding. The data used for research should be presented and presented, e.g. in tables with sources. Explain letter abbreviations.
5. Chapter 2.3 - not understandable. I propose to first define and discuss the equations for CUE and WUE, and then discuss their components NPP, GPP, ET. Equations should be numbered.
6. How can the data from section 2.2. are used in the calculations in section 2.3.
7. Line 171 is xi - should be xi.
8. Line 170: there is Rxy - should be Rxy.
9. Line 197 - which means: "were relatively stable over the study..." which means relatively stable ??????????
10. It seems that the examined values of CUE and WUE may be affected by the composition and quality of soils in the area of the plateau (migration of water and carbon in soils). Why. The studied forests with different stands grow on different soils. The authors did not take this into account.
11. Proszę przedstawić dla wybranych roślin bilans węgla.
12. How is the carbon balance in relation to water relations in the soil?
13. The effect on CUE and WUE of e.g. sulphur-loving and chlorophilic plants is not shown.
14. Line 465 how to understand "carbon water" - is it about CO2 in water?
15. The authors use the expression percent instead of % in the text - use % - example lines 452-457.
16. Conclusions: sentence - "The examination of residuals indicates that human activities influence the trend of CUE and WUE to some degree. “ – it is good to write to what extent. It should be explained what results from the calculated values of CUE and WUE indicators.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer：
Greetings!
Thank you for your review and comments on our paper entitled "Spatial and temporal patterns of carbon and water use efficiency on the Loess Plateau and their influencing factors (land-2089548)", and on behalf of myself and the other authors, thank you very much for giving us the opportunity to continue to revise and improve the manuscript. Your comments are important for the further improvement and refinement of our research. We have carefully studied these comments and have responded to them one by one, making corrections in the article that we hope will be approved by you.
Thank you again for giving us the opportunity to revise our manuscript. We would also like to thank the reviewers for taking the time to provide valuable comments on our research. The main corrections and responses to the reviewers' comments in this article are listed below. Details of the revisions and proof of embellishment are attached.
Qi Zhang, Jin Xin Lu, Xue Xuan Xu
College of Grassland Agriculture, Northwest A&F University
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear Authors,
I think this paper has potential and a good basic concept, but needs substantial rewrites for clarity. Aside from changing incorrect or inaccurate word choice (there are too many examples to list here), the authors need to:
1. Provide more detail of the subject area. There are many geographical locations referenced in the results section with no way to orient the reader. Perhaps a map would be beneficial? Or a phrase of location description so that the reader knows the area in the map they should look at.
2. Be on the lookout for sentence fragments throughout. Many verbs are missing in sentences.
3. Check and use subscripts when appropriate. The switch from subscripts in the equations to the lack of subscripts in the text can cause confusion.
4. Overall consistency in terminology and symbology. For example, in the methods, it lists four categories of trend analysis results, however those categories were not used throughout the discussion of those trends in the results section. Or, another example, sometimes the word "percent" is used and other times the symbol "%" is used.
5. Explain the asterisks in the figure 8.
This is by no means an exhaustive list. I suggest the authors find someone to re-read this paper for clarity prior to resubmission after edits are made.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer：
Greetings!
Thank you for your review and comments on our paper entitled "Spatial and temporal patterns of carbon and water use efficiency on the Loess Plateau and their influencing factors (land-2089548)", and on behalf of myself and the other authors, thank you very much for giving us the opportunity to continue to revise and improve the manuscript. Your comments are important for the further improvement and refinement of our research. We have carefully studied these comments and have responded to them one by one, making corrections in the article that we hope will be approved by you.
Thank you again for giving us the opportunity to revise our manuscript. We would also like to thank the reviewers for taking the time to provide valuable comments on our research. The main corrections and responses to the reviewers' comments in this article are listed below. Details of the revisions and proof of embellishment are attached.
Qi Zhang, Jin Xin Lu, Xue Xuan Xu
College of Grassland Agriculture, Northwest A&F University
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear editor,
The manuscript "Spatial and temporal patterns of carbon and water use efficiency on the Loess Plateau and their influencing factors" was submitted to Land. It's a nice research about carbon and water use efficiency. I have some concerns and my decision is minor revision, finally I recommend to authors that improve the quality of this nice paper as following.
1. Please talk more about methodology in the abstract.
2. I did not find a suitable sentence in the abstract about conclusion, please pay attention.
3. I recommend that more speak about necessity of research in the introduction.
4. I did not see any references in lines 98 to 104.
5. Well written methodology section, congratulations.
6. Well written result section, congratulations.
7. I noticed that in the discussion section, Chinese references were used in most of the content. Please check the desired cases in other regions of the world.
8. Please be sure that all the references cited in the manuscript are also included in the reference list and vice versa with matching spellings and dates.
9. Finally, I checked plagiarism detection of this research and the similarity is 24%, please checked attached file.
Regards
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear Reviewer：
Greetings!
Thank you for your review and comments on our paper entitled "Spatial and temporal patterns of carbon and water use efficiency on the Loess Plateau and their influencing factors (land-2089548)", and on behalf of myself and the other authors, thank you very much for giving us the opportunity to continue to revise and improve the manuscript. Your comments are important for the further improvement and refinement of our research. We have carefully studied these comments and have responded to them one by one, making corrections in the article that we hope will be approved by you.
Thank you again for giving us the opportunity to revise our manuscript. We would also like to thank the reviewers for taking the time to provide valuable comments on our research. The main corrections and responses to the reviewers' comments in this article are listed below. Details of the revisions and proof of embellishment are attached.
Qi Zhang, Jin Xin Lu, Xue Xuan Xu
College of Grassland Agriculture, Northwest A&F University
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear Authors
The revised version of the article is sufficient for publication. I hope this is a prelude to more interesting research in this area.
greetings
Reviewer
Author Response
Dear Reviewer：
Greetings!
感谢您批准我们发表在LAND上的论文“黄土高原碳和水利用效率的时空模式及其影响因素”（land-2089548）。
张琦， 卢金鑫， 徐雪璇
西北农林科技大学草原农业学院
