Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

It was pleasure for me to read your paper and please receive my compliments. Most of my notes are given in the PDF file as form of comments in boxes and yellow underlying.  I hope that my comments will improve slightly your paper.

I am not native English spoken person so I will not judge on the English although I find the paper well written.

On many places marked by me with yellow color references are missing please make corrections.

The methodology and the sample preparation and the instrumentation is well explained and even too much for some places.

Importance of the investigation of the potentially toxic elements in smaller cities is well explained and I hope more papers will be published in future.

Personally I wish to use potentially toxic elements for the reasons that the authors will agree with me. Not every element is toxic in even small quantities like Pb and Cd. Zn and Cu are micronutrients as well. High concetrations are toxic but small ones are not. 

I suggest on some places, "toxic elements" to be change to "potentially toxic elements"

I hope the other reviewers will have same opinion for your paper as well.

Kind regards 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

I suggest on some places, "toxic elements" to be change to "potentially toxic elements"	Done and corrected accordingly!
Missed references	Done and corrected accordingly!
Comments in the text of the manuscript	All comments have been attended and corrected through the entire text accordingly!

Reviewer 2 Report

Please see the attachment file. Thanks

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

1.	The abstract should be more informative.	The abstract was clarified and corrected accordingly!
2.	All the other comments	All the other comments were amendments in the text by of the manuscript using Track changes in MS office and corrected accordingly!
3.	Line 160-161: what means “geohygienic studies”? Geogenic?	This means the calculation of the impact on health due to the exposure to the geochemical elements.

Reviewer 3 Report

Review report: land-2191287

The manuscript " Assessment of soil toxic metal pollution in an industrial town, Russia: characteristics and pollution" by Inna Z. Kamanina, Wael M. Badawy, Svetlana P. Kaplina, Oleg A. Makarov and Sergey V. Mamikhin focused to describe the characteristic features of toxic metals in the soil of the city of Kolchugino-Vladimir region - Russia. The paper falls within the scope of the land. It is expected to give a useful guide to the control and regulation measures of waste disposal into the environment, which has an adverse impact on human health. Obtained results are novel and surely deserve to be published in the journal after minor revision.

 

My comments are detailed below:

The abstract should be more informative.

 

The English should be improved in both the correct uses of terms and syntax. Some statements in the introduction and the discussion are misleading.

Line 16. Please write “association” as “associations”.

Lines 18-19: Please remove “a” before “great”.

Line 20: Please write as “an adverse impact on human health”

Lines 36-37: Please remove “the” before “regional” and so on through the text.

Line 38: Please add “the” before “soil” and so on through the text.

Line 41: Please remove “the” before “unbalanced” and so on through the text.

Line 42. Please change “naturally” to “natural”.

Line 42: Please add “the” before “disease” and so on through the text.

Line 43: Please remove “the” before “human” and so on through the text.

Line 44: Please add “the” before “building” and change “have” to “has”.

Line 48: Please write this sentence as follows “However, regarding small cities, there are not only a few works devoted …”

Line 61: Please write this sentence as follows “Sod-podzolic”

Line 66: Please write this as “represented”

Line 75: Please add “the” before “Soil”

Lines 76-77: “composition” must be written as “compositions”

Line 80: Please write this sentence as following “Two types are characterized by the soil cover: gray forest, and sod-podzolic”.

Line 81: Please change “from other soils” to “by other soils”.

Line 112: Please add “of” before “distilled water”.

Lines 133-134: Please remove “the” before “Supplementary Materials”.

Line 137: Please add “the” before “Shapiro-Wilk test”.

Line 137: must be written as “All the relevant statistical analyses”

Lines 139-141: Please write this sentence as follows “The spatial distribution of the pollution patterns was studied using GIS technology and the data were interpolated using the inverse distance weighting (IDW) method”.

Line 145-146: Please add “the” before “pollution load index (PLI)” and “total pollution index (TPI)”.

Line 160-161: what means “geohygienic studies”? Geogenic?

Line 168: Please delete “the” before “element”.

Line 172: Please delete “a” before “single”

Line 180: Please change “is” to “are” must be written as “The interpretation categories for PER are given as an inset in Error!”

Line 181: Please write as “RI is given”

Line 184: Please add “An” before “Operational Land Imajer”.

Line 187: must be written as “satellite images”

Line 193: Change “are” to “is”

Line 195: change “were” to “was”

Line 209-210: Must be written as “may pose a significant hazard to humans and the environment”

Line 214: must be written “shows’

Line 219-220: Must be written as “mostly indicate the non-normal distribution of the mass fractions”

Line 227: Please delete one of the dots after “Error! Reference source not found.”  and so on through the text.

Lines 229, 343. Figure 2, Figure 5, Figure 6. The sentence must begin with “The…………”

Line 232. Remove “the” before “anthropogenic”

Line 233. Add “the” before “spatial”

Line 236: Add “a” before “high amount”

Line 237: Add “is” before “most likely”

Line 237: must be “locations”

Line 240. Remove “the” before “location”

Line 232. Remove “the” before “anthropogenic”

Line 259: Remove “the” before “toxic elements”

 

Line 261: Remove “a” before “rather”

Line 262: Remove “the” before “public health”

Line 267-268: write as “decision-makers”

Line 277: write as “the package”

Lines 277-278: Remove “The” before “agglomerative”

Line 284: must be written as “the better the method fits the dataset”

Line 288: “weighted” must be written as “weight”

Line 288: Add “the” before “Ward”

Line 291: must be written as “locations that are joined”

 

Lines 293-296: Must be written as “In fact, there are almost four sub-clusters and it seems that location # 24 contains a separate one. Most probably, it has different geochemical data over the others and that’s why it contains a separate sub-cluster. Location #24 is characterized by metallurgical plants”.

Line 309: must be written as “every single element”.

Lines 315, 316, 317, 318: “location” must be written as “locations”

Line 320 “locations” must be changed to “location”

Lines 325, 327, 318: “location” must be written as “locations”

Line 349: Please rewrite the sentence as “the maximum likelihood was applied to Operational Land Imager (OLI)”

Lines 355-357: Please rewrite the sentence as “The industrial areas are directly linked to the existence of the ferrous factories and correspond to the locations of the highest association of pollution”.

Figure 8. Distribution ………

Lines 370: “as an industrial area” or “as industrial areas”?

Lines 372-373: Please rewrite the sentence as “great attention should be paid to eliminating the pollution sources and regulating waste disposal”.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

1.	It is necessary to correct the title of the article by adding the name of the city where the research was conducted.	Done and corrected accordingly!
2.	the text is in some places sloppily arranged. There are repetitions and incomprehensible sentences (see, for example, lines 40), as well as erroneous references to figures in the text.	These errors are corrected through the entire manuscript.
3.	The object of study is not clearly described (lines 73-85). Several times it is written that sod-podzol soils prevail. At the same time, the presence of gray forest and alluvial soils is indicated. It is important if soil samples were selected on the same soil.	The soil samples are dominant by sod-podzolic ones. however, they are not the same type of soil. The objectives are improved and clarified.
4.	The analysis of satellite data is poorly related to the results of mapping the content of heavy metals in soils. It would be more logical to identify land cover classes at the first stage on the basis of satellite data, and only after that to determine the location of sampling points taking into account the land cover. In addition, it would be logical to use a land cover map to more accurately interpolate metals content from point-sampling data for soils	A figure and its discussion were added to depict the link between the findings of LULC, the corresponding pollution load index PLI, and the sampling points.
5.	There is no quantitative analysis of the relationship of the land cover map to pollution classes in the manuscript.	Figure 9 was added and it just illustrates the ties between PLI, areas and the corresponding locations.

Reviewer 4 Report

The manuscript is devoted to the important issue of assessing the level of heavy metal contamination of soils in industrial city. The authors used standard methods of assessment and the results of land cover mapping from satellite data.

In general, the manuscript can be accepted for publication, but after a slight revision:

1.           It is necessary to correct the title of the article by adding the name of the city where the research was conducted.

2. the text is in some places sloppily arranged. There are repetitions and incomprehensible sentences (see, for example, lines 40), as well as erroneous references to figures in the text.

3.           The object of study is not clearly described (lines 73-85). Several times it is written that sod-podzol soils prevail. At the same time, the presence of gray forest and alluvial soils is indicated. It is important if soil samples were selected on the same soil.

4.           The analysis of satellite data is poorly related to the results of mapping the content of heavy metals in soils. It would be more logical to identify land cover classes at the first stage on the basis of satellite data, and only after that to determine the location of sampling points taking into account the land cover. In addition, it would be logical to use a land cover map to more accurately interpolate metals content from point-sampling data for soils.

5.           There is no quantitative analysis of the relationship of the land cover map to pollution classes in the manuscript.

Despite these comments, the manuscript can be accepted for publication in the journal after taking into account the above-mentioned comments.

Author Response

1.	In abstract, line 14 the abbreviation is placed in parentheses.	Done and corrected accordingly!
2.	In line (40-41), what these reviewers mention to?	This belongs to the previous paragraph. It was corrected!
3.	The Introduction should be included more new studies using novel techniques for assessment soil pollution such as: - Shokr et al. (2022) ( https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy12123220) -   El Behairy et al., (2022)( https://doi.org/10.3390/ agronomy12112871) -  Abuzaid et al (2023) (https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy13010161).	The introduction section was improved and recent literatures were added.
4.	Please correct line 60 (Error! Reference source not found).t	The errors were corrected through the entire manuscript.
5.	Line no 63 is repeated, please correct.	Done and corrected accordingly!
6.	Please correct the paragraph from line 95 to 99.	Done and corrected accordingly!
7.	Please clear the type of spectrometer (line 121).	The type of the spectrometer is QUANTUM-2A atomic absorption spectrometer!

Reviewer 5 Report

The manuscript has prepared by you contains valuable datasets that deserve to be published and would be of interest for evaluating and characterization of toxic elements , calculation of pollution indices and potential ecological risk, and implementation of remote sensing imaging to identify the land use land cover.

However, it is suggested to take into consideration the specific comments provided below to improve overall quality of the manuscript:

-          In abstract, line 14 the abbreviation is placed in parentheses.

-          In line (40-41), what these reviewers mention to?

-          The Introduction should be included more new studies using novel techniques for assessment soil pollution such as: - Shokr et al. (2022) ( https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy12123220) -   El Behairy et al., (2022)( https://doi.org/10.3390/ agronomy12112871) -  Abuzaid et al (2023) (https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy13010161).

-          Please correct line 60 (Error! Reference source not found).t

-          Line no 63 is repeated, please correct.

-          Please correct the paragraph from line 95 to 99.

-          Please clear the type of spectrometer (line 121).

Author Response

1.	The introduction need to be revised dramatically, make it more clearer and logically. For example, why to assessment of soil toxic metal pollution in an industrial town, and why do this work in the city of Kolchugino - Vladimir region - Russia? The abstract also need to be revised logically and clearly.	Both are revised and corrected accordingly! The changes are Tracked using MS office Option.
2.	For abstract, line 16-17, “ The analysis showed that sites No. 14 and 16 contribute significantly to pollution”, what is No.14 and 16 ? line 17-18, “Maximum likelihood was used to classify the land use/land cover. Six classes were distinguished namely; urban, water, green, forest, swamps, and industrial areas.” is not the main results or conclusions, it is not necessary to appear in the abstract. I suggest you combined this information together, for example, No.14 and 16 belong to which land use/land cover type, and the lead to the significant high pollution.	The names of locations were added. Done and corrected according to your valued comments.
3.	Line 21, the font and size of “Keywords: ” was not correct	Done and corrected accordingly!
4.	For introduction, line 55, “iii) implementation of remote sensing imaging to identify the land use land cover.”, this is not the main objective of this research.	It was eliminated from the objectives. Corrected accrordigy!
5.	For Material and method, Line 60, “Error! Reference source not found.. ” please check	Done and corrected accordingly!
6.	Line 62-64, “ Therefore, the recommended sampling density was selected to be 1 sample per km2. Therefore, the recommended sampling density was set at 1 sample per km2.”, please check this sentence	Done and the duplication was removed.
7.	For Results and discussion, Table 1, the longitude of number 16 “3939897” should be “39.39897”	Done and corrected accordingly!
8.	Line 227 “Error! Reference source not found..” please check.	Done and corrected accordingly!
9.	Line 230 “The spatial distribution of the determined elements can be discussed as;” what this sentence mean? Or it need to be removed, Please check.	It was removed.
10.	In the whole text, “Error! Reference source not found..” appeared several time	Done and corrected accordingly!
11.	Please revise the format of the cited references in both the reference list and the main text according to the requirement of the journal.	Done and corrected accordingly!

Round 2

Reviewer 5 Report

All points of the reviewer were be considered.