Deep Tillage Improves Degraded Soils in the (Sub) Humid Ethiopian Highlands

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

See my comments

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you for the comments.

The responses to the comments and the annotated revised manuscript are attached as a pdf file.

regards

Tammo, Misbah and Petra

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Report on ‘Land 593-688’

An interesting read, but nothing novel, indeed the results could well have been predicted from earlier publication, in particular [15, 17 and 29]. This is a new location for studies in deep tillage but a well-studied crop. Also, the methodology [manually digging!!!] is ‘new’.

I have annotated the manuscript and highlight here the most important issues..

Abstract: reasonable, but no mention that the manual deep tillage unlikely to be economically rewarding.

Introduction: fine but use of one reference [the only one that I verified] seems to be incorrect.

Materials and Methods: a scale on the map in Figure 1a, use ‘fields’ instead of ‘plots’ and then one can use plots in each field. Was the stratification of soil down to 60 com retained once the pan was broken, or was all the soil homogenised? Important to let the reader know. No borders when harvesting??? If not, then poor field research practice. Lettering in Table 1 for ‘All plots’ [letter cross years] implies that the data were combined over years, whereas line 176 implies otherwise.. So in 2016, were new plots opened for the manual loosening [line 123]. Wouldn’t it be useful to verify a lasting effect of manually loosening the hard pan? Lines 178 and 181/182 seem to say the same thing..

Results: explain the lettering in Table 2, ‘all plots’ and really one can remove all of the other data [see annotation] in that Table. A number of places have issues with meaning, ambiguity, validity as annotated. Indicate meaning of bars in Figure 4. Remove some extraneous information in captions to Figure 6 and 7.  Put data from text into Table 3 [page 10]. Why should here be no yield effect of DT vs CT in 2016? This deserves some sort of discussion. Line 282 is ambiguous.

Discussion: maybe worthwhile considering sediment as a % of runoff [lines 310-311].

Conclusions: care with sweeping statements if the result was evident in only one year.

Supplementary materials: data in Figure S1 are the same as in Table 2?! Why present twice? What is 12 in equation of Sl=? Should St be Vt in the bottom line of page 1. What are the letterings in Table S1?

References: some information missing in some, some duplication, wrong use of capitals, various presentations of Journal titles, non-use of italics and so on…

A big question, glossed over: DT also enhanced BD in shallower soil as well as at depth, so to some extend the reported effect of breaking of the hard pan is confounded with enhanced BD at shallower depth?

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you for your time and comments

The response and the marked-up revised manuscript are attached.

Regards

Tammo, Misbah and Petra

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf