In Situ Measurement of Stemflow, Throughfall and Canopy Interception of Sprinkler Irrigation Water in a Wheat Field
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
ABSTRACT
Methodology missing - please add
Line 18: "...Indicating that stemflow...use efficiency" delete sentence
Keywords
Line 23: Delete Sprinkler irrigation - already captured in title - unnecessary duplication.
INTRODUCTION
Line 36: "now has been" - replace with "is"
Line 38: delete 1st agriculture as in traditional agriculture.
Line 44, 45, 46: replace canopy interception with CI
Line 51: replace pose with impose
Line 57: After Throughfall water add the abbreviation of (TF)
Line 58: why is there a need to cite 3 sources for this one fact?
Line 87-91: What is the problem that led to the urgent need for this investigation in this study area? Present problem statement sentence. A lack of information is not sufficient to qualify as a problem statement.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
Line 96-105: Indicate sources of the information used in this paragraph?
Line 113: "...water pumped from a well" - Is this ground water? clarify
Line 133: "...following local practices." - such as? clarify.
Line 177: "...selecting proper plants..." - what are PROPER plants - clarify.
Line 214-217: Was an ANOVA employed to determine statistical differences? Clarify?
Pearson's correlations coefficient needs to be mentioned in Materials and Methods section, under the relevant section.
Indicate the dates of 1st and 2nd measurements and the time (days) in between.
RESULTS
Line 219-222: To indicate the data is in the various tables is not a good manner of results reporting. rephrase to highlight important data.
Line 231: Remove interpretation of data as in "indicating that the crop canopy ..."
Line 240: remove "3.1. subsection".
Line 278-279: remove interpretation of data as in "Indicating good water balance ..."
DISCUSSION
Excessive amounts of results were brought over from the RESULTS section. Paraphrase results that are brought over into the discussion section.
Line 296: relocate sentence to Materials and Methods, as in "In this study ... 2.45 hours"
Line 297-300: too much verbatim results - just 1 sentence of "essence" of results needed - reduce to 1 sentence.
Line 300-302: To focus your discussion exclusively on comparing your study results with others (The so-called: ‘I-found-they-found’ principle) is not adequate for an international paper at this level. The function of a discussion is to provide context to the observed data, which the ‘I-found-they-found’ principle does not provide. DISCUSS WHAT THIS MEANS FOR FARMERS.
Line 307/313: DISCUSS WHAT THIS MEANS FOR FARMERS.
Line 307: What does this "trend" imply for a farmer?
Line 324-330: To focus your discussion exclusively on comparing your study results with others (The so-called: ‘I-found-they-found’ principle) is not adequate for an international paper at this level. The function of a discussion is to provide context to the observed data, which the ‘I-found-they-found’ principle does not provide. DISCUSS WHAT THIS MEANS FOR FARMERS.
Line 351: wind speed measurement - Method to be described in Materials and Methods; Results (line 351) relocated to the relevant section in Results.
Line 358-371: To focus your discussion exclusively on comparing your study results with others (The so-called: ‘I-found-they-found’ principle) is not adequate for an international paper at this level. The function of a discussion is to provide context to the observed data, which the ‘I-found-they-found’ principle does not provide. DISCUSS WHAT THIS MEANS FOR FARMERS. Do so for all results - farmers are the end product user of your paper.
CONCLUSION
Present INSIGHT, not a SUMMARY of the results.
Author Response
Thannks for these comments from the reviewer. The point-to-point reply can be found in the pasted file.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Please see attachment
Comments for author File: Comments.docx
Author Response
Thanks very much for these comments and suggestions. The point-to-point reply can be found in the pasted file.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Throughfall water and canopy interception under sprinkler irrigation in wheat field have been investigated. - cite one or two such papers
Author Response
Reviewer 1#
Comments: Throughfall water and canopy interception under sprinkler irrigation in wheat field have been investigated. - cite one or two such papers
Reply: Thanks for this suggestion. In this paper, we cited references to show the canopy interception and throughfall water results for wheat crop [1-3]. References [1,2] directly measured the canopy interception of sprinkler irrigation water using adsorption method. And reference [3] just measured the throughfall water, i.e. the water under canopy, using containers and the canopy interception amount was calculated as the difference between the water measured above and under canopy. In the second method, canopy interception rate was approximately 40%. However, it must be noted that this high CI rate include the stem flow amount.
We researched and only found additional two references that was related to the CI and TF water measurement [4,5]. Reference [4] directly measured the TF using the containers below the canopy with the method similar to this study. Reference [5]measured the canopy interception (called canopy water storage in the reference) and they found CI was approximately. This value was close the data of in this study. We cited them in the revised MS.
Was found all these references did not measure the SF in wheat field. Therefore, the stem flow data in this study is very important to close this research gap.
References:
- Wang, Q.-G.; Kang, Y.; Liu, H.-J.; Liu, S.-P. Method for measurement of canopy interception under sprinkler irrigation. J. Irrig. Drain. Eng. 2006, 132, 185-187, doi:10.1061/(ASCE)0733-9437(2006)132:2(185).
- Kang, Y.; Wang, Q.-G.; Liu, H.-J. Winter wheat canopy interception and its influence factors under sprinkler irrigation. Agric. Water Manage. 2005, 74, 189-199, doi:10.1016/j.agwat.2004.11.004.
- Li, J.; Rao, M. Sprinkler water distributions as affected by winter wheat canopy. Irrig. Sci. 2000, 20, 29-35, doi:10.1007/PL00006715.
- Butler, D.R.; Huband, N.D.S. Throughfall and stem-flow in wheat. Agric. Forest Meteorol. 1985, 35, 329-338, doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/0168-1923(85)90093-0.
- Wigneron, J.-P.; Calvet, J.-C.; Kerr, Y. Monitoring water interception by crop fields from passive microwave observations. Agric. Forest Meteorol. 1996, 80, 177-194, doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/0168-1923(95)02296-1.
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors have made adequate changes to improve the MS. However, still there is scope for improving the introduction
Author Response
Reviewer 2#
Comments: The authors have made adequate changes to improve the MS. However, still there is scope for improving the introduction.
Reply: Thanks the reviewer for his comment. One highlight in this study is to directly investigate the stemflow of wheat, which was not be done in the previous researches. The stemflow is not only important for evaluating the water balance in sprinkler irrigation, but also influencing the chemicals’ (pesticides and pollutants) transferring from canopy surface or air to root zone, which may harm plant growth and food quality. Also the stemflow could cause huge water flow in soil surface, which finally could result in soil and water erosion. All these show the importance of stemflow study. We added these information in introduction section as “Further, the dissolved chemicals (pesticides and pollutants) will flow down to root zone with the stem flow, and finally pollute the soil and may harm crop growth and food qual-ity [16]. Great SF also cause much water flow in surface and could result in soil and water erosion [21]” in lines 70-73.
