A First Insight on the Interaction between Desiccation Cracking and Water Transfer in a Luvisol of Belgium

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This study investigated the interaction between desiccatoin cracking and hydraulic properties of soils. 

1. The introduction should be improved to review the more previous relative work and give the key innovation of this study.
2. For improving the readability of this study, the example should be added to show the specific steps of image processing and analysis process for identifying cracks and measuring their width and length.
3. The conclusions can be arranged by several paragraphs with serial numbers. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

It is clear that substantial effort has been put into this paper. Also, the idea od studying the relations among soil structure, water content and permeability is interesting (albeit definitely not novel per se). 

However, I think the problems with this paper are numerous. They start already from the title, which implies soil structure and hydraulic properties were analyzed, which is not true. And this is highly unfortunate. The reader gets no specific info (type, grade, anomalies etc.) of the structure of the analyzed soils, not to mention that soil permeability was not measured at all. No photos depicting soil structure are provided, although the abstract states image processing was conducted (results on image processing are completely absent!?).

Further, no data on organic C content is found in the paper? How come? It is highly important for soil water retention.

And what about soil mineralogy? We know that it is one of the main soil properties affecting the cracking. And yet, no mention on it in this paper... Come to think of it - why did the authors choose to do the research on a Cutanic Luvisol, and not on some vertic soil? Luvisols usually do not contain much clay (as is the case in this paper as well!), do not crack, and are poorly structured (and the authors consider the analyzed soils to be "structured"?).

There are also other methodological problems.. Probably the most serious one: because the tensiometers failed, SWRC was modelled, although no measurements were performed beyond 5 bar suction. This is a highly dubious approach. In my opinion, it would be better if the authors entirely excluded the SWRC data form the paper, and relied only on soil water content (soil cracks are directly related to water content - water suction is a function of soil moisture state).

To conclude, I think the paper is interesting and falls into the scope of the Journal, but needs substantial improvements across all its segments: title, abstract, intro, materials&methods, discussion, and - of course - conclusions.

For my specific comments, please check the annotated pdf file that I attach.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors of the proposed paper have made a substantial effort to revise it according to the comments of the reviewers. They have also done a good job in providing the answers to these comments. Accordingly, in my opinion, the paper is significantly improved and can be published in Soil Systems.