Tracking Soil Health Changes in a Management-Intensive Grazing Agroecosystem

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper “Tracking soil health changes in a Management-intensive Grazing agroecosystem” studied ten soil health indicators using the Soil Management Assessment Framework (SMAF) to identify changes in soil physical, biological, chemical, and nutrient health five to six years

after converting irrigated cropland to irrigated pastureland under MiG.

The authors obtained several important results and made important analyses, but how the paper was written is very confusing. Below I highlighted the most important issues about the paper.

In my opinion, the paper needs a lot of corrections as there are some confusing parts, especially in the results and discussion.

Abstract

In general, the abstract is very confusing. Please, write it again.

Line 12 – what do you mean by nutrient health? For me, this does not exist. It should be nutrient content, not nutrient health. Correct in all parts of the paper.

Introduction

Line 28 – “land managers” means “farmers”?

Line 32 “ which focuses in part on economic and social objectives to increase stocking rate” – please correct this part. It is confused.

Line 53 – “characteristics that promote healthy, productive agroecosystems” – what are healthy ecosystems? What do you mean?

Line 56-57-  “healthy cycling of key plant nutrients” – again, what do you mean by healthy cycling of key plant nutrients?

Line 62 – “an important food source to support microbial” – replace for “ soil organic carbon is an important source of energy and subtract for microbial communities.”

Line 70 – “There may be significant soil chemical changes that occur from these management decisions.” – which management decisions? For me, this phrase could be removed.

Line 74 – “However, changes in soil pH and salinity in managed perennial grassland” ... salinity is a change of pH – improve this frase.

Line 76 – “alterations in soil pH, may alter plant growth and depend”... Correct this part

Lines 83 and 84 – soil biological, chemical, and physical factors? Or attributes or proprieties?

Material and methods

Which methodologies were used to quantify MBC, soil nutrients content, potentially mineralizable nitrogen [PMN], and ß-glucosidase activity,

soil chemical indicators (pH and electrical conductivity [EC]), and soil nutritional indicators (plant-available P and K), among others. You should indicate which methods were used for each evaluation.

Line 104 – replace elevation to altitude

Line 107 – replace occurring for occurs

Line 110 – commodity crops – which ones?

Line 114 – which grasses?

Lines 117 to 127 – It is important to make a climatological graph showing mean temperature and precipitation during the Years of evaluation. Also, it should be important to make a table showing the history of the área, indicating the crops and the amount of fertilizers applied during and before the experiment.

Line 145 – When soil samples were collected?

Line 154 – the remainder?

Results

Evaluating the results was difficult, as they were mixed with discussion. I suggest that the authors correct this part, separating results and discussion.

The results are very confusing, as there are discussions associated with results. If you decide to separate results and discussion, as presented in the paper, it is not possible to include discussion in the results.

All this part should be written again, as it is mixed with discussion.

It is not common to present the tables before the results, as in Tables 1 to 3. Also, the titles of the tables 1 to 3 are too long. The significance and other parts should be at the end of the table as footnote. 

Discussion

The discussion is presented on this topic and in the results. You should decide if to include the discussion in the results (so the topic would be Results and Discussion) or remove all discussion in the Results and include in Discussion.

Line 524 – this table is the same as presented in Shawver et al. (2021). I am not sure if you need permission of the journal where the paper was published to show this table again. 

The text should be revised 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This manuscript fulfils all scientific criteria. The research question is clearly formulated, the methods are up-to-date and the results are consistent.  
However, the reviewer wonders what is really new about the research question and the results. It has been known for decades that soil health measured on the basis of various parameters is, as expected, better under grassland or pasture than under arable land.  It is equally well known and widely studied that soil compaction is greater or less depending on the number of grazing animals. Intensive grassland or pasture use is more favourable for soil health. In terms of carbon storage capacity alone. The reviewer would have liked new findings to be made clearer. Unfortunately, one also searches in vain for important reviews in general (Bünemann et al. 2018, Soil Biology & Biochemistry, ....). At the very least, the work should be placed in a larger context. 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

It is an interesting and valuable manuscript, I have only some small comments and questions.

Line 150: Please, write the “bulk density” here with the Bd abbreviation.

Line 160: Please, add the used physical, chemical and biological methods to the text with references.

Line 261: Please, delete the dot after “[35]”.

Lines 349-364: After going through the biological parameters measured in 2017/2018 and 2021/2022, the microbiological parameters were increased but this increase were not continuous and were not drastic. However, in 2022 the values of PMN were extremely high. Could be the reason of these increase that the sampling time was closer to the grazing period than in case of the earlier sampling events?

Line 424: Please, add “0” between “the to” at the end of the line.

Lines 479-480: I don’t understand exactly this part of the sentence: “SOC appears to have increased by nearly 1% (40 to 82% greater)”.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

This manuscript is dealing with soil health impacts of transitioning from irrigated cropland to irrigated management intensive gazing (MiG). Ten soil health indicators have been analyzed using the so called Soil Management Assessment Framework (SMAF), which was previously described and used. This manuscript should be accepted after minor changes. Next I’m presenting comment, which somewhat could help to improve the manuscript.

The study relies on four hypotheses. However, objectives are not explicitly stated. Please, consider to rework hypothesis amd objectives.

-   Please, briefly indicate the methods used to analyze soil physical, chemical and biological properties used as soil health indicators. For example, how was measured soil organic matter content, soil bulk density, etc. In my opinion stating methods used is essential, even if they have been described in a previous work. This issue is important to compare this work with other similar works.

   Conclusion are lacking in this manuscript. However the information provided in the abstract and the discussion sections allow readers to draw up conclusions.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Tthe authors reviewed the article and made all the corrections suggested by me. In my opinion, the work can be published.

Author Response

Thank you for your assistance and work to prepare this manuscript for publication.