Examination of Susceptibility to the Deficiency of Soil Water in a Forested Agricultural Area

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Grammatical and typographical issues

Line 80: change passe to passed

Line 169: change represent to representing

Line 163: change "allows you to specify which parameters" to : allows for the specification of which parameters"

Line 169: change represent to representing 

Technical issues

Overall, I found the information presented interesting. It provided an innovative perspective on understanding interactions among various soil factors in an upland environment. However, the paper would benefit from the inclusion of tables and the addition of maps that show the location of the 3 types of vegetation analyzed as well as maps that provide an overlay of information and/or a table that provides some geostatistical analyses. 

I would have liked to see some tables of data to better understand how the information collected was analyzed. For example, I would have liked to see more clearly how the 27 penetrometer readings were related to the 25 at each location bulk density analyses to the 80 soil salinity analyses.

Please clarify:  is SWAT+ a completely revised version of SWAT or did the authors completely revise SWAT +? If the latter, how was it revised?

Much of the information on statistics and spatial analyses (parts of lines 131-156) should be moved to the introduction rather than being in the results section. The current information in this section provides background and justification for methods used.  Following transfer of the background information to the introduction, the authors should address how their results relate to results previously reported. 

Figure 4, Please describe the differences among the three types of rhomboids (FYI rhomboids and diamonds are two different geometric shapes).

In an examination of Figures 5 - 10, the area of the Smuagawka catchment with the least water runoff also has the highest water storage, while in the Mszanka catchment, the area with the highest runoff also has the highest water storage. This interesting difference was not clearly described in the text.

Author Response

Grammatical and typographical issues

Line 80: change passe to passed

Line 169: change represent to representing

Line 163: change "allows you to specify which parameters" to: allows for the specification of which parameters"

Line 169: change represent to representing 

Technical issues

Overall, I found the information presented interesting. It provided an innovative perspective on understanding interactions among various soil factors in an upland environment. However, the paper would benefit from the inclusion of tables and the addition of maps that show the location of the 3 types of vegetation analyzed as well as maps that provide an overlay of information and/or a table that provides some geostatistical analyses. 

I would have liked to see some tables of data to better understand how the information collected was analyzed. For example, I would have liked to see more clearly how the 27 penetrometer readings were related to the 25 at each location bulk density analyses to the 80 soil salinity analyses.

Please clarify:  is SWAT+ a completely revised version of SWAT or did the authors completely revise SWAT +? If the latter, how was it revised?

Authors

We appreciate the time dedicated and willingness to review the manuscript. Comments are valuable and appreciated.

We have used SWAT+ a completely revised version of SWAT. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) is a small watershed to river basin-scale model used to simulate the quality and quantity of surface and groundwater and predict the environmental impact of land use, land management practices, and climate change. In this study, we have presented new hydrological modelling using revised SWAT+ to simulate soil water potential in forest areas in Outer Carpathian - region prone to overland flow. This is an improved simulation of landscape position, overland routing, and floodplain processes.

Tables were incorporated.

Much of the information on statistics and spatial analyses (parts of lines 131-156) should be moved to the introduction rather than being in the results section. The current information in this section provides background and justification for the methods used.  Following a transfer of the background information to the introduction, the authors should address how their results relate to the results previously reported.

Authors:

As the reviewer suggested, in the Discussion section in the revised manuscript, we have empathized that this analysis represents helpful information that can be considered a framework to design and assess management strategies for groundwater resources. We inserted some parts of the line to the Introduction section.

Figure 4, Please describe the differences among the three types of rhomboids (FYI rhomboids and diamonds are two different geometric shapes).

Authors:

Painted squares represent data set for agricultural land, open squares represent sets of points related to forests and diamonds are the designation for the meadows. We added this fragment; “The examined soil parameters for meadows and forests were positively correlated for both catchments. Soil data collected for agricultural areas were negatively correlated".

In an examination of Figures 5 - 10, the area of the Smuagawka catchment with the least water runoff also has the highest water storage, while in the Mszanka catchment, the area with the highest runoff also has the highest water storage. This interesting difference was not clearly described in the text.

Authors:

We added this fragment to the main text:

This study synthesizes methods for estimating water movement and storage measured in a set of forested agricultural areas. Water retention in the aquifer ranged from 129 to 141 mm in the forest area (Fig. 5). Meanwhile, the highest annual surface runoff in the Mszanka catchment was on average from 5.460 mm to 7.640 mm. Water retention in this area was similar for the entire catchment and ranged from 351.8 to 355.4 mm in the aquifer (Fig. 6).

It often performs problems in parameter estimation of different space-time scales. Finally, the visual inspection of the water level response to water scarcity has greatly promoted the hydrological model in this research.

We regret and apologize for not including a dedicated section to the method and materials of hydrological and spatial parameters variability, different time scales of water cycling dynamic mechanism, and the limitations of data, etc. Nonetheless, the methods described in this work showed to be capable of providing reasonable aquifer properties estimates. At present, this region is prone to overland flows, which changes water yield very simulation in a single way. Their evaluation could be a challenging task for future investigations. Honestly, we are not familiar with assessing the overland flow effect on hydraulic properties.

Reviewer 2 Report

My remarks mainly concern missing and/or unclear information.

-the type of tests that were done on the soil sample is mentioned, but no results are discussed. Only a vague description 'dominated by loam' is attributed to the soil type.  Because this article concerns also erosion, it is important to give more (detailed) information.

- about the presentation of the geometry of the soil mass, one or more sections of the site should be interesting 

- it is not clear why the investigation is limited to the top layer, especially when rivers and ditches flow through the area

- in the article 'the statistical method' and the 'spatial method' are indicated as innovative. No discussion is made in relation to other (standard) methods, in a way that the quality of the innovation is not clear.

Author Response

My remarks mainly concern missing and/or unclear information.

-the type of tests that were done on the soil sample is mentioned, but no results are discussed. Only a vague description 'dominated by loam' is attributed to the soil type.  Because this article concerns also erosion, it is important to give more (detailed) information.

- about the presentation of the geometry of the soil mass, one or more sections of the site should be interesting 

Authors:

We have added Tables with basic information. Unfortunately, we do not have data on the geometry of the soil mass.

- it is not clear why the investigation is limited to the top layer, especially when rivers and ditches flow through the area

Authors:

Samples can be taken from different depths. Layers at 0-20 cm depth were selected because this depth represents all types of agricultural land: meadows, forests, and agricultural areas. Sand, gravel, sandy clay are more related to alluvium deposits in agriculture areas than forest soils. While this analysis was limited to the response of the well-aquifer system to deformation induced by groundwater, similar methods are available to study water level fluctuations due to other naturally occurring stresses such as drought. The major simplifying assumption is that solids grains are incompressible. However, the distributed hydrological model is not mature enough. The explanation for soil erosion, sediment yield, sedimentation, landscape-ecological aspects of the restoration of the disturbed land strategies are challenging and regret beyond our work focus. Visually, the water level fluctuations measured at the monitoring point showed relatively minor detail. This latter is the result of the relative great variation range recorded at this observation. Therefore, we believe that the effect can be minimized; however, we do not discard it.

- in the article 'the statistical method' and the 'spatial method' are indicated as innovative. No discussion is made in relation to other (standard) methods, in a way that the quality of the innovation is not clear.

Authors:

The “innovative” word has been removed. We believe that our study is novel and relevant as the aquifer parameters estimation based on natural groundwater fluctuations is a little-used tool in Poland. Therefore, we seek to consolidate the research line to be a reference to reproduce these studies in the mountain region. Thus, an intriguing preliminary conclusion arises from the water estimations. Water level fluctuations analysis appears better to resolve this aquifer parameter than the water-table elevation modelling. This latter could be explained considering that the water level fluctuations study is conducted using relative-high frequency water-table variations. However, this topic requires more detailed studies based on theoretical development, which are beyond the focus of this manuscript.

We have added this fragment to the Conclusion section “Our study applies a methodology for the soil water examination that provides useful information for water resources assessment at catchment-scale”.

Reviewer 3 Report

Overall, the article Examination of susceptibility to the deficiency of soil water in a forested agricultural area is very important, innovative, and current.

It is well structured, and the methods and results/discussion are displayed in a very complete and easy to understand way. However, I do believe the abstract and introduction could be improved.

A more thorough analysis of each section of the article is shown below.

• Abstract: The abstract can be improved. While the information it provided is quite complete, it is a bit hard to read. Certain sentences should be rewritten to improve the understanding of the work developed. The abstract should be self-explanatory - the reader should feel no need to read the entire paper, in order for him to understand what it is about and what the main results were.
• Introduction: The introduction is very vague. It gives little background about the work you are presenting. The aim of the paper should be more thoroughly described, and it is also important to mention the structure of the paper in this section, so the reader knows how it is organized (it facilitates the reading and understanding of the paper).
• Methods: The methods are described in a very complete and direct way. Nothing to add, other than a few minor English corrections (highlighted in the attached .pdf file).
• Results/Discussion: Results are very well executed. However, lines 119 - 147, although incredibly important, should not be in this section. The information provided by those paragraphs should be in the Introduction section. It will help the reader to better understand the scope of the paper.
• Conclusion: This section is well executed - it goes through all the sections of the paper, even highlighting what should be done in the future. Maybe mention the methods used to achieve the results you mentioned in the conclusion (highlighted in the attached .pdf file - lines 219 - 223).

The attached .pdf file includes additional comments throughout the entire article - mostly regarding minor English corrections.

Following these very minor suggestions, I believe the article has great potential for publication!

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Overall, the article Examination of susceptibility to the deficiency of soil water in a forested agricultural area is very important, innovative, and current.

Authors:

We thank the Referee for the careful and insightful review of our manuscript. As suggested, we combined the Figures and improved the graphical Abstract. We have corrected all detailed technical comments. The manuscript is very interesting from an ecosystem functions point of view. This paper presents a combination of different methods for assessing the hydro-climate feature in a forest area.

It is well structured, and the methods and results/discussion are displayed in a very complete and easy to understand way. However, I do believe the abstract and introduction could be improved.

A more thorough analysis of each section of the article is shown below.

• Abstract: The abstract can be improved. While the information it provided is quite complete, it is a bit hard to read. Certain sentences should be rewritten to improve the understanding of the work developed. The abstract should be self-explanatory - the reader should feel no need to read the entire paper, in order for him to understand what it is about and what the main results were.

• Introduction: The introduction is very vague. It gives little background about the work you are presenting. The aim of the paper should be more thoroughly described, and it is also important to mention the structure of the paper in this section, so the reader knows how it is organized (it facilitates the reading and understanding of the paper).

Authors:

We agree with the reviewer’s comment. In the revised manuscript, we have modified the Abstract to explain the physical principles related to the aquifer response. We believe that this sub-chapter is clear and straightforward, and it provides an overview of the physical phenomena analyzed, explains the bases about the soil water retention, and the water level fluctuations as a result of it.

As the reviewer’s suggested, in the revised manuscript, we have improved the discussion regarding i) Hydrological properties estimations from natural groundwater level variations; ii) Estimation of hydrological properties in a set of monitoring points. The revised manuscript has included a dedicated section to the Introduction. Please check.

Our study was focused on characterizing the properties of soil at 0-20 cm. Small watershed and basin-scale models were used to simulate the quantity of surface run-off, groundwater and predict the environmental impact of land use, land management practices, and climate change. A new generation of the distributed hydrological models has greatly broadened simulation fields to soil and water diversified situations.

• Methods: The methods are described in a very complete and direct way. Nothing to add, other than a few minor English corrections (highlighted in the attached .pdf file).

Authors:

We agree with the reviewer’s comment. The revised manuscript has included an introductory paragraph in the results and discussion section that established an overview of the method used in our study, the kind of results obtained, and the method's significant limitations.

• Results/Discussion: Results are very well executed. However, lines 119 - 147, although incredibly important, should not be in this section. The information provided by those paragraphs should be in the Introduction section. It will help the reader to better understand the scope of the paper.

Authors:

We detailed review the data and the computational codes that graph these data seeking for an error or any inconsistency. In addition, we emphasized that only three variables are required to estimate values for some aquifer parameters (specific storage, porosity, storage coefficient, transmissivity, and hydraulic conductivity). Two of these three variables are measured practically in any studied aquifer. Therefore, the groundwater level fluctuations analysis is an inexpensive and plausible tool for aquifer parameters estimation, easily replicated at any region of the world impacted by external anthropogenic stresses. The suggested lines have been incorporated into the Introduction section.

We have added this fragment: “Unfavourable climatic conditions in mountainous regions, e.g. temperature inversion, which contributes to delayed vegetation in the valleys was the reason to show the spatial variability of temperature. The salt’s direction of migration depends on the amount of water contained in the soil, as well as weather and climate conditions. This was the reason for the designation of the spatial variability of electrical conductivity (EC; salinity), EC was selected for spatial analysis because salt reduces the number of nutrients and temperature, which inhibits the growth of plant roots. The EC level was compared between agricultural areas (average 14.54 mS/m) and forested areas (average 1.64 mS/m) in the basin of the mountain”

• Conclusion: This section is well executed - it goes through all the sections of the paper, even highlighting what should be done in the future. Maybe mention the methods used to achieve the results you mentioned in the conclusion (highlighted in the attached .pdf file - lines 219 – 223).

The attached .pdf file includes additional comments throughout the entire article - mostly regarding minor English corrections.

Following these very minor suggestions, I believe the article has great potential for publication!

Authors:

We followed the comments raised by Reviewers. We have added this fragment to the Conclusion section “Our study applies a methodology for the soil water examination that provides useful information for water resources assessment at catchment-scale”.