Seasonal and Depth Dynamics of Soil Moisture Affect Trees on the Tibetan Plateau

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript titled ‘Season and Depth Differences of Soil Moisture Use for Tree Growth across Wet and Dry Gradients in the Tibetan Plateau’ is a simple yet informative study that clearly defined a research question and set out a smart data collection and analysis approach to answer the question. The methodology has been clearly presented.

I have suggestions to improve the manuscript, which can be considered minor revisions.

Title

First of all, the title of the article is vague. It needs to be revised to give a clear understanding of what this article is going to present.

Abstract

L 12-14. This sentence can be broken into multiple short and meaningful sentences.

L 17. Please elaborate what’s meant by moisture growth?

Results & Discussion chapters

The subheadings are long, windy, and vague. They can be shortened to make them crisp.

The manuscript needs moderate editing by an expert English editor.

Author Response

Thank you for your valuable suggestions on this article, please see the uploaded document for detailed responses.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

Your research is valuable not only as a fundamental knowledge but also in terms of its practical appliccation. As a whole, the manuscript is well organized and structured but still needs some corrections to be made.

The methodology used is well explained, the quality of statistical evaluation and graphic presentations is high, but the Abstract, Conclusions and Reference section needs your attention.

My recommendations are as follows:

1) Why the affilitations of authors are marked with letters instead of numbers? Please, check the template form.

2) For correspondence author no address should be included, only the eail and phone. Please, check the template form.

3) The abstract should be no longer than 200 words. I counted 388 words, so please, correct it.

4) Lines 334-342: Please, read again this part of the text. I think that it is quite hard to understand.

5) Lines 353-354: Probably, you intended to say "These results suggest that monsoon precipitation has a significant effect on tree growth".

6) Lines 354-358: This sentence also needs to be reconsidered.

7) Lines 389-392 and also in the Conclusions: How did you find that trees develop different types of roots? Isn't it possible that the groundwater rises by capillary action up to the normal roots?

8) The Reference section do not follows the Instruction for authors -i.e. journlaname in italic, publication year bolded, etc. Please, fix this note.

Author Response

Thank you for your valuable suggestions on this article, please see the uploaded document for detailed responses.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

1) The high percentage of matches is very alarming (79%), I would advise reformulating those places in the text that have the highest percentage of matches, for example the introduction.

2) Why were such old sampling years (line 122) chosen for processing, why is it not possible to use modern data?

3) The article is based on long-known generally accepted statements and the overall value of the great work done is not clear. The findings only confirm known facts. The conclusions should be further developed to highlight the significance. It is necessary to clearly highlight the novelty of the work and relevance in modern realities.

4) It is widely known that wet and dry gradients depends on the type of soil in which plants grow. Was there any soil sampling? How did the results correlate with soil type?

5) Table 1. DE - period needs to be corrected.

Thus, I think that the manuscript requires major revision.

Author Response

Thank you for your valuable suggestions on this article, please see the uploaded document for detailed responses.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Authors improved the manuscript. I do not have any comments or questions.

Author Response

Thank you for your suggestions on the article, we have further enhanced the language of the manuscript, please see the attached document for specific changes.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf