Vegetation Restoration with Mixed N2-Fixer Tree Species Alleviates Microbial C and N Limitation in Surface Soil Aggregates in South Subtropical Karst Area, China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript is short and objective. It just needs a few corrections and language adjustments. 

Please review the English language. There are a few misspellings and punctuation errors. E.g.: Please check lines# 45,47,86, and Figure 8(b).

Reinforce the meaning of acronyms when relevant. Some, such as EEA and EES, are very present in the text and the reader can easily follow them, but others are not. E.g.: MWD in Line 175.

 

 

 

Author Response

Thanks to the reviewer for giving us the positive comments and we have made corrections according to the Reviewer’s comments as follows.

1. Please review the English language. There are a few misspellings and punctuation errors. E.g.: Please check lines# 45,47,86, and Figure 8(b).

Response: Thank you for noticing these errors. We have corrected the misspellings and punctuation errors throughout the text, and replaced the word “utilizability” with “availability” (Lines 50-51, 53, 92, and Figure 8(b)).

2. Reinforce the meaning of acronyms when relevant. Some, such as EEA and EES, are very present in the text and the reader can easily follow them, but others are not. E.g.: MWD in Line 175.

Response: Thank you for your suggestion. As suggested, we have readjusted the meaning of acronym MWD (Lines193-194).

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript corresponds to the subject of the journal and can be recommended for publication. This manuscript is an example of a well organized and executed study and I propose to accept it after a minor revision. Below I will give some comments on the text of the manuscript.

Lines 15-36: Please describe in more detail the specific results of the study.

Line 104: Please indicate the hypothesis you tested in this study

Line 199: Did you assess the normality and homogeneity of the data before statistical processing?

Figures 1, 2, 4: These pictures need to be made larger as they are unreadable in their current form

Please double-check the text carefully for typos, missing spaces, and punctuation marks. Unfortunately, the text still contains many such typos.

Author Response

Thanks to the reviewer's positive and instructive comments, we have made the corrections accordingly as follows.

1. Lines 15-36: Please describe in more detail the specific results of the study.

Response: As suggested, we have added more detail descriptions of the specific results in the Abstract (Lines 16-42), and Results sections (Lines 246-261).

2. Line 104: Please indicate the hypothesis you tested in this study.

Response: Thanks for the comments. We have added details about the hypotheses in the Introduction section (Lines 107-113). Also, these hypotheses are indicated in the appropriate part of the Discussion (Lines 419, 435, 486, and 498).

3. Line 199: Did you assess the normality and homogeneity of the data before statistical processing?

Response: Yes, we have checked the normality and homogeneity of the data before statistical analysis. Also, we added an explanation of the assessment of the normality and homogeneity of the data in the Materials and Methods to avoid the confusion (Lines 216-217).

4. Figures 1, 2, 4: These pictures need to be made larger as they are unreadable in their current form.

Response: Thanks for pointing these out. We have adjusted the figures 1, 2, 4 and made them more readable (Lines 263, 314, and 338).

5. Please double-check the text carefully for typos, missing spaces, and punctuation marks. Unfortunately, the text still contains many such typos.

Response: Thank you for noticing these errors. We have checked the manuscript carefully and corrected errors accordingly.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx