Effects of Simulated Acid Rain on Soil Enzyme Activity and Related Chemical Indexes in Woodlands

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The article presented shows care in its writing on the part of the authors and I believe that it has a lot of interest. I particularly enjoyed the discussion of results!

If possible, provide a map of the geographical location of the study área

Can you indicate the type of soil in the study area and the main associated characteristics?

What is the depth of collection of soil samples?

What is the size of the sieve mesh used in the sieving of soil samples? What is the drying temperature of the soil samples?

Now the work is done, but it would have been interesting to have also analyzed soil samples without simulated acid rain!

Author Response

Dear Reviewer：

Thank you very much for the constructive comments and suggestions. I have supplemented the basic conditions of the research area (geographic information, soil characteristics) and research methods. Please review it.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

Your research article is interesting and valuable because it shows the effects of simulated acid rain on soil enzyme activity and related chemical indexes in woodlands. The present paper is prepared in the usual manner for scientific work. The abstract and chapter 1 and 4-5 are well written. The manuscript, however, requires improvement, especially the methodology, results and literature list.

1. Please explain what is hydrolyzed nitrogen (HN)? Why has HN been studied? What information does HN provide? What is its role in soil and the environment?
2. The methodology is too general. Please describe in detail the methodology for the determination of soil enzymes. What reactants were used and what were the reaction products? The cited literature [30-33] is in Chinese and is not available to other readers. Please see the world methodology for enzyme determination.
3. Please, check the data in tables 1-4. Lowercase letters are missing.
4. Please, check the figure 1. The Authors report the activity of the enzymes in the same unit. It is not correct.
5. Table 5-8. What does "time differences" mean?
6. References must be as https://www.mdpi.com/journal/forests/instructions.

Some literature items are too old, eg [1,8,21,30,31,36, 64-67,69-72,75]. Please look for more recent information. Moreover, there is no complete data, eg [37]. Too much literature is in Chinese (29 out of 72). Please correct it.

7. There should be a space between text and [1]. Please check the full text.
8. Please check all text for superscripts and subscripts.

In my opinion, the manuscript is clearly written, but I don't feel qualified to judge about the English language and style.

Sincerely yours

Reviewer

Author Response

Dear Reviewer:

Thank you very much for the constructive comments and suggestions. I have modified or supplemented the methods, results and literature list of the paper. Please review it.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Autors,

Thanks you for answers. I accept the amendments and recommend the text for publication in "Forest".
Kind regards,

Reviewer

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.