Fire Damage to the Soil Bacterial Structure and Function Depends on Burn Severity: Experimental Burnings at a Lysimetric Facility (MedForECOtron)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments for Author,

I have read your paper carefully. The paper was very good designed and there is novelty. However I have minor comments to improve manuscript.

Specific comment:

1- Author should extend result section even discussion was meaningfully.

2- There is some confuse in abstract please rearrange end of sentence again.

In addition, Please add more information regarding biological activity of of soil To improve, Please use this references: a- https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-1724-3_50 b- Scientific Reports, 2019, 9(1), 15178. Please incroporate them from line 61-81.

Best Regards

Author Response

RESPONSES to REVIEWERS

We prepared the manuscript following the Author’s guideline, including comments and clarifications to the feedback provided. We answered them individually and carefully addressed, point-by-point, the issues raised in the comments appended and a suitable rebuttal to any specific request. We mentioned the line number of any revisions made. In addition, we include two versions of the improved manuscript, one including changes and corrections highlighted and another, including changes but not highlighted.

We would thank the reviewers and editors for their suggestions, comments and time spent in this manuscript, especially in these hard times. After your revision, the manuscript has been deeply revised and corrected, so we believe that now it has been improved.

Reviewer 1

Comments for Author,

I have read your paper carefully. The paper was very good designed and there is novelty. However I have minor comments to improve manuscript.

We would thank you for your time and comments. According to your review, we have modified and rewritten some points to clarify the abstract and results sections.

We been deeply revised the manuscript and corrected some mistakes and improved the general quality.

We hope that the current manuscript was clearer and easier to understand.

Specific comment:

1- Author should extend result section even discussion was meaningfully.

2- There is some confuse in abstract please rearrange end of sentence again.

We revised and improved those sections, including your comments.

In addition, Please add more information regarding biological activity of of soil To improve, Please use this references: a- https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-1724-3_50 b- Scientific Reports, 2019, 9(1), 15178. Please incorporate them from line 61-81.

Thanks for the reference, it has been included.

Best Regards

Reviewer 2 Report

The work presents the fire damage on the soil bacterial structure and function depends on burn severity: experimental burnings in a lysimetric facility.

The subject of the work is extremely important - in the era of progressive climate changes and droughts occurring in larger and larger areas, spontaneous fires are more and more frequent. It is therefore important to investigate how quickly and how the burnt soil regains its biological values.

The methodology of work is very clear, the procedure and location are presented in an understandable way.

I felt a certain dissatisfaction due to the physico-chemical properties description not fully developed (only a table). The increases in pH after 1 day are puzzling (LOWsev, HIGHsev). Does it affect other physico-chemical parameters?

The references are up to date.

There are minor typos in the work (in the description of Table 1 - UNB - in table 1 - UB; low burn severity (LOWsev) and low burn severity (HIGHsev).

After completing the work can be published.

Author Response

RESPONSES to REVIEWERS

We prepared the manuscript following the Author’s guideline, including comments and clarifications to the feedback provided. We answered them individually and carefully addressed, point-by-point, the issues raised in the comments appended and a suitable rebuttal to any specific request. We mentioned the line number of any revisions made. In addition, we include two versions of the improved manuscript, one including changes and corrections highlighted and another, including changes but not highlighted.

We would thank the reviewers and editors for their suggestions, comments and time spent in this manuscript, especially in these hard times. After your revision, the manuscript has been deeply revised and corrected, so we believe that now it has been improved.

Reviewer 2

The work presents the fire damage on the soil bacterial structure and function depends on burn severity: experimental burnings in a lysimetric facility. The subject of the work is extremely important - in the era of progressive climate changes and droughts occurring in larger and larger areas, spontaneous fires are more and more frequent. It is therefore important to investigate how quickly and how the burnt soil regains its biological values.

The methodology of work is very clear, the procedure and location are presented in an understandable way.

We would thank you for your time and comments. According to your review, we have modified and rewritten some points to clarify the manuscript.

I felt a certain dissatisfaction due to the physico-chemical properties description not fully developed (only a table). The increases in pH after 1 day are puzzling (LOWsev, HIGHsev). Does it affect other physico-chemical parameters?

We agree this point, we focused discussion on biological properties  but however, the main idea was to read into the interactions of all recorded parameters with the ecosystem damage.

The results showed non-significant changes with some exceptions that we included explicitly in the improved version. In this case, the low range of pH variation should not imply interactions with other variables.

The references are up to date.

We revised and updated all references.

There are minor typos in the work (in the description of Table 1 - UNB - in table 1 - UB; low burn severity (LOWsev) and low burn severity (HIGHsev).

The typos were corrected.

After completing the work can be published.

Thanks again!