Considering the Joint Impact of Carbon Density Change and Land Use Change Is Crucial to Improving Ecosystem Carbon Stock Assessment in North China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Authors tried to examine the changes of carbon stock by considering land use change and carbon density change in North China. I think paper have important findings, although it does not read well. Authors should write better English. They should divide the text into more paragraphs, so that it will read better. Introduction part and especially discussion part should be substantially improved before publishing this paper.

Here are some more details to be addressed:

 

line 38: "carbon stock" itself is not ecosystem service

line 41: write better English, should be "indicators"

line 50: "more accurate carbon stock assessment results" - so long words and no meaning. Write more clearly

Introduction: some sentences clarifying the importance of carbon stock estimation apart from land use change would be appreciated here. Air pollution as important parameter triggering decline of carbon stock of forests and crop (in case of tropospheric ozone) should be mentioned here in order the depict the importance of your paper. See papers as 10.3390/atmos12121629 and 10.3390/atmos12010082 which you might add here.

line 84: define NPP

line 127: data is plural

Table 4: such a large table should go to supplement

lines 436-440: redundant sentences

fig 10: do not put figure into discussion. All figures should go to Results.

Discussion: too weak. You use only limited number of references, mainly showing disadvantages of some other papers. You should work more with what is known and relate your study to other researcher findings. For example, lines 484-486 have references which are absolutely not important. You should reference papers dealing with carbon stocks in discussion. In addition, in 4.4 part I would like to see among limitation some discussion, that soil organic carbon is not constant. Especially when crop yield and its biomass is increasing, then likely soil organic carbon will be decreasing, as it is mainly happening in Europe. This part is completely missing here.

 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

mainly plurals are not OK, must be revised

Author Response

Please see the attachment, thanks.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This paper investigates the combined effects of carbon density changes and land use changes on some characteristics in northern China ecosystems. The article is written in clear and accessible language. The relevance of this work is beyond doubt, since environmental issues are important. In terms of subject matter, quality and volume of research, this work meets the requirements of the Journal. There are some points for improvement:

1. Unification and improvement of their quality is required.

2. It is advisable to add more comparisons with literary sources.

3. How do the findings fit with some climate changes?

4. How do the data obtained for the period 2000-2015 compare with data for other regions of China and the World?

5. Conclusions can be made more concise.

Author Response

Please see the attachment, thanks.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear authors, thank you for the changes you did. It is much better now, therefore I recommend to accept.