Effects of Garden Waste Compost and Bentonite on Muddy Coastal Saline Soil

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper aims at investigating the effect of compost and bentonite, alone or in combination, to remediate coastal saline areas. It might therefore fit the scope of Sustainability.

However, in its present form, the paper is very descriptive and it does not provide any new addition to the already very exhaustive literature about this topic. The authors must better highlight what is the novelty of their objectives as well as better justify why they think that bentonite might be a suitable amendment in the Introduction.

The methodology lacks of transparency and should be much more detailed (soil characterization, composting process, bentonite’s origin, …)

The discussion is very poor and seems to be basically a repetition of the results. It is very important that the authors discuss their findings with respect to other studies and provide mechanistic explanations for their results.

Because the paper could have some interest for the scientific community, I do not recommend its rejection. However, I encourage the authors to thoroughly revise it by discussing more deeply their findings and better highlighting their novelty in comparison with the large literature about this topic.

Specific comments

L39 : this is too vague. Please provide more details about the “rapid development of cities” and “the garden area has increased rapidly”

L42: which kind of pollution?

L43: which kind of environmental problems?

L45: humus is also organic carbon. Replace “organic carbon” with “fresh organic matter”

L47-49: start a new paragraph about the use of bentonite and give more details. These two sentences come out of left field. The state of the art about the use of bentonite is too poor.

End of the introduction: the authors must better highlight what is of novelty and why their questions are original with respect to the very exhaustive literature about this topic.

Table 1: how did you determine these properties? In addition, is it total or available (or…) Cl-, Ca2+, Mg2+, … concentration that are presented?

L70: which proportion of each of these wastes?

L72: it is very important that you give more details about the composting process (how did you manage it, what was the average temperature, what was the moisture, how many times did you return it, …).

Table 2: again, more details about the procedures used to characterize compost. Moreover, define abbreviation (GI, CHA/CFA).

L78: what is the origin of bentonite as well as its composition?

L77-79: why did you select these rates of application?

L77-79: For which depth did you apply the amendments?

L98-100: Is it the concentration of these anions and cations in leachates that you measured? If so, please specify it.

L101-103: give references for these methods.

L107: what about the normality of the data and the homogeneity of the variances?

L108-110: this seems to be a very strange definition of PCA (convert soil properties into comprehensive indicators, what does it mean??)

L123 and figure 2: the units of salinity seem strange. What does reflect them? The most common units for salinity are deciSiemens per metre (dS/m).

Fig 2. Write pH and PH. Moreover, this graph is very confusing as you superimpose pH of each depth while there is no unit on the y-axis. You should display pH like you displayed salinity.

Fig. 4: what are the units of the x-axis? Why did you use Chinese character on the y-axis?

L180-201: the interpretation of the PCA results is pretty confusing and the authors should be more cautious with these findings. Correlation does not imply causality. In addition, eigenvalues are overinterpretated as several parameters have very similar values (in addition the authors are wrong when saying that available potassium has the largest value since for instance the eigenvalue of available N is higher that tha of the available K). This paragraph need to be totally re-written.

L190: “The improvement effect of garden waste is very obvious”. You need to explain why.

L236-239: I disagree with (see my acomment above about the interpretation of the PCA).

 

Author Response

Thanks very much for taking your time to review this manuscript. We appreciate the very useful comments from the reviewer. We agree with these suggestions and have revised the manuscript accordingly. 

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

• Abbreviations in the Abstract should not be used to define work done.
• The Abstract needs to be rewritten clearly- what is meant by the optimal application? for what purpose was the optimal condition.
• It is not clear whether the topic was set for engineering, soil treatment or increasing soil stability?
• The language needs revision.
• What is the extent of garden waste problems in China? How many tons/year and area?
• The aim of the work is rather unclear. Is it to stop the dredging of coastal soil by improving its mechanical properties or conserving soil biodiversity?
• A location of the area must be supported by a map
• Why the soil depth chosen for the study was 0-40 cm?
• the purpose of using bentonite. is it cheap ore readily available?
• What is the rationale behind using the present weights of garden waste and bentonite?

Author Response

Thanks very much for taking your time to review this manuscript. We appreciate the very useful comments from the reviewer. We agree with these suggestions and have revised the manuscript accordingly. Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

I included my comments in the attached revised version. I'd suggest to carefully revise the materials and methods section where some details are missing and through the manuscript have been showed.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thanks very much for taking your time to review this manuscript. We appreciate the very useful comments from the reviewer. We agree with these suggestions and have revised the manuscript accordingly. Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments on the article are given in the attached file.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thanks very much for taking your time to review this manuscript. We appreciate the very useful comments from the reviewer. We have revised the manuscript accordingly，including all units, space,  tables, figures and reference.

 

 

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have well addressed my comments.

Author Response

We have studied reviewers’ comments carefully and have revised our manuscript.
Attached please find the revised version and relevant document, which we would
like to submit for your kind consideration.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx