Alternative Soil Substrates Addition Cause Deterioration in Reclaimed Soil Macropore Networks at Eastern Mining Area, China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The content and overall structure of the manuscript are good. The manuscript possesses promising findings, primarily to address the use of alternative soil substrates to reclaim mine soils in China. However, there are comments and observations indicated in the pdf manuscript. The author can consider addressing them in the manuscript. How and why is this work novel and different from others? Articulate how this research contributes to new knowledge in the discipline in the introduction. The specific comments are as follows:

Specific comments:

The author can consider including a nomenclature with units in the beginning. 

[p.4. l127] Add references to the methods followed.

[p.4. l134] The author indicated that during segmentation, a reasonable threshold value was adjusted continuously by 134 visual inspections. Why? If automated thresholding is not successful, did the author use some random value manually during segmentation for all soil columns or how many? 

[p.4, l136, 143] References can be cited for the equations used in the manuscript.

[p.7-p.8. l69, l.175] The author should check the letters (difference between treatment means) (Tables 2 and 3) and interpret them accordingly. If one treatment is significantly different from others, present them accordingly. If not, the interpretation can be misleading! For example, 

[p.8. l174-l176] ‘Similarly, macroporosity, microporosity, and accessible macroporosity in each layer of RMSs were smaller than those of NCS, among which the difference of RMS filled with RM was the most significant (P < 176 0.01) with the normal’. This is possibly not correct. Yes, the mac/microporosity is less, but not all of them are significantly smaller than that of the normal! 

[p.11., l258] What does ‘NCR’ mean? The author needs to define it. Is this NCS?

[p.12.-p.13; l297-316] The correlation study/results and figure 8 from the discussion section can be moved to the results section. The discussion part about the results can be presented accordingly. 

[p.13, l347] The manicurist has a lot of information and attractive findings. The author can consider including some of the key findings here! The conclusions section seems to be a bit lack of them!

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear reviewers

Thank you very much for your nice comments and great support! We answered all the comments you suggested, and hopefully this revised manuscript can fit with the acceptable standard for Sustainability. Please see the attached point-by-point answers with the changes marked manuscript version for your further evaluation.

Point 1: How and why is this work novel and different from others? Articulate how this research contributes to new knowledge in the discipline in the introduction

Response 1: Thanks for your suggestion, we have added the content of novelty and value in the Introduction (Page 2, Line 88-94).

Point 2: The author can consider including a nomenclature with units in the beginning.

Response 2: Thanks for your suggestion, we have added abbreviations below the abstract (Page 1 Line 37-40).

Point 3: [p.4. l127] Add references to the methods followed

Response 3: Thanks for your suggestion, we have added a reference to the method we used (Page 5, Line 159)

Point 4: [p.4. l134] The author indicated that during segmentation, a reasonable threshold value was adjusted continuously by 134 visual inspections. Why? If automated thresholding is not successful, did the author use some random value manually during segmentation for all soil columns or how many?

Response 4: During the segmentation, we tried four automatic segmentation methods, interactive thresholding segmentation, deep learning multiphase segmentation, watershed segmentation and top-hat segmentation. And we found a combination of watershed segmentation and top-hat segmentation had better accuracy in identifying macropores of CT image, and the threshold value was fine tuned by visual inspection after it was determined automatically by watershed segmentation and top-hat segmentation, respectively. The reason is to avoid the threshold being segmented too large or too small, and threshold values varied with different images. We have rewrote this content in M&M (Page 5, Line 158-166)

 

Point 5: [p.4, l136, 143] References can be cited for the equations used in the manuscript.

Response 5: Thanks for your suggestion, we have added a reference to the equation 2 (Page 6, Line 184). Besides, there are many methods to calculate the equivalent diameter at present, while no relevant literature can be cited to equation 1, but the equation 1 we used is a variation of the sphere calculation formula, it would be understand easily for readers, so we do not cite reference to equation 1.

Point 6: [p.7-p.8. l69, l.175] The author should check the letters (difference between treatment means) (Tables 2 and 3) and interpret them accordingly. If one treatment is significantly different from others, present them accordingly. If not, the interpretation can be misleading!

Response 6: Thanks for pointing out this issue, we have revised all tables in order to be understood more clearly, and relevant contents were carefully checked and revised. (Page 9, Line 211-212, Line 216-221; Page 14, Line 317-319; Page 15, Line 347-351)

Point 7: [p.11., l258] What does ‘NCR’ mean? The author needs to define it. Is this NCS?

Response 7: Thanks for pointing out this issue, we have revised “NCR” as “NCS” (Page 14, Line 316)

Point 8: [p.12.-p.13; l297-316] The correlation study/results and figure 8 from the discussion section can be moved to the results section. The discussion part about the results can be presented accordingly.

Response 8: Thanks for your suggestion, we have removed relevant content from discussion section to section 3.4 (Page 14-15, Line 328-339)

Point 9: [p.13, l347] The manicurist has a lot of information and attractive findings. The author can consider including some of the key findings here! The conclusions section seems to be a bit lack of them!

Response 9: Thanks for your suggestion, we have revised the conclusion (Page 16-17, Line 419-435)

Point 10: The author can consider to perform statistical analysis for the parameters of table 1 to see whether there were any significant difference between the treatments?

Response 10: Thanks for your suggestion, we have performed statistical analysis for the parameters of table 1 (Page 4, Line142)

Point 11: A bit unclear. Did the author add 'b' and 'c' or subtracts them or how the 'd' was achieved?

Response 11: Thanks for pointing out this issue, we have redrawn the Figure 2 (Page 6, Line169)

Point 12: The possible of “when the diameter > 3000 μm, the macropore number of MF was extremely significant (P < 0.01) more than that in B1 horizon of NCS and filling layers of other RMSs.”

Response 12: The reason has been explained in Discussion section (Page 15, Line 366-368)

Point 13: Other detail problems

Response 13: We have revised the other detail problems carefully according the comments in the pdf manuscript.

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

the manuscript deals basically with the characterization of reclaimed soils by the analysis of microtomographic images. It is an interesting subject, and the presented text is clear and well discussed.

Nonetheless, the proposed research is based on some methods that are extensively presented in the existing literature. So, intrinsically there is not much novelty in the presented research. Also, I am in doubt if the presented subject constitutes something that will be of interest to most of the readers as the study was very specific.

So, I recommend the editors not accept the manuscript.

 

Author Response

Dear reviewer

Thanks for pointing out the problem of this research, minesoil profiles are reconstructed worldwide by alternative soil substrates in the subsidence area, the reclaimed cultivated land filled by alternative soil substrates is a unique type of coal mining area, and has special soil profile characteristics from other cultivated land. At present, effects of the common filling substrates on soil macropore distribution characteristics of entire reclaimed minesoil profile need further exploration, understanding the effects of the common filling substrates on soil macropore distribution characteristics are essential to assess the utilization values of different substrates for filling, and expand the knowledge in macropore networks of degraded soil profile. Thus, we believe our study would be of interest to many readers in the mining land reclamation and agriculture soil field.

Reviewer 3 Report

Please find the annotated PDF file for comments

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear reviewers

Thank you very much for your nice comments and great support! We answered all the comments you suggested, and hopefully this revised manuscript can fit with the acceptable standard for Sustainability. Please see the attached point-by-point answers with the changes marked manuscript version for your further evaluation.

Point 1: Abstract, I would suggest editing the whole abstract and make those sentences crip.

Response 1: Thank you for your suggestion, we have rewrote the abstract. (Page1 Line 16-37)

Point 2: Rephrase, the description is not clear (line 101-103)

Response 2: Thanks for pointing this out, we have revised the collect method and added the sample number collected each site. (Page 3 Line 112-125, Line 130-132)

Point 3: Reference is needed to the segmentation methods

Response 3: Thanks for your suggestion, we have added a reference to the method we used (Page 5, Line 159)

Point 4: How did you select the macropore to be accessible and in accessible

Response 4: Thanks for pointing out this issue, the accessible macropore and inaccessible macropore can be selected automatically through Axis Connectivity module in Avizo, and we have added this content. (Page 6 Line 181)

Point 5: The problems of Table 2 and 3.

Response 5: Thanks for pointing out this issue, we have revised table 2 and 3 according to the comments. (Page 9 Line 229; Page 11 Line 256)

Point 6: Other problems about the language and expression

Response 6: We have revised the language and expression problems carefully according the comments in the pdf manuscript.

 

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

The writing of the manuscript have improved in the revised version.

I just have one suggestion. For the entire manuscript, please break the long sentences into two short sentences to improve the readability.

For Example, L 17

"However, some substrates lack appropriate soil characteristics and negatively affect the minesoil functions, which are largely caused, in the micrometric point of view, by the deterioration of macropore structure" 

might be written as 

"However, some substrates lack appropriate soil characteristics and negatively affect the minesoil functions. These negative impacts are largely caused by deterioration of the macropore structure."

I would suggest a quick revision of the entire manuscript to fix lengthy sentences.

Author Response

Response to Reviewers’ Comments

Manuscript ID: sustainability-1831454

Title: Alternative soil substrates addition cause deterioration in reclaimed

soil macropore networks at Eastern Mining Area, China

 

 

Point: For the entire manuscript, please break the long sentences into two short sentences to improve the readability.

Response: We have revised 5 sentences according this comment.

 

1 "However, some substrates lack appropriate soil characteristics and negatively affect the minesoil functions, which are largely caused, in the micrometric point of view, by the deterioration of macropore structure" was written as "However, some substrates lack appropriate soil characteristics and negatively affect the minesoil functions. These negative impacts are largely caused by deterioration of the macropore structure." (Page 1 Line 17-19)

 

2 “Coal mining is a large-scale activity causing serious land damage, ecological environment deterioration, and a series of soil function loss, such as weaken in soil productivity, bio-diversity and nutrients circulation, which leads to an occurrence of soil degradation worldwide to a large extent” was written as “Coal mining is a large-scale activity causing serious land damage, ecological environment deterioration, and a series of soil function loss, such as weaken in soil productivity, bio-diversity and nutrients circulation, and it leads to an occurrence of soil degradation worldwide to a large extent” (Page 2 Line 49-53)

 

3 “which are all used as cultivated land for 10 years with winter wheat-summer maize rotation system” was written as “All of them are used as cultivated land for 10 years with winter wheat-summer maize rotation system” (Page 3 Line 97-98)

 

4 “In addition, the inter-connected macropore networks of soil samples were extracted with the use of PNM module (Figure 4), which were regarded as a structure connected by pores and throats” was written as “In addition, the inter-connected macropore networks of soil samples were extracted with the use of PNM module (Figure 4), and regarded as a structure connected by pores and throats” (Page 7 Line 201-204)

 

5 “Among three RMSs, the soil filled with YRS had the maximum permeability values in both layers, which showed no significant difference with those of NCS” was written as “Among three RMSs, the soil filled with YRS had the maximum permeability values in both layers, and they showed no significant difference with those of NCS” (Page 14 Line 267-269)