Study on Stability and Ecological Restoration of Soil-Covered Rocky Slope of an Abandoned Mine on an Island in Rainy Regions

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

In the presented study, the authors reported on some efforts done for ecological restoration of the abandoned mine in Zhoujiayuan Mountain Island, China. Indoor experiments and field investigation were employed to analyze the problem within the soil-covered slope before and after the slope stabilization using different techniques.  The offered topic may be of interest to the journal readers, but the work should be revised before it can be considered further. The following are some of the concerns that must be addressed in the manuscript:

“Abstract”

·         The abstract part needs to be revised and modified to present only the most relevant goal, and idea, and get quickly to the main point of the paper. It is also essential to highlight work novelty.

·         The authors should also check and reduce some unnecessary information in the abstract.

·         There are some abbreviations in the abstract, I suggest the authors remove them.

“Introduction”

·         In the introduction, the authors tried to highlight the significance of the study, however, the novelty of the study should be emphasized further.

·         L69: “Areas with steep slopes are not conducive to vegetation growth”, the authors should highlight a reason for this claim.

“Materials and methods”

·         The authors should leave a space between values and units (eg. 50 m instead of 50m). This applies to the other parts of the manuscript.

·         The authors should check again the use of “etc.” in the manuscript, otherwise better avoid that.

·         The slope stability analysis has not been well explained in this section; for instance, what was the slope stability analysis method?

·         In the slope stability analysis, instead of focusing much on what has been done by others, the authors should focus on telling the reader what has been done by them.

·         What were the typical plant species used in slope stabilization?

“Results and discussion”

·         Ecology in general covers a wide range of aspects, in the study the authors kept on mentioning “ecological restoration”; however, there are no sufficient results to justify that the ecology was restored apart from the vegetation. To justify ecological restoration, the authors should have investigated more ecological parameters such as different plant and animal species. Otherwise, it was just an application of different approaches (including vegetation cover) to slope stabilization.

·         The discussion of figure 9 should be moved before the figure.

·         The authors also spent more time explaining the methodologies in the results and discussion section instead of presenting more of the results.

“Conclusion”

 

·         Firstly, the conclusion should be merged into one paragraph, then should be revised based on the material, the objective, the main results obtained, as well as clarification of the future applicability of the study.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your comments and suggestions. We have made some revisions and statements for some problems according to the reviewing comments in our revision manuscript, marked by blue color. Our response to the comments is given in the attachment. Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

In figure 6, explanations are needed for the meaning of TS, TSS, TMS, TBS, MS MBS, BS.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your comments. We have carefully made some revisions according to your suggestions. All changes are marked by blue characters in this version. Our brief response to the key points is in the attachment. Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

1. The authors should highlight this study's novelty or practical/theoretical significance at the end of the introductory paragraph.

2. Although the paper focuses on the stability and ecological restoration of soil-covered rock slopes on an island in rainy regions, I suggest adding some more references to address the affecting factors (e.g. rainfall, geological structure) of the rock slope failure/landslide in other representative areas in China, such as landslides in Three Gorges area and mountainous area of southwest China. For example, the following reference can be considered:

‘Three-dimensional landslide evolution model at the Yangtze River. Engineering Geology. 2021’

3. Besides Figure 4 (i.e. the flow chart), an overall flow chart should be provided to illustrate better the methodology adopted in this study.

4. What do the abbreviations in Figure 6(i.e. TS, TSS…) stand for? Please clarify this in the main text or figure caption.

5. Line 299. “Performance parameters” is not a professional term. I suggest using “basic properties” to replace it.

6. Line 356: “With the continuous rainfall and the change of the rainfall”… It is hard to understand this sentence.  Please revise it to make it clearer and improve readability as well.  

7. Line 361-362: “However, in the first year of ecological restoration, the root system of vegetation is not yet developed”.  I did not see any data or evidence presented by authors to support this statement.

 

8. Please refine the ‘conclusions’ and outline the most striking and interesting points of this study. 

Author Response

Thanks very much for your comments. We have carefully made some revisions according to your comments and suggestions. All changes are marked by blue characters in this version. Our brief response to the key points is in the attachment. Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The majority of the previously highlighted issues have been addressed by the authors, so I advise considering the paper for publication. Just little issue, the percentage symbol in column two of table 3 might simply be assigned to the column title "Quality requirement (%)" rather of being assigned to each and every value.

Author Response

Thanks very much for your comments. We have carefully made some revisions according to your comments and suggestions. All changes are marked by blue characters in this version. Our brief response to the key points is in the attachment. Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors have well addressed all of my comments. Thanks. 

Author Response

Thank you for your hard work and thank you very much for your comments and suggestions again.