Azorean Vascular Plants with Potential Use in Constructed Wetlands with Horizontal Subsurface Flow
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The topic of the manuscript falls well within the scope of the journal. The authors have listed and scored a number of plant candidates for the construction of wetland that is supposed to handle the effluents in the Azores. The paper is quite well written with nice structure and sound methods and solid results and conclusions presented. I have only two points about the use of the plant species to construct the wetland:
1. why not use more than one species to construct a wetland at the same time. A combination of plants may offer a suit of merits that from different species. I suggest adding some discussions on this point.
2. Besides, I suggest adding the invading risk in the table of the scores to get a final choice, rather than conduct a second round of selection according to the invading risk.
Overall, this is an interesting study to the journal and I suggest acceptance after a minor to medium revision to address the above concerns.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer, Sustainability
We thank for all the constructive comments on the submitted manuscript. We have made an effort to make the necessary changes to improve the document, as suggested. In a few minor cases, we were unable to comply, but we have included a justification.
Listed below is a list of our answers.
Answer to point 1:
A paragraph has been added at the end of the results and discussion section, referring the benefits of mixed cultures.
Answer to point 2:
This is a good point, that we had considered before the submission. We have tested the possibility of including noxiousness (being a weed and/or an invader) on score calculation. However, while it seemed to be reasonable to attribute a scale from 0 to 4 for all the other items, we were faced with the decision to attribute a score to weeds and/or invasive plants. This score would have to be negative, but its value was not easy to ascertain (it could range from -4 to -12 or even lower). It would depend on the weight given to noxiousness in the total score. Since we had no objective criteria to decide on this weight, we opted to left it out of the total score and to consider it at a second step. We hope the reviewer will understand this option.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
This manuscript presents the results of a study conducted in order to examine the plant taxa present in the Azorean flora with the potential to be used in constructed wetland systems.
The authors reported and evaluated 73 taxa which implied the good potential for the constructed wetlands implementation in the Azores.
Before acceptance, authors should carefully check all text since several errors were noted, especially regarding several brackets missing.
The manuscript is well written and obtained results are clearly presented. Results are also in details presented in the supplementary file.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer, Sustainability
We thank the constructive comments on the submitted manuscript. We have made an effort to make the necessary changes to improve the document, as suggested.
We do hope that this new version is closer to the standards required for the manuscript to be accepted.
Kind Regards,
Sílvia Quadros, on behalf of the authors
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear authors, the work is interesting, but for the general use of its results it should be clarified.
1. The title of the work does not fit. No specific solutions creating nature-base solutions. There are only suggestions to use specific plant species.
2. the footnotes do not have an English translation of lines 6-10
3. qualification criteria for individual plants are very vague (large, medium ) these are relative terms there should be figures with a range.
Similarly, the tolerance (number 9) as to the nutrient load that can be distinguished and detailed here.
4 There is a lack of statistical tests to confirm the validity of the conclusions.
Conclusions do not follow from the results of lines 499 -502.
5. if the title of the paper introduces us to the problem of natural solutions, through the use of wetlands why is there no information in the paper regarding specific solutions. Where they could be created, in which areas. The authors only indicate specific species without giving solutions on how and what to consider when creating CW. Species composition, quantity, area.
As it stands, I suggest changing the topic of the paper, supporting the results with ststistic tests, if possible expanding the table of species selection criteria so that it is widely applicable.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear Reviewer, Sustainability
We thank the constructive comments on the submitted manuscript. We have made an effort to make the necessary changes to improve the document, as suggested.
Listed below is a list of our answers.
Answer to points 1 and 5:
A survey of the plant genera used in other countries for constructed wetlands with subsurface flow was carried out, and the list extended to the species existing in the Azores. In the region, there are no constructed wetlands and the knowledge of plants with potential for effluent treatment is not yet known, so we understand that this is the starting point for future works, namely the study of specific solutions.
We agree with the reviewer suggestion, and we have changed the title, removing the initial part “Nature-based solutions for effluent treatment”.
Answer to point 2:
The footnotes were translated into English.
Answer to point 3:
There are several plants (especially native species) that have not yet been studied regarding the efficiency of nutrient and/or pollutant removal, which in this case we attributed 0 points (no data). On the other hand, there are species that we know that exist in habitats with high nutrient charge, however, without technical references (2 points). When species show good removal efficiencies this means that they show a good tolerance to nutrient loadings, so we believe that these two criteria should be associated.
Answer to point 4:
A supplementary statistical analysis was added, both in the results and discussion, as in the supplementary materials.
We do hope that this new version is closer to the standards required for the manuscript to be accepted.
Kind Regards,
Sílvia Quadros, on behalf of the authors
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
I accept the work in its current form
Author Response
Dear reviewer 3, We thank you for your input. We have incorporated your suggestions into this revision. Best regards, Sílvia Quadros
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
