Intense Pasture Management in Brazil in an Integrated Crop-Livestock System Simulated by the DayCent Model
, Rafael Vasconcelos Valadares 2, Henrique Boriolo Dias 2, Santiago Vianna Cuadra 3, Eleanor E. Campbell 4, Rubens A. C. Lamparelli 2, Edemar Moro 5, Rafael Battisti 6, Marcelo R. Alves 5, Paulo S. G. Magalhães 2 and Gleyce K. D. A. Figueiredo 1
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper is well structured, the data, methods, results and conclusion being well described.
There is one question for the authors….how confident are they or the model in extrapolating data from one (small) site to different others, especially in different climatic conditions? Some examples such as Colorado, Scotland and Germany have been given, yet, Brazil is a different thing.
The experimental design is OK, although a larger scale would be more appropriate. Having in view the hard work starting from sampling to obtaining data, this is a good start.
Some minor revisions of language are required (few examples are lines 253, 312, 486).
Regarding the PTFs used, those of Saxton, I could not open the link provided.
Author Response
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Reviewer 2 Report
- ABSTRACT: In order to increase the practical value of the work, I propose to introduce some information on the concrete measures that have been taken for the rehabilitation of degraded pastures and their efficiency. Beyond models and coefficients.
- INTRODUCTION:
- Some data on the flora and spontaneous vegetation of the study area are required.
- I suggest writing a few sentences about the history, importance and characteristics of the Daycent model.
Author Response
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Reviewer 3 Report
Good work.
Some minor comments.
- Figure 3 is hard to understand.
- Please consider put Figure 5 left plot in the section of Field Data.
- The cross point in Figure 8 should be at (0, 0); The regression line does not make sense.
- Please put legends in Figure 12.
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Reviewer 4 Report
I think the title is too long and so I suggest this one: Intense pasture management in Brazil in an integrated crop-livestock system with using Daycent model Lines 19-23: The first sentence is the abstract is too long. Make a new sentence from “PBM can provide insights…”. Line 23-24: This study focused on the calibration and validation of the Day24 cent model for ICLS in Brazil. When did you to this study? Line 24-25: two pastures 25 grown at the same time Which pastures? Please name. Line 31-32: this kind 32 of agricultural system Which system? Needed to be more cleat. Lines 19-33: More finding should be addressed in the abstract. Most parts of abstract is about your activities, not your findings. Materials and Methods section is well-written with enough details. However, the meteorological data should be added for all the experiment time, means from August 2007. You can also add long term means for the meteorological data. Furthermore, statistical analyses should be described at the end of this section, Materials and Methods. And all statistical software you used, for example ArcGIS, SAS (or Minitab or SPSS),…Author Response
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