Assessment of Soil Sustainability Using the LUCAS Database in the Southwest Region of Romania

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The subject of the article is interesting and topical.

 

The article is well written, but in order to be published, some corrections must be made, namely:

Present the objectives of the study.

Chapter 3, Results and discussions on the LUCAS study, should be renamed, taking into account the fact that chapter 4 is called Discussions.

It is necessary to improve the legibility of the photos and mention their source.

Presentation of the conclusions of the study.

Presentation of study limitations.

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

1. General paragraph structuring: Each paragraph should start with a topic sentence, each paragraph should have one idea, and each paragraph should transition well with the next paragraph. Some of your paragraphs have multiple ideas and are not laid out like this. While reviewing your manuscript try to restructure some of your paragraphs with this in mind.
2. In introduction, I suggest that you need to further explain why the LUCAS database is used to assess soil sustainability.

3. The experimental procedures must be presented more clearly. The overall experiment design needs to be much better described to evaluate the statistical methods and results. If the analytical method is not fully described the citation is needed.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors have done a great job, however their presentation, in my opinion, is very poor. They should make a major revision of the document; all sections should be improved.

The INTRODUCTION is extensive and not very clarifying, with unconnected parts in which, basically, they give an account of the development of the LUCAS program and make certain statements without bibliographical support (lines 106-108).

The MATERIALS and METHODS section is extremely confusing and lacks references to the methods used, only a list of soil and/or landscape attributes and parameters.

In section 3 (RESULTS and DISCUSSION on the LUCAS STUDY), the authors include information related to the previous section on materials and methods.

The authors call Section 4 DISCUSSION, although it seems to be vague conclusions, although it is again a description of the LUCAS study.

Finally, the REFERENCES section has serious deficiencies both in the structure of the citations and in their content.

For all these reasons I consider the rejection of this work, since in all its sections there are very serious deficiencies.

 

Author Response

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Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I appreciate the effort of the authors to improve the material, taking into account the previous recommendations. I find that the changes have added value to the original material.

Congratulations.

Author Response

Dear Sir/Madam,

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to publish our manuscript to Sustainability.

We appreciate the time and effort that you have dedicated to providing your valuable feedback on our manuscript.

Reviewer 2 Report

The author has carefully revised the relevant opinion，and I suggest accepting this paper.

Author Response

Dear Sir/Madam,

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to publish our manuscript to Sustainability.

We appreciate the time and effort that you have dedicated to providing your valuable feedback on our manuscript.

Reviewer 3 Report

"In my opinion, I appreciate the review work done by the authors. However, the work has many deficiencies. Some of them have been corrected in this version, but there are still many to be done, especially the lack of concordance between the paper and the title, since this correlation is not appreciated.

The authors should clearly indicate the aims of the work at the end of the INTRODUCTION section and eliminate them from other sections.

As for the MATERIALS AND METHODS section, it should be reorganized or rewritten, since in its current state it is a continuation of the INTRODUCTION section in which the LUCAS project is described again, and the subsections into which it is divided do not correspond to the title. The analytical methods used also do not appear, and part of this section is found in the following section (RESULTS AND DISCUSSION), which details the sampling (lines 443-499).

In the RESULTS AND DISCUSSION section, the results obtained are not presented, nor is there an objective discussion of them.

As for the CONCLUSIONS section, there are no conclusions in relation to the title.

In general, all sections are mixed and much work is needed to make them clearer and to present them succinctly and in accordance with the title and the aims of the work

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors have made some improvements in their manuscript, but several issues highlighted in the previous revision persist. Specifically:

- The stated objectives (L69-71) are not reflected anywhere else in the text.

- The authors indicate that soil samples have been taken, but this is placed in the Results and Discussion section (L456-457), they do not indicate how they have been taken, what analysis has been performed on them or anything else.

- The Introduction section continues to mix contributions that could be considered as belonging to other sections, such as lines 162-172, which are more typical of the Materials and Methods section than of the Introduction.

Given these issues, a comprehensive revision is necessary. The manuscript should be reorganized to better reflect the proposed objectives, with clear documentation of analytical analyses performed, the database developed, resulting cartography, and any other relevant information.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf