Influences of 13 Years New Conservation Management on Labile Soil Organic Carbon and Carbon Sequestration in Aggregates in Northeast China
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear Authors,
After careful reading of your manuscript, I find it very promising, although underdeveloped in some aspects. It is based on good research, which is communicated more or less properly, but some details should be better explained, and the entire work should be into wider context of the international research. I hope my recommendations will help you to bring your work in order.
1) Title and below: many readers would wonder about this time slice – why 13, and not 10 or 15 years? Please, state in Introduction your choice of this time.
2) Subsection 2.1 should put your site into the regional physical geographical (landforms, climates, landscapes…) and socio-economical context, also with attention to agricultural trends and patterns. Indeed, this should be supported by literature citations.
3) Results MUST be separated from Discussion, as this is recommended in all high-class international journals. Results = your direct findings, Discussion = interpretation of your findings, comparing them to the previous studies (also in other regions and countries), consideration of limitations, stating practical recommendations/implications.
4) Discussion: you have to explain your findings – why did occur what you report? What were the factors? What about the influence of local/regional climate changes, weather conditions, anthropogenic influences…?
5) Conclusions: please, offer a numbered list of the principal outcomes (2-3 from Results and 2-3 from Discussion) and state perspectives for further research.
6) The list of References is too short for a journal in so high-class journal.
7) The writing is clear, but I strongly recommend you to control that each section/subsection consists of no less than two paragraphs.
8) In addition to the existing graphics, a simple location map and photograph of the site are desirable.
The writing is clear, but I strongly recommend you to control that each section/subsection consists of no less than two paragraphs.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
This study compared the soil organic carbon and its fractions between under conservation management and under conventional tillage. This topic has certain application value. However, in terms of the manuscript, the language format is not standard, the data can not support the conclusion well, and the discussion is not in-depth. The comments are as follows:
Main comments:
1) I don’t know how the author defines a “new” conservation management, but I don't think the management mentioned in the article is a new conservation management.
2) The topic of the article is not clear. There was not a clear scientific problem or a hypothesis in the preface, and the discussion is not in-depth. It may be because the results didn't match the authors' expectations.
3) The results show no difference in SOC (lines 213-214 and Figure 2), but the author directly state an increase as ‘the results demonstrated that NCM caused the increase in SOC in the surface layer of the soil’ (lines 222-223), and then discussed why and how NCM increased SOC.
4) Table 1 is not fully displayed?
Minor comments:
Line 26-29: “Soil organic carbon fractions, including microbial biomass carbon (MBC) and light fraction organic 27 carbon (LFOC), were all significantly higher in NCM than in CT in the 28 upper 10 cm. ” It is certainly not appropriate. MBC and LFOC were higher in NCM than in CT, but EOC and WSOC were not (Figure 5).
Line 45: Inconsistent font size
Line 65-68: This sentence doesn't make sense here.
Line 76-78: why tillage treatments have a strong effect on SOC owing to the influence of climate?
Line 79-80: why? Any references?
Line 81-85: This is the specific content of this study and it is obviously inappropriate to cite references.
Line 101: Font inconsistency
Line 101-102: what about according to the Chinese Soil Taxonomy?
Line 104: Font inconsistency
Line 108: NCM and CT need the full name.
Line 138: it is not randomly sampled, since the sampling points were ‘S’ type distribution.
Line 145-146: the other part was kept at 4 oC for analysis of microbial biomass carbon? It is need to be clearer.
Line 196: No need for italics
Line 236-238: Too arbitrary a conclusion
Lines 240-241: The results are not consistent with those shown in Figure 3.
Line 243-245: The results need to be accurately described. It’s not ‘including’.
Line 253-255: Why? Any references?
Line 263-266: Any references?
Line 277-278: improper format
Line 282-283: Font inconsistency
Lines 299-301: not significantly (p<0.05)?? and since it’s not significantly, it’s not higher.
Line 357-358: “Besides, the portions of macroaggregates (> 0.25 mm) was all higher under NCM than under CT in the top soil (0-10 cm) …”, but actually it only in 1-0.5 mm was higher showed in table 2 and not different showed in Figure 5.
References: References are only sometimes recent (just 1 >2020 papers cited). need to be updated. And the format of the first reference was different.
Figure 3: (a) is missing from note.
Figure 3D: I suggests to unify the units of the vertical axes.
the quality of English language also need to be improved.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
The MS in the present format is not suitable for publication.
The MS is casually handled which is reflected from the casual entry of multiple fonts with in the manuscript.
The references are too old which need to be revised with recent updates of conservation management on soil organic carbon and aggregation.
The researcher need to follow the following methods for determination of the attributes mentioned here in and resubmit the MS.
For analysis of aggregate stability and size distribution, soil retained on the sieve (4 mm) should be used in the study. A wet sieving method need to be determined for the water-stable aggregates in the soil and the MWD need to be calculated using van Bavel’s formula [45]. The percentage of water stable aggregates (WSA) greater than 250 µm of the total soil mass (after sand correction) need to be calculated. In wet sieving, the soil retained in set of sieves of various diameters need to be divided into four categories: (i) large macroaggregates (LM) of > 2000 µm, (ii) small macroaggregates (SM) of > 250–2000 µm, (iii) microaggregates of (Mi) of > 53–250 µm) and (iv) silt + clay (S+C) of < 53 µm and soil and aggregate fractions were dried at 45 â—¦C in the oven. The SOC concentration of the soil samples and the aggregates must be determined following the wet digestion method by Walkley and Black .
Need to be improved
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear Authors, I'm fully satisfied with your responses and revisions.
Author Response
We thank Reviewer 1 for his/her recognition of our paper.
Reviewer 2 Report
lines 175-178: Are you sure you used air-dried soil (at 45 oC) to measure microbial biomass C?
line 183: which is an effective….
line 313: P<0.05 means no significantly difference?
the subtitle 4.1 and 4.2 in discussion: What influences what?
lines 368-375: the format need to be uniform.
Figure 1a: very inappropriate. I am not sure it is the map of Jilin Province or Dehui city, since there is no any marks, such as major cities or latitude and longitude.
I notice that in the revised version, all the grants are different from the original ones. I hope this is the result of the author's consideration.
It's ok now.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
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In the discussion and concluding section mention clearly whether soil management regimes had no significant effects on soil organic C? What about the conservation management which markedly increased labile organic C fractions. From your result also identify the most sensitive fraction to different agricultural managements.
In the M& M section outline the methods for different C fractions.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 3
Reviewer 3 Report
The authors have addressed the queries and amended the manuscript as per the comments
Author Response
We thank Reviewer 3 for his/her recognition of our paper.
