Mapping Soil Parameters with Environmental Covariates and Land Cover Projection in Tropical Rainforest, Hangadi Watershed, Ethiopia

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript entitled "Mapping Soil Parameters with Environmental Covariates and Land Cover Projection in Tropical Rainforest, Hangadi Watershed, Ethiopia," obtained some findings which might have implications for enhancing the efficiency and efficacy of future projections. The manuscript seems interesting and informative. Hopefully, it will be helpful in getting a better understanding of the future challenges in watershed areas of tropical rainforests. With a detailed reading of the MS, the reviewer suggested the following changes to enhance presentation and readability for both the scientific and non-scientific communities. 

 

 

1. Unfortunately, due to the absence of proper line numbering in the whole MS, which let the reviewer to highlight all the corrections/comments(detail) regarding MS improvement, in the attached PDF file. 
2. Please improve English language grammar in the whole paper, some corrections have been highlighted in attached file.
3. In the abstract other than small corrections as mentioned in the PDF file, please, re-write from line 2 of the abstract: "These study objectives were to assess soil fertility status, spatial variability of selected soil parameters, and compare Random Forest with Ordinary Kriging.
4. In the last sentence of the abstract, please re-write it as Future research should include the remaining predictors: physiochemical and lithological data to improve Random Forest performance.
5. In the introduction part, the significance of the study needs further improvement. The detailed discussion regarding "environmental covariates" need to be improved further. 
6. Please address the current problem statement, study objectives, novelty, and future direction in the introduction section.
7. In the 2.1. Study Area Description: section, Please write the correct format for longitude and latitude according to Fig.1. In this section, unit as percent or %? Please be consistent with your writing style. Please add mean annual precipitation (mm), Mean annual temperature (°C), and slope; also, mention the soil type and texture of the study area.
8. Please replace the caption for Figure 1. Showing the geographical location of the study watershed.
9. Please change the caption for Figure.2 Climatic condition of Odo Shakiso district (Berhanu et al., 2021). The Figure seems a bit confusing; RF represents what? Is that runoff or rainfall? Please mention it in the caption with *? Also, indicate how to represent precipitation in this Figure. Please simplify this Figure.
10. Please write the title in table-1 more appropriately and simplified way, such as in Table.1: The Distribution of the area (ha) according to land use cover classes during 1990–2018.
11. Please correct the following in the whole article; pH (it will not PH), RF (it will not Rf), and OK (it will not OK).
12. The caption detail of equation-1 should be consistent and according to the right format. 
13. The title of Figure 3. The projected land use and cover changes for 2048 (Berhanu et al., 2021).
14. Please simplify the title of the Table.2, currently, it's showing purposeless. Also, add units of various variables. 
15. In Figure.7&8, is it a prediction map of which years?
16. At the start of the section. 4.2. Selected Soil Chemical Properties. Please re-write as; According to [47] assessment, forest land use soils of the study watershed are in the strong acidic range, while the remaining are in the moderately acidic range (Figure 8).
17. There is still a need to enhance the cohesion between the conclusion, introduction, and abstract.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Attached herewith, please find a reviewer-1 response. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Attached herewith, please find reviewer-2 response. 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

 good luck. 

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you. All my concerns have now been addressed adequately. 

Best wishes