Soil Salinity Weakening and Soil Quality Enhancement after Long-Term Reclamation of Different Croplands in the Yellow River Delta
, Qiuying Zhang 4,*, Zhao Li 1,2, Chao Tian 1,2, Yunfeng Qiao 1,2, Kun Du 1,2, Hefa Cheng 5, Gang Chen 6, Xiaoyan Li 3 and Fadong Li 1,2,*
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Manuscript Number: sustainability-2089680-peer-review-v1
Title: Soil salinity weakening and soil quality enhancement after 2 long-term reclamation of different croplands in the Yellow 3 River Delta.
Comments
In this present study, authors have done good job and focused on the soil salinity weakening and soil quality enhancement after 2 long-term reclamation of different croplands in the Yellow 3 River Delta. This article is well written, technically sound and in well scientific style. However, manuscript needs to address certain critical points before recommending it for publication.
1. Abstract of manuscript is not well written please revise it carefully as per your study plan.
2. If possible please add 1 key words.
3. Authors have suggested that please clearly write novelty and hypothesis of your research work. How your research work is unique from already published work.
4. P9 L290: Please carefully check the Table numbers. Also please check the PC4 is looks missing please justify.
5. The author has not performed literature cited carefully in this manuscript. Please add few latest references in the discussion section.
6. Manuscript need to be revised for grammatical and typo error.
7. Finally, the language of the manuscript should be improved to increase the readability of the manuscript.
Author Response
1. Abstract of manuscript is not well written please revise it carefully as per your study plan.
Response: We have rewritten the abstract by based on research background, study plan and discoveries.
2. If possible please add 1 key words.
Response: We have added one more key word of “cropland” in the revision.
3. Authors have suggested that please clearly write novelty and hypothesis of your research work. How your research work is unique from already published work.
Response: We have rewritten the 3rd and 4th paragraph of Introduction to emphasize the novelty of the study in Yellow River Delta and the implementation of the analysis method of SQI in this region. We have also included the hypotheses of this work in the region. Above changes are in Line 79-112 of the revision.
4. P9 L290: Please carefully check the Table numbers. Also please check the PC4 is looks missing please justify.
Response: We have corrected Table numbers ang Figure numbers. For the PCA analysis, the first three principal components represented 87.04% information of all soil physical and chemical indicators and the eigenvalues of the first three components in PCA were greater than 1, showing excellent representation. Therefore, the rests were insignificant and ignored.
5. The author has not performed literature cited carefully in this manuscript. Please add few latest references in the discussion section.
Response: We have updated and added the latest relevant references in the Introduction and Discussion of the revision.
6. Manuscript need to be revised for grammatical and typo error. Finally, the language of the manuscript should be improved to increase the readability.
Response: We have asked a native English-speaking professor to help check and revise the manuscript.
Reviewer 2 Report
Is a very good effort towards assessing chemistry, salinity and quality level of soil of Yellow river delta area of China. The work utilised standard methods for soil sampling and analysis and the results were evaluated according to traditional format of soil data evaluation. There are however areas that need to be strengthened to enhance the quality of the work:
a. Conceptualization - salinity and nutrients fertility decline are important soil management challenges confronting farmers and land use managers. These have been attracting considerable research attention and large volume of literature materials have now piled up on this. A study of this kind is supposed to identify clearly the gap(s) that exist(s) which need to be filled. The authors mentioned in line 97 to 99 of page 2 that : "but relatively little has been done on the effects of long-term reclaimed cultivation on soil nutrients and soil quality in the Yellow River Delta". This suggests that the work has only a local context as it has not been placed in a proper global context. If because the Yellow Delta area has not been previously studied is the only reason why this work was carried out, it then implies that the work is only of local interest to Chinese readership rather than global community. The authors need to therefore do more to place this work in a global contest by contextualizing which essential gap it intends to fill and which global contribution to scholarship it stands to make.
b. Use of Soil quality indices
There are many SQIs developed for assessing soil quality but three have remained outstanding (namely Additive, Weighted Additive and Nemoro). The authors have not exhibited familiarity with these as they simply went and used an undefined index without giving details of its background and why it was used.
c. Discussion of study findings - The authors have not made much efforts to discuss their study findings by comparing the results they obtained with the results obtained by other research workers that world on similar subject matter in other areas of the world (not just China).
d. Use of reference - the subject matter of the paper (soil nutrients and salinity assessment) has been well researched with new developments added on daily basis. The authors listed a total of only 53 references consulted. Even at that, only 6 out of the 53 are for 2022 despite the fact that fresh ideas on the subject matter are always being added.
Author Response
1. Conceptualization - salinity and nutrients fertility decline are important soil management challenges confronting farmers and land use managers. These have been attracting considerable research attention and large volume of literature materials have now piled up on this. A study of this kind is supposed to identify clearly the gap(s) that exist(s) which need to be filled. The authors mentioned in line 97 to 99 of page 2 that : "but relatively little has been done on the effects of long-term reclaimed cultivation on soil nutrients and soil quality in the Yellow River Delta". This suggests that the work has only a local context as it has not been placed in a proper global context. If because the Yellow Delta area has not been previously studied is the only reason why this work was carried out, it then implies that the work is only of local interest to Chinese readership rather than global community. The authors need to therefore do more to place this work in a global contest by contextualizing which essential gap it intends to fill and which global contribution to scholarship it stands to make.
Response: We agree and believe salinity and nutrients fertility decline are global challenges. We investigated salinity and nutrients fertility decline in this manuscript using the Yellow River Delta as the model site. In the revision, we have re-emphasized the objectives to focus on concerns of salinity and nutrients fertility decline globally and have reviewed the global soil salinity and land degradation by adding related literatures.
2. Use of Soil quality indices. There are many SQIs developed for assessing soil quality but three have remained outstanding (namely Additive, Weighted Additive and Nemoro). The authors have not exhibited familiarity with these as they simply went and used an undefined index without giving details of its background and why it was used.
Response: We are sorry we did not describe this clearly in the prior submission. We have modified the description in Line 196 to 201 in the revision as follows: “Among the three methods used to estimate SQI (i) simple additive SQI (SQI-1), (ii) weighted additive SQI (SQI-2), and (iii) statistically modeled SQI (SQI-3) based on principal component analysis (PCA), the weighted additive SQI was used for soil quality evaluation:
SQI = ∑ni = ∑ WiNi
where Wi represents the weight value of the i th indicator, Ni represents the affiliation degree of the i th indicator, and n represents the number of evaluation indicators.
3. Discussion of study findings - The authors have not made much efforts to discuss their study findings by comparing the results they obtained with the results obtained by other research workers that world on similar subject matter in other areas of the world (not just China).
Response: We thank the reviewer for the comments. In the revision, we have updated the comparative analysis of the results of our work with others globally and have added relevant references accordingly.
4. Use of reference - the subject matter of the paper (soil nutrients and salinity assessment) has been well researched with new developments added on daily basis. The authors listed a total of only 53 references consulted. Even at that, only 6 out of the 53 are for 2022 despite the fact that fresh ideas on the subject matter are always being added.
Response: We have updated the references to reflect the current knowledge of the topic area in the revision.
Reviewer 3 Report
The idea of the work and the design, as well as the measures taken seem to me adequate to prove how the practice of agriculture can recover saline soils.
However, the work must first be fully edited so that whoever reads it can understand what has been done new, and how this new work contrasts and contributes with respect to what is already known.
There are many grammatical errors, sentences that are not understood, numbers of tables and figures wrongly placed, not indicated in the results, lack of explanation in the figure and table captions, parts of results that cite bibliography, parts of the discussion that are descriptions of results, parts of the discussion that are unintelligible, parts of the discussion that are not known if they are own results or from other works, and the conclusions are basically a return to the results.
I think that the paper should be read by more people with experience and edited to show what has been done, what is new and how it contrasts with the results already published. This is the first step to be able to read and review it.
Author Response
Response: We thanks the reviewer for the comments and suggestions. We have asked a native English-speaking professor to help check and revise the manuscript. All the above comments have been addressed together with the comments and suggestions by other reviewers.
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The author(s) has(have) carried out some improvements as I suggested in my first report on the manuscript. The manuscript is generally okay to be accepted for publication. However, the authors need to insert few statements:
a. In the introduction, there is still the need for them to emphasize that
Previous studies assessing the effects of reclamation on soil salinity level, few studies have used Soil Quality Index to carryout such assessment. This study thus seeks to advance an understanding in this regard using Yellow River Delta of China as a case study.
This simple statement will help to clearly put the study away from being of local interest and situate it into proper global context
b. In the methodology section, the author(s) should not just indicate that they used weighted addition SQI , they should provide details that there are three main SQIs being used in soil quality evaluation (simple additive, weighted additive and Nemoro). Out of the three, the can indicate that weighted additive SQI was used because.......(they provide a simple convincing reason for choosing it).
If the above two corrections are effected, the quality of the manuscript would become stronger and the editor can go ahead and accept it
Author Response
1. In the introduction, there is still the need for them to emphasize that
Previous studies assessing the effects of reclamation on soil salinity level, few studies have used Soil Quality Index to carry out such assessment. This study thus seeks to advance an understanding in this regard using Yellow River Delta of China as a case study.
This simple statement will help to clearly put the study away from being of local interest and situate it into proper global context
Response: We thank the reviewer for the comments. We have added and updated the unique statements in the Introduction. Above changes are in Line 95-100 of the revision.
2. In the methodology section, the author(s) should not just indicate that they used weighted addition SQI , they should provide details that there are three main SQIs being used in soil quality evaluation (simple additive, weighted additive and Nemoro). Out of the three, the can indicate that weighted additive SQI was used because.......(they provide a simple convincing reason for choosing it).
Response: We have rewritten the reason why we chose the method of SQI to access the soil quality. Above changes are in Line 170-175 of the revision.
Reviewer 3 Report
The work has been improved considerably, and in my opinion now deserves to be published.
Author Response
We thank the reviewer for the comments.
