Soil Compaction Mechanism and Improvement in Farmland

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Suggested corrections:

Line 64, replacing drugs with amendments may be clearer to the audience;

In Table 1 and the discussion, I had trouble figuring out whether the pH for CK was 5.70 or 5.71, since it does affect the difference and percentages calculated. Is the pH for A2, 6.29 rather than 6.01? Is the pH for A5, 6.77 or 6.90?

Line 129, delete testis and add test is.

Check the narrative for Lines 144-152 and 153-160, the words match Lines 295-303 and 304-310, but the references are different.

Line 217, Figure 1 should be Figure 2, based on the data.

Lines 219-226, does not clearly match Table 1, I had a lot of trouble with the calculations based on A5 listed as 6.77, but the Table 1 value is 6.90. Line 225, A1 should be labeled A2 and the pH is 6.01 in Table 1, not 6.29 as noted in the narrative.

Line 242, not sure how the values 0.43 and 2.36 were calculated.

Table 7, should the CK value 2.21, be replaced with 2.24 and A5 value of 1.05 replaced with 0.43. Also, is 2018.4 or 2018.10 after 1 season?

Line 259-270, not sure how the values were calculated, not clear from the narrative to the Table or Figure.

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 1 Comments，please refer to the attached.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions

It is interesting to evaluate the manuscript “Soil compaction mechanism and improvement in Farmland”. The work is interesting and broadens the knowledge of multi-level impacts in the functioning of the soil system, but the manuscript need hard revision for publication in sustainability. It has serious issues with presentation of the work.

I have some comments here that the author must revise:

1.      Abstract need major revision focusing the results and recommendation in brief.  

2.      Introduction section need more review of literatures and hypothesis addressed in the manuscript. I suggest more recent literature review, which need to be incorporated to highlight areas for future study and call attention to research hypotheses.

3.      I also suggest the authors to take reference of recently published works related to this study. I text references are not properly cited as for example line no 51…Jing et al. (2015) and others need to be properly checked and incorporated.

4.      I suggest including a map where experimental work was designed, reference materials to be included in this section.

5.      I suggest crossing check all units presented in this paper, convert results in hectare for better understanding.

6.        I donot know why results section contain formula, which should be mentioned in the methodology section.

7.      Methodology section need slight improvement.

8.      Authors should make a clear distinction between results and discussion. There is some discussion in this section rather than a statement of the results of the analysis. The author must revise it carefully.

9.      The discussion section needs to go deeper and more systematically and add some references.

10.  The conclusion does not describe the specific conclusions obtained in the article, nor does it have specific data support, which is rather general. This part needs to be reorganized. What are the advantages and disadvantages of this study? I donot know why references are cited in the conclusion section.

I suggest hark work and major improvement of the manuscript before acceptance

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 1 Comments,please refer to the attached

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper entitled Soil Compaction Mechanism and Improvement in Farmland, submitted to Sustainability presents an interesting study of the topic addressed.

However, two topics cause me doubts regarding their suitability for publication. The first is that the novelty of the study and the importance of its results are not sufficiently highlighted in my opinion. The second is that although there is talk of experimental trials, these are not described or shown images of it in order to increase the contribution of the study. Resolving these shortcomings, the article can be published.

Author Response

The novelty of this study and the importance of the results are fully emphasized in the introduction and conclusion. In the part of experimental scheme design and conclusion, we enrich the content of experimental data and chart analysis.

Reviewer 4 Report

-This manuscrip correspond for scope of journal.

Investigation of soil trait, primarily physical trait, its state  evolution in region of North China, and the mechanism of compaction and degradation effects of different soil amendment in the aim of improving technology farmland soil compaction.

The investigation is original and relevant for the field. This study represents complementary to the previous ones.

-Content of article appropriate to the title of article.

The research of the subject, which is clearly defined, was carried out in the paper. There are many open and unexplored problems, which we should not ask for in this work, nor should we propose ideas for a new work. It is in the area of ​​interest of the author.

Key words are appropraite.

-Aim of study is clear and achieved in investigation.

- Methods of investigation are adequate, reliable and prprerly applied.

-Results are clearly presented and discussed

-The table, figures and pctures are clear.

-Conclusion are based on obtained results. 

Author Response

Thank you for your recognition of the results of our work. At your suggestion, we have detailed the paper in depth and put forward the future research direction.

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Authors have considerably improved the manuscript and now can be accepted

Reviewer 3 Report

Once the suggestions and proposed improvements have been implemented, I give my opinion in favor of the publication of this article.