Changes in Land Use through Eucalyptus Plantations Impact Soil Fauna Communities in Brazilian Savannas

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Journal: Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050)

Manuscript ID: Sustainability-2650259

Type: Research Article

Manuscript title: Changes in Land Use Through Eucalyptus Plantations Impact Soil Fauna Communities in Brazilian Savannas

 

The work presented deals with an interesting area of environmental sustainability. The paper is very well written. Objectives, hypothesis and experiment design of paper are appropriate, but the title is not as good. I also suggest careful proof checking of the entire manuscript.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Minor editing is needed. I also suggest careful proof checking of the entire manuscript.

 

Author Response

We strongly appreciate the suggestions made by the reviewers, which we seek to respond to in their entirety. The entire text was revised with a careful adequation of the language

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The present study 《Changes in Land Use Through Eucalyptus Plantations Impact Soil Fauna Communities in Brazilian Savannas》aims to evaluate the edaphic community of mesofauna in cerrado areas and Eucalypt plantations and their correlation to soil chemistry parameters, the result of this study should be interesting and it should provide an important theoretical basis for the sustainable use of local soil.

However, the main results obtained in this study only show in four figures, the results were not well presented, and the Fig.4 is not standard, and the horizontal and vertical coordinate mark is lacking, the statistical analysis of differences of index of Organic matter, Potassium, Calcium, Phosphorous, and pH were lacking. 

Author Response

We strongly appreciate the suggestions made by the reviewers, which we seek to respond to in their entirety. 

We decided that is not necessary to add the coordinate information because Figure 4 focuses only on the Cerrado and Eucalyptus stand Shannon’s diversity index. All values are shown in the y-axis.  We add in Materials and Methods (2.3 Soil chemical analysis) the active soil acidity pH (H2O). Organic matter, potassium, calcium, phosphorus, and pH were tested by Variance Analysis but did not show significance so we decided not to add to the results. 

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Similar studies are available in the literature

Parameters studied are very less as the soil characters are not correctly studied...

Soil pH, soil organic carbon and EC are not measured

Soil characters also includes soil microbial parameters which need to be done

Comments on the Quality of English Language

There re spelling mistakes found in the article

Author Response

We strongly appreciate the suggestions made by the reviewers, which we seek to respond to in their entirety. The soil analysis was described in 2.3 topics (Soil chemical analysis) according to Embrapa protocol. This reference is the most used in Brazilian soil description

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

 careful proof checking of the entire manuscript and the format of the tables.

Author Response

Thanks for the suggestion. We carefully check the corrections