Stock of Carbon and Soil Organic Fractions in No-Tillage and Crop–Livestock Integration Systems

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript titled “Stock of carbon and of soil organic fractions in no tillage and 2 crop-livestock integration systems” dedicated to the study of the carbon stock and 14 SOM fractions in a no-tillage system and crop-livestock integration in Cerrado biom. The research work is carried out at a good level, the experimental part is carefully described. The study of carbon stock in the Brazilian Savannah is of great fundamental and applied importance especially given the importance of the region's ecosystem in the global carbon cycle. The work is also important from the point of view of choosing the optimal tillage technologies that preserve the soil, as well as understanding the processes of restoring the quality of the region's soils.  The results are valuable and fully consistent with the Sustainability journal's aims and scope.

Authors may be encouraged to improve the conclusion part and add the discussion of the processes leading to the identified differences, taking into account previously obtained and published data on other soils.

I also strongly recommend reducing the number of significant digits to one after the decimal point. For example, the numbers in rows 196-197, 227, 271, 310, 339, as well as in the Clay and ASI columns of Table 1, should be rounded to 1 significant digit or even to whole numbers. This will not change the identified trends, but it will make it easier to perceive and will be more correct from the statistics point of view.

Authors should check the decimal separator throughout the text and not mix the period and comma. For example, "95.8 and 15,2 mg dm-3", line 103. Also at line 45  «soil c stock»  should be corrected to «soil C stock»  

Thus, I recommend the work for publication after minor revisions.

Author Response

Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript. Please find the detailed responses below and the corresponding revisions/corrections highlighted/in track changes in the re-submitted files

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors collected soil samples across different depth from 4 systems with different soil management strategies, evaluated the soil samples' chemical and physical properties and conducted correlation analysis and ANOVA on the evaluated properties. The authors found that soil management strategies affects the carbon stock between native vegetation and agricultural use, but no significant differences was detected among strategies of agricultural use. 

Major comments:

The manuscript focuses on the effect of soil management strategies on carbon stock, however, there is little information about how the two strategies, no-tillage and crop-livestock, work in practice. A brief introduction for the no-tillage and crop-livestock systems can be added to the introduction section for readers.

The carbon management index yielded a value >100 for the agricultural lands. The author provided a brief explanation on why this occurs, but it would be more helpful to expand this explanation with better reference to the formula provided in the method section.

Minor comments:

Line 45: The chemical symbol for carbon should be capital "C".

Line 71: "de" should be "the"?

Line 102: Is the CaCl2 an typo after pH?

Line 420: the comma is not necessary.

Supplementary data: Do you mean "median values" and "soil depth"?

Author Response

Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript. Please find the detailed responses below and the corresponding revisions/corrections highlighted/in track changes in the re-submitted files

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Manuscript ' Stock of carbon and of soil organic fractions in no tillage and crop-livestock integration systems'. The MS is falls into the scope of Sustainability. Please consider the following points.

-The level of English throughout the Manuscript needs to meet the journal's standard. Therefore, you may wish to ask a native speaker to check your Manuscript for grammar, style, and syntax.

-The abstract section needs a thorough revision. Currently, it provides very little useful information and fails to highlight the main research results. It needs to more clearly outline the primary research findings to align with the research objectives.

-The introduction section is divided into too many paragraphs, and the logic is unclear. It is recommended to reduce the number of paragraphs, reorganize the logic, and enhance both academic rigor and readability.

-"L104-L109: Can the effects of treatments with different experimental periods be compared?"

-L122-L123: Only four replicate samples were collected, without samples from different years or multiple sampling times, resulting in little representativeness.

-L142-L148: The soil sample sieving method needs to be detailed, as it forms the basis of this study.

-What does the red line represent in Figure 1? It is suggested to use a clearer method of presentation.

-L191-L267: A section heading is needed.

-It is strongly recommended to separate the Results and Discussion sections to clearly distinguish the main research findings.

-The Conclusion section lacks useful information and needs to be rewritten to highlight the main research conclusions.

-References. It would be best to consult the specific guidelines provided by the journal for instructions on formatting and referencing.

Moderate editing of English language required

Author Response

Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript. Please find the detailed responses below and the corresponding revisions/corrections highlighted/in track changes in the re-submitted files

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

This article is about the decrease in carbon content in soil compared to the content in natural uncultivated areas. In the study, the authors reveal the influence of the edaphic parameters analyzed on the content of organic matter in the soil, as well as the cultivation techniques used. The study is correct in its different sections, although not too original, since this is something predictable, however it confirms the evidence and can be published.

Author Response

Thank you very much for taking the time to review this manuscript. Please find the detailed responses below and the corresponding revisions/corrections highlighted/in track changes in the re-submitted files

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

The author has made corresponding revisions based on the comment I provided.

Minor editing of English language required