Water Table Fluctuation and Methane Emission in Pineapples (Ananas comosus (L.) Merr.) Cultivated on a Tropical Peatland

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The choice of topic is interesting, the authors suggest in the literature review that the methane emission of cultivated tropical peatland with pineapple has been little studied. The language of the paper is correct, but the results are incomplete, there are incoherent descriptions. My fundamental problem with the article, that not the fluctuation was studied (as titled), which would be a repetitive groundwater level change, rather an examination of two static stages.

some comments:

102.: lack of standard procedures vs 214. reference for standard procedure

Figure 1. Sarawak is missing, Sessang has different spelling in text than on map

156 "Von Post scale": please addreference

Figure 2: what does the 6 cm mean,  and what is the outer frame with text "chamber" ? The left part of the figure is clear, but the other confuses the reader.

Figure 5-11: number of samples, basic statistics are missing

 The mentioned 0,9 m water depth in the lysimeter means that the 97 cm high lysimeter was practically dry? While the 0 m depth of water level means fully anaerobic conditions, being wet up to surface?

The box chamber covered the pineapple plant also, or the bare soil surface? 

Was the depth of groundwater in the field the same as that set in the lysimeter? The article does not explain why there is such a large discrepancy between methane emissions measured in the field and those measured in the lysimeter that theoretically models it. How can affect the high rainfall the methan emission mesured in the lysimeter, when they were covered by plastic (183-184), during rainy days? Or did this result apply to the field measurement?

My suggestion is to resubmit this paper with revised results.

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

I believe that it is a very important work providing measurements of CH4 emmissions from very important agricultural environments like tropical peatlands. I believe that the authors made their best in the experimental procedure providing very important data. The overall work is robust. Even though in some cases the results did not favor a good conclusion (e.g. Table 2), the authors provided many explanations to the rich discussion section. I believe that the work could be published after a refinement in English language (there are many language faults in the text). 

Author Response

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Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors took note of my comments and amended the manuscript accordingly.

Author Response

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