Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Be consistent with whether or not you capitalize the word river when referring to a specific river. For example, you have Mondego river (line 117) and Mondego River (line 228). I personally think the word should be capitalized, but just be consistent with usage throughout the paper.

Page 1

Line 5: Why is there an “and” and an ampersand “&” – not sure of this.

Line 17: Change in to on

Line 19: add an “and” between characteristics and major

Line 40: add an s to area

Page 2

Line 49: You mention the “second one” here, but what was the first one?

Line 50: change a to the

Line 51: Change are to is

Line 52: Delete “Since”

Line 62: Remove “It is” and replace with “Studies”

Line 63: remove “with studies”

Line 64: place “and” before Mn

Line 77: Replace “have” with “has”

Line 84: Remove “to determine” and replace with “the determination of”

Page3

Line90: put a period after A (B.A.)

Line 93: Make d in Description lower case for consistency

Line 102: remove “occur”

Line 103: Add “occur in the region” after beds

Line 105: add “is” before flatter

Line 105: Replace “the” with “is”

Line 106: place dash between semi and natural (semi-natural)

Line 109: Replace “its” with “their”

Page 5:

Line 117: remove dashes between north-east and south-west, these are single words.

Line 119: add “by” after highlighted

Line 127: “lead” should be “led”

Line 132: delete “with” and replace with “to”

Line 133: Switch the placement of the words climate and normal

Line 134: add “the” after “shows”

Line 137: Delete “whilst” and replace with “while”

Page 6

Perhaps indicate in the figure caption that the numbers dots indicate when the campaigns happened?

Line 144: change design to designed

Line 162: replace each with “all”

Line 167: delete apostrophe on years

Line 167: place “of” before datasets

Line 169: Delete “it was” and replace with “we”

Line 169: add comma after Gb

Page 7

Line 172: pat an “a” between to and high

Line 174: Delete the second occurrence of the word “to”

Line 177: Add comma after “site”

Line 181: Add comma after “scale”

Line 181: Delete “and”

Line 181: add “scale” after river

Line 184: add comma after ”…RM2)”

Line 185: delete “have” and replace with “has”

Line 188: Delete the comma after April

Line 188: Add “in” after “role”

Page 8

The ordering of the measurement lines in this figure can be figured out from the text, but it might be nice to mention that the lines from top to bottom represent the campaigns 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 from top to bottom.

Line 189: Replace “were” with “was”

Line 194: delete “waters” and add “of the water” after “pH”

Line 208: Delete “are” and replace with “were”

Line 208&Line 209: Move “were observed” from its current sentence location and place it after “reductions”

Line 213: Delete “While”, start sentence with “Most”

Line 213: Place apostrophe after “basins”

Page 9

Line 227: delete “it was observed”

Line 227: add “was observed” after “content”

Line 228: Add comma after River

Page 10

Line 234: remove “s” from “elements”

Line 237: Use “granitic-dominated”

Line 240: Add “have” after “may”

Line 247: remove comma after “EC”

Line 248: use “granite-dominated”

Line 254: add “s” to end of “yield”

Page 11

Line 264: add “be” after “to”

Line 266: Add comma after “heavy”

Line 267: Anomaly or Abnormally?

Line 267: delete “a” before “normal”

Line 277: Add “s” to end of “other”

Line 283: delete “that”

The sentence from Line 283 to 285 is awkward

Line 283: Add “d” to the end of “note”

Line 284: add “ing” to the end of “regain”

Line 285: Replace “with” with “in”

Line 288: Add comma after “Fe”

Line 296: Add comma after “agent”

Line 298: Replace “Is it …” with “It is …”

Line 299: add “and” before “it”

Page 11

Line 310: Delete “for” and add “into” after “taking”

Line 314: Delete “It was observed” and add “was observed” after “turbidity”

Line 316: Change “short” into “shortly”

Line 338: Period after interest

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 1 Comments

The authors would like to thank the reviewer for the time spent reading the manuscript, as well as the suggestions that indeed contribute for its improvement.

Indeed, the manuscript had a few orthographic and grammar errors, which we thank the reviewer for the thoroughly point almost all of them. These have been corrected, as well as few other after a careful review of the entire article.

Point 1: Be consistent with whether or not you capitalize the word river when referring to a specific river. For example, you have Mondego river (line 117) and Mondego River (line 228). I personally think the word should be capitalized, but just be consistent with usage throughout the paper.

Response 1: We thank the reviewer for noticing this inconsistence through the manuscript. The authors opted to change the word “river” to capitalized “River”, when referring to a specific River.

Point 2: Page 2, Line 49: You mention the “second one” here, but what was the first one?

Response 2: Despite in line 48, the authors did mention that the country suffered, in 2017, two major fire events. We agree with the reviewer that the line 49 could have been written better, to better understand that although the presented work is a consequence of the second event, this one was not the only one that year. The sentence has been grammatically improved on page 2, line 49.

Point 3: Page 6. Perhaps indicate in the figure caption that the numbers dots indicate when the campaigns happened?

Response 3: The reviewer’s suggestion was added to the caption on line 143.

Point 4: Page 8. The ordering of the measurement lines in this figure can be figured out from the text, but it might be nice to mention that the lines from top to bottom represent the campaigns 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 from top to bottom.

Response 4: We thank the reviewer for noticing that this information was not on the caption. It has been added to line 198. This same line was also added to the caption of the newly-made figure 6 (line 231), and figure 7 (line 264).

Point 5: Page 11. The sentence from Line 283 to 285 is awkward.

Response 5: This sentence was rewritten in order to be more perceptible. It is now on page 11, line 296 to 298.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

See the attached file.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 2 Comments

General Comments

The paper “Impacts of large wildfires on surface water quality. Analysis through a geochemical background methodology” written by Mário David Sequeira, Ana Maria Castilho, Pedro A. Dinis, and Alexandre Oliveira Tavares is well organized.

It presents a wealth of geochemical river water quality data and the influence of fires on this data. It is suitable for the Journal. The literature review is solid. The paper should be found of

interest by some of the Journal audience.

The authors would like to thank the reviewer for taking the time read and comment the manuscript, as well as all the suggestions that contributed for its improvement.

Point 1: The Abstract and Conclusions are not fully corresponding to each other. In particular, the first paragraph of Conclusions is not reflected in the Abstract. Please make sure then that the Conclusions section defines the novel findings of the paper, and that they are reflected in the Abstract.

Response 1: We appreciate the reviewer for noticing this inaccuracy, as has been corrected on line 21. The rest of the abstract was rearranged in order to keep it within the 200-word limit.

Point 2: The language needs tightening and some of the terms need to be defined.

Response 2: The authors have carefully reviewed the manuscript and corrected the errors found.

Overall, the paper requires minor/moderate revisions.

Language

Point 3: The language needs tightening. For example, (there are many more):

Lines 17-18: To understand the impacts that these had in -> on surface water quality, a series of monthly monitoring campaigns were --> was implemented.

Line 19: campaigns lasted for 8 months, and supervised the water’s physical UNNECESSARY COMMA

Lines 80-83: In order to understand the surface water changes on the Mondego River after the forest fires of October 2017, 10 surface water sampling points, representing catchment basins with different physiographic, lithological and land use features that were affected by the wildfires of 2017 to ... REDUNDANT: NO NEED TO MENTION FIRES OF 2017 TWICE IN THE SAME SENTENCE

Lines 147-148: The monitoring campaigns initiated one month after the fires, at the beginning of the precipitation period, ending on June of 2018. THIS IS NOT A SENTENCE; IT IS A SENTENCE FRAGMENT

Lines 147-148: The monitoring campaigns initiated one month after the fires, at the beginning of the precipitation period, ending on June of 2018. Its frequency was close UNCLEAR: WHICH NOUN IS THE PRECEDENT OF "Its"?

Line 314: It was observed an increase in turbidity, GRAMMAR

Response 3: The authors have carefully reviewed the manuscript and corrected orthographic and grammatical errors.

Point 4: Lines 309-310: Also, although the common mediums used with the methodology are soils and sediments, when taking account for the precipitation, it can also be used with surface waters, as it was observed through the present study. UNCLEAR: WHICH NOUN IS THE PRECEDENT OF "it"? ARE YOU SAYING THAT PRECIPITATION CAN ALSO BE USED WITH SURFACE WATERS? IF SO, WHAT DO YOU REALLY MEAN?

Response 4: The sentence was somewhat confusing and therefore it has been rewritten (page 12, line 324-324). What the authors meant was that it is possible to establish a geochemical background for surface waters, as long as the normal precipitation of the area is understood. As the chemistry of surface water change from the raining season to the dry season, so as the background for each season.

I recommend that you have a colleague whose first language is English help you revise your paper or that you use English Language editing services such as those provided by mdpi.com or others to clean up the language of the paper.

Point 5: Your ACRONYMS

Looking for the definitions of your acronyms is a pain in the neck for a reader:

• geochemical background (Gb) USED 6 TIMES
• the median absolute deviation (MAD) USED 3 TIMES
• Electrical conductivity (EC) USED 6 TIMES
• Mediterranean cool dry-summer (Csb) USED 1 TIME
• Ion chromatography (IC) USED 1 TIME
• inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) USED 2 TIMES
• inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) USED 1 TIME
•  

Clearly, you don't need all these acronyms, do you?

Consider spelling out most, if not all, of your acronyms (or defining the ones most frequently used on every other page)--make your paper READER-FRIENDLY! After all, as opposed to most other journals, this one is generous and does NOT impose word-count limits. Again, make your paper READER-FRIENDLY!

Response 5: The authors agree with the reviewer, as well as, acknowledge the reviewer’s suggestion of reducing the number of acronyms throughout the text.

Particular Comments

Point 6: The TITLE: “Impacts of large wildfires on surface water quality. Analysis through a

geochemical background methodology”

◦ I recommend replacing the period in the tile with a colon.

◦ The “background methodology” does not fully reflect what the authors have done. After all, they investigated the impact of wild fires on the background geochemical river water profiles. Furthermore, the authors admit that for the smaller rivers they have NO background information. I suggest you REFINE the title.

Response 6: The authors agree with the reviewer on the refinement of the title as it can better explain the work of the manuscript. The title was refined as it can be observed in page 1, line 1.

Point 7: Lines 5-6: Mário David Sequeira, Ana Maria Castilho and Pedro A. Dinis & Alexandre Oliveira Tavares

◦ AWKWARD because you use the same conjunction (and = &) twice in the series

◦ ⟼ Mário David Sequeira, Ana Maria Castilho, Pedro A. Dinis, and Alexandre Oliveira Tavares

Response 7: We thank the reviewer noticing this gaffe. This mistake was corrected.

Point 8: Lines 75-79: Using the Median ± Median Absolute Deviation (MAD) is a procedure that does not rely on statistical assumptions and have the advantages of being particularly effective against data outliers commonly found on datasets, delivering conservative values (Reimann et al. 2005), and being preferred in ecological studies (Rothwell and Cooke 2015). While the median is a concept within the common knowledge, the median absolute deviation is not. Don't force the reader to go to Reimann et al. (2005) to find out what it is. Define it in your paper.

Response 8: The authors thank the reviewer for the suggestion of adding the definition of the median absolute deviation to the paper as to make it more reader friendly. This definition is now on page 7, line 172, in the Methodology section.

Point 9: Line 133: Mediterranean cool dry-summer (Csb) (IPMA 2013).

◦ WHAT DOES "Csb" stand for? You are using it only once. CUT IT!

Response 9: Since Csb was only used once in the text, we agree with the reviewer in removing it.

Figure 1 a, b, c is fine.

Point 10: Figure 2b: burn litter and materials carried by the runoff on watercourses (2017.12.18) POOR QUALITY WITH THE SUN REFLECTIONS-- I don't see the litter ... do you? Provide a better picture, or CUT THIS ONE.”

Response 10: The authors decided to remove the figure 2b, since they did not have a better picture to illustrate what was intended (Page 4).

Point 11: Table 1: Do you really have two significant digits after the decimal point? I doubt it. If you do, please explain.

Response 11: The authors agree with the reviewer that the number of significant digits after the decimal point was too high. This was the result of copying the data from the attribute table of our GIS software to our datasheet and forgetting to reduce the number of decimal units. The authors also took the opportunity to improve the table by changing the coordinates of the sampling points from decimal degrees to degrees, minutes and seconds (Page 3, Line 91).

Point 12: Table 2: Variation of major ions in all the campaigns (mg/l) contrasted with the upper and lower limits of the calculated Gb. I don’t see this contrast in the table. Where is it? What do the bold numbers denote? Clearly NOT the upper and lower limits! CLARIFY! Is such a large number of numbers necessary? In the spirit of the English adage “a picture is worth one thousand words,” could you possibly present this wealth of data in a figure or figures (plots)?

Response 12: The authors thank the reviewer the suggestion to substitute the table for a figure, a new figure 6 (Page 9).

References are fine

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf