Contrasting Water Use Strategies of Tamarix ramosissima in Different Habitats in the Northwest of Loess Plateau, China
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors have presented a thorough data set on water sources from two sites near Lanzhou City. Results are nicely presented. There does not seem to be any true replication. If the intent is to compare the two habitats, there should be at least 3 sampling sites in each habitat.
Line 73: What is meant by “a better vegetation landscape”?
Line 74: It is stated that existing studies focused on this species “in the same habitat”, but it is not clear what that habitat was, and whether these studies were examining differences in water source with respect to time of year, or other environmental variables.
Line 76: The justification for this study is not clear. The introduction should more clearly outline the “research gap”, and why there is an interest in examining the difference between habitat types.
Line 87: I’m not familiar with the term “beaded valley”.
Line 114: The authors should give more information on the hydrology of the area, particularly at the point at which the well is placed.
Line 117: How far are these sampling stations from the habitat sampling sites?
Sample collection: How many sampling periods were there? Were all samples from a site collected in a single day? How many branches were collected per site? Was each from a different individual?
Line 156: Precipitation may be taken up directly by foliage in some situations, and atmospheric moisture from fog can contribute significantly to the water uptake. Has the species being investigated been tested for direct uptake of precipitation or atmospheric moisture?
Line 164: It is not clear what difference is being calculated.
Figure 2: Please convert legend and axis labels to English.
Author Response
We are very grateful to the reviewer for their constructive comments and thoughtful suggestions. Based on these comments, we have made careful revision on the manuscript. The changes made to the text are highlighted in red so that they may be easily identified.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear authors,
This manuscript constitutes a very interesting and well performed study concerning contrasting water use strategies of Tamarix ramosissima in different habitats in the Northwest of Loess Plateau (China). The overall idea is interesting, and the methodology is very well described. The manuscript, in general, is clear, well-structured, and well written as also the results and the discussion. Figures are very well presented (but please translate to English axis’ titles of Figure 2).
Author Response
We are very grateful to the reviewer for their constructive comments and thoughtful suggestions. Based on these comments, we have made careful revision on the manuscript. The changes made to the text are highlighted in red so that they may be easily identified.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear authors,
This manuscript constitutes a very interesting and well performed study concerning contrasting water use strategies of Tamarix ramosissima in different habitats in the Northwest of Loess Plateau (China). The overall idea is interesting, and the methodology is very well described. The manuscript, in general, is clear, well-structured, and well written as also the results and the discussion. Figures are very well presented. So, I think that this revised version of the manuscript can be accepted for publication.
Author Response
We are very grateful to the reviewer for their comments and affirmations of the paper.
This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.
