Comprehensive Monitoring and Ecological Risk Assessment of Heavy Metals in Soil and Surface Water of Chishui River Basin in Upper Reaches of the Yangtze River

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Authors presented very detailed and complete study on monitoring and risk assessment of content of heavy metals in river basin. Very specific dataset of analysis and detailed discussion on monitoring results, statistics and appropriate limits related to particular chineese case make this paper valuable. However, methods presented are well known; regional span of assessment is limited only to this case. Therefore orginality of the study is rather average, but worth to publish. I found this paper very concrete and with good quality of presentation. 

Some typos were found - needs minor revision.

Author Response

Responds to the reviewer’s comments

Dear Editors and Reviewers,

 

Thank you for your decision concerning our manuscript(ID: water-2412066).

 

We are very grateful for your constructive comments and important corrections. We have revised this paper according to the comments. We hope the revision meets up with the requirements of your esteemed journal.

 

Revised portion are marked in red color in the revised files, and the detailed responses to the reviewers are also listed below for your reference.

 

Thank you in advance for your final decision on this paper.

 

Best regards,

Ziwan Chen

 

List of Responses

 

General comments for Authors:

Authors presented very detailed and complete study on monitoring and risk assessment of content of heavy metals in river basin. Very specific dataset of analysis and detailed discussion on monitoring results, statistics and appropriate limits related to particular chineese case make this paper valuable. However, methods presented are well known; regional span of assessment is limited only to this case. Therefore orginality of the study is rather average, but worth to publish. I found this paper very concrete and with good quality of presentation.

Some typos were found - needs minor revision.

Response:

Thank you very much for the reviewer's approval of this article, and we are pleased that the article has been identified. We have checked and corrected the typos in the article, and we hope that the revised manuscript can meet the requests of this esteemed journal.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

In the manuscript provided by Xu and co-workers, comprehensive monitoring and ecological risk assessment of heavy metals in soil and surface water of Chishui River Basin in upper reaches of the Yangtze River, China have been studied. In my opinion, although this article contains new aspects, the manuscript can be accepted with major revisions at Water.

 

- English writing needs further polish.

- Abstract should be contained some quantitative results/findings.

- The keywords provided by the authors are mainly derived from the main title. The authors should try to provide some different keywords. This would increase the visibility of the paper by search engines if accepted for publication by the journal.

- Adverse health effects of analyzed elements must be presented in the introduction section. In so doing, it is suggested that the following articles be used as a reference:

Marine Pollution Bulletin, 123(1-2): 34-38 (2017).

Environmental Science and Pollution Research, 25(3): 2664-2671 (2018).

- The quality of the discussion section must be improved. In so doing, the authors must be organized the discussion from the general to the specific, linking your findings to the literature, then to theory, then practice and avoid repetition from the introduction.

- The "literature review" section of the manuscript must be improved. It is necessary to compare the results of the present study with previous similar studies.

- The 'conclusions part' must be improved. Therefore, please try to sharpen this further. The optimal conclusion should include:

* A summary of your key findings.

* A highlight of your hypothesis, new concepts, and innovations.

* A summary of key improvements compared to findings in the literature (provide a couple of references to indicate key improvements).

* Your vision for future work.

* Limitations of the study.

- For numbers in text and tables < 1.00, use three digits beyond the decimal point; for numbers between 1.00 and 9.99 use two digits beyond the decimal point; for numbers between 10.0 and 99.9, use one digit beyond the decimal point; and for concentrations ≥ 100, use the nearest whole number.

 

The paper has some typographical and grammatical errors which must be corrected. Therefore, the English language of the text should be strongly revised by a native English speaker with expertise in the scientific field and skills in scientific paper writing.

Author Response

Responds to the reviewer’s comments

Dear Editors and Reviewers,

 

Thank you for your decision concerning our manuscript(ID: water-2412066).

 

We are very grateful for your constructive comments and important corrections. We have revised this paper according to the comments. We hope the revision meets up with the requirements of your esteemed journal.

 

Revised portion are marked in red color in the revised files, and the detailed responses to the reviewers are also listed below for your reference.

 

Thank you in advance for your final decision on this paper.

 

Best regards,

Ziwan Chen

 

List of Responses

 

General comments for Authors:

In the manuscript provided by Xu and co-workers, comprehensive monitoring and ecological risk assessment of heavy metals in soil and surface water of Chishui River Basin in upper reaches of the Yangtze River, China have been studied. In my opinion, although this article contains new aspects, the manuscript can be accepted with major revisions at Water.

Response:

Thank you very much for the reviewer's approval of this article, and we are pleased that the article has been identified. We have made revisions to the manuscript as requested by the reviewer, and have also checked and corrected language errors in the article. We hope that the revised manuscript can meet the requests of this esteemed journal.

 

Comment 1:

English writing needs further polish.

The paper has some typographical and grammatical errors which must be corrected. Therefore, the English language of the text should be strongly revised by a native English speaker with expertise in the scientific field and skills in scientific paper writing.

Response:

We have checked the language of the article sentence by sentence and invited colleagues with good English proficiency to polish the language issues. We hope the language can meet the requirements of our publication.

 

Comment 2:

Abstract should be contained some quantitative results/findings.

Response:

We have added some results in the abstract section, including quantitative indicators such as surface water chemistry results and comprehensive ecological risk index, to define the water and soil environmental quality of the entire region.

 

Comment 3:

The keywords provided by the authors are mainly derived from the main title. The authors should try to provide some different keywords. This would increase the visibility of the paper by search engines if accepted for publication by the journal.

Response:

We have taken note of the reviewer's suggestions regarding keywords, and we strongly agree with them. According to the reviewer's suggestion, we have added two new keywords and adjusted the expression of two of them. The modified keyword section can not only meet the journal's requirements but also increase the visibility of the paper.

 

Comment 4:

Adverse health effects of analyzed elements must be presented in the introduction section. In so doing, it is suggested that the following articles be used as a reference:

Marine Pollution Bulletin, 123(1-2): 34-38 (2017).

Environmental Science and Pollution Research, 25(3): 2664-2671 (2018).

Response:

We have noticed some research findings on the accumulation of heavy metals in the food chain and their risks to human health, which will help to provide an overview of the impact of heavy metals on human health in this article. Therefore, we have cited these two research findings in the introduction section. References can be found in [14-15].

 

Comment 5:

The quality of the discussion section must be improved. In so doing, the authors must be organized the discussion from the general to the specific, linking your findings to the literature, then to theory, then practice and avoid repetition from the introduction.

Response:

Thank you for your constructive comment. We have modified this manuscript for its’ discussion section according to your comments. As your advice, we have modified by the discussion linking our findings to the literature, then to theory, then practice.

 

Comment 6:

The "literature review" section of the manuscript must be improved. It is necessary to compare the results of the present study with previous similar studies.

Response:

Thank you for your pertinent comment. We strongly agree with the importance of comparing previous research results. We have revised this manuscript in the discussion and conclusion sections.

 

Comment 7:

The conclusions part must be improved. Therefore, please try to sharpen this further. The optimal conclusion should include:

* A summary of your key findings.

* A highlight of your hypothesis, new concepts, and innovations.

* A summary of key improvements compared to findings in the literature (provide a couple of references to indicate key improvements).

* Your vision for future work.

* Limitations of the study.

Response:

Thank you for your meticulous comment. We have revised the conclusion section according to the reviewer's suggestions. In this section, we elaborated on the innovative points and main findings of this study, and compared the differences between this study and previous research results. We also elaborated on the limitations of this research work and the plans and prospects for the next steps. We sincerely hope to receive further guidance from the reviewers in our future work.

 

Comment 8:

For numbers in text and tables < 1.00, use three digits beyond the decimal point; for numbers between 1.00 and 9.99 use two digits beyond the decimal point; for numbers between 10.0 and 99.9, use one digit beyond the decimal point; and for concentrations ≥ 100, use the nearest whole number.

Response:

Thank you for your pertinent comment, and we strongly agree. We have made unified modifications to all the numbers according to the reviewer's requirements, except for the following two parts, which we believe are more appropriate to express in the original way:

Firstly, for the section related to environmental capacity parameters in this paper. In this article, we predicted the changes in soil environmental capacity on a scale of 50 to 100 years. The annual variation of dynamic environmental capacity is very small, and the variation pattern may be ignored if more significant numbers are not used to express it. Therefore, we will uniformly express the environmental capacity parameters in the paper with 4 significant digits.

Secondly, Table 2 of this article cites the 'background values of soil (layer A) in China', and we believe that changing the author's original data digits is inappropriate. Therefore, we have retained the original data digits cited in Table 2.

We have made unified revisions to the numbers in the remaining parts of the paper according to the reviewer's requirements.

Special thanks to you for all your good comments again.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The revised manuscript has addressed my concerns and I agree with its publication in present form.

 

 

 

The English of the manuscript is well-written.