Effect of Straw Mulching and Deep Burial Mode on Water and Salt Transport Regularity in Saline Soils

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 2)

Dear colleagues, thank you for the new edition of the manuscript, it has been significantly improved. However, one remark remains. I didn't find the term "capillary barrier" in the text, although there are a lot of just "barriers". Also, I did not find among the references recommended in the previous review of works on the capillary barrier. I will repeat once again, technologies with capillary barriers are physically based technologies of soil engineering. It is the physical mechanism of the capillary barrier that provides the results you get and explains them. Both the term and the physical meaning of the "capillary barrier" are well known and understood by hydrophysicists, so it should also be used in the rating modern journal Water. Please make minor changes to the manuscript by adding the term capillary barrier and the corresponding references to the works on the soil engineering with capillary barriers from my previous review.

28 July 2023

With best wishes

Reviewer No. 2

Author Response

Reviewer 1

Comment 1: Please make minor changes to the manuscript by adding the term capillary barrier and the corresponding references to the works on the soil engineering with capillary barriers from my previous review.

Response: I have added the term “capillary barrier” accordingly in the Introduction, Results, and Discussion sections of the new manuscript and have added relevant literature works.

 

 

Reviewer 2 Report (New Reviewer)

Dear Authors

Your contribution has been well written in scientific and language presentation; however to my opinion it is very long and has the place to make it more compact in each section.

Author Response

Reviewer 2

Comment 1:Your contribution has been well written in scientific and language presentation; however, to my opinion it is very long and has the place to make it more compact in each section.

Response: I have made the new manuscript more compact by removing some unimportant elements.

Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)

Manuscript Title: Effect of straw mulching + deep burial mode on water and salt transport regularity in saline soils

The article is well written, however, I have found major errors in the manuscript that the authors need to address them. Some headings description are italic, do it according to journal requirement

Abstract:

The abstract should lighten the paper's key outcomes that can serve as a stand-alone document. However, authors have elaborated abstract in more simplified form. I suggest revising abstract and incorporate significant results in the abstract for a comparative framework.

Introduction:

Reference is wrongly cited, please correct as Carson et al. [13]. “Carson E. Dann et al. discovered that mulching with crop residues resulted in a 10-20% increase in water use efficiency[13]”, Do it throughout the manuscript.

Despite include recent, relevant literature citations in the Introduction, the authors missed to develop a proper hypothesis that they had tested. Please provide a sound hypothesis before stating the study's main goal.

Materials and methods:

Site description and climatic conditions

Give reference of this line “The climate of the area is warm-temperate continental monsoon climate, with mean annual evapotranspiration, mean annual precipitation, and mean annual air temperature of about 1982 mm, 552 mm, and 12 °C, respectively”.

“The climate of the area is warm-temperate continental monsoon climate, with mean annual evapotranspiration, mean annual precipitation, and mean annual air temperature of about 1982 mm, 552 mm, and 12 °C, respectively”. Remove the space between numerical number and centigrade and do it throughout the manuscript.

Results:

Results are well written.

Discussion:

It is more generalized and it is not explained in the light of the observed results. Please revise the discussion part for each parameter explaining the mechanism of action. I would like to invite authors to discuss more details aspects by using new references.

References

The authors are urged to thoroughly review all references because some of them do not actually adhere to the journal style.

 

I advise to correct the manuscript English by consulting with native English speakers

Author Response

Reviewer 3

Comment 1：Some headings description are italic, do it according to journal

requirement

Response: I have revised the formatting of the title description according to the journal requirements.

 

Comment 2: The abstract should lighten the paper's key outcomes that can serve as a stand-alone document.However, authors have elaborated abstract in more simplified form. I suggest revising abstract and incorporate significant results in the abstract for a comparative framework.

Response: In the novice manuscript I have partially rewritten the abstract and included important results to form a comparative framework.

 

Comment 3: Despite include recent, relevant literature citations in the Introduction, the authors missed to develop a proper hypothesis that they had tested. Please provide a sound hypothesis before stating the study's main goal. 

Response: The Introduction section I have partially rewritten in the new manuscript as you suggested.

 

Comment 4: Give reference of this line “The climate of the area is warm-temperate continental monsoon climate, with mean annual evapotranspiration, mean annual precipitation, and mean annual air temperature of about 1982 mm, 552 mm, and 12 °C, respectively”.

Response: I have corrected the section on "Location description and climatic conditions" and provide references as suggested.

 

Comment 5: It is more generalized and it is not explained in the light of the observed results. Please revise the discussion part for each parameter explaining the mechanism of action. I would like to invite authors to discuss more details aspects by using new references.

Response: In the Discussion section I have added an explanation of the mechanism of action and add new literature to discuss the details.

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report (New Reviewer)

Abstract:

You cannot used the direct abbreviation “SC, DB, S1D1, S2D1, and S1D2”

Introduction:

Reference number is missing “According to Yin et al., ground”

Rephrase this line “Straw, the most prevalent organic mulch material across all climatic zones, offers multiple advantages when utilized in the field, such as being suitable for soil water storage and improving crop yields by reducing soil evaporation and maintaining soil temperature in order to increase soil water availability”

Materials and methods:

Remove the space between number and centigrade “12 °C”

Why this heading text is italic “2.1.4 Sample collection and determination”, “2.2.1 Study area and site characterization”, “2.2.1 Study area and site characterization”, “2.2.2 Treatments”, and “2.2.3 Sample collection and determination”.

Once you have abbreviated the words the use the abbreviations instead of full words, do it throughout the manuscript.

Results and discussions:

Well written

 

 

 

 

English still needs to be improved 

Author Response

Comment 1: You cannot use the direct abbreviation “SC, DB, S1D1, S2D1, and S1D2”

Response: I have added an explanation of the abbreviations in the summary.

 

Comment 2: Reference number is missing “According to Yin et al., ground” . Rephrase this line “Straw, the most prevalent organic mulch material across all climatic zones, ….”

Response: I have placed the quote in the correct location and rewritten the sentence you are talking about in line 66.

 

Comment 3: Remove the space between number and centigrade “12 °C” . Why this heading text is italic “2.1.4 Sample collection and determination”, “2.2.1 Study area and site characterization”, “2.2.1 Study area and site characterization”, “2.2.2 Treatments”, and “2.2.3 Sample collection and determination”.

Response: I have removed the space between the number and changed the title to non-italicized.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

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.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper investigated the evaporation and salt contents variation caused by different mulching condition based on an indoor soil column experiment. The results are interesting and can be used to guide salt soil management, However, the drawbacks is also clear. There is only one round soil evaporation and salt accumulation process. The result concluded is not confirmed by another round experiment. In this case, the result is true in this special study and may not be corrected in other situation. Second, this study is not deeply analyzed the evaporation, soil salt accumulation and leaching mechanism and related influencing factors. Without these analyses, the results could be a special one and is not a general rule. Three, the analysis between evaporation and salt content in table 2 and 3 are much experiential. For example in table 2, the regression expressions are greatly influenced by evaporation potential. High and low evaporation potential could result in different expression. And lastly, the language is not good though I am not a English speaker. Some expressions and words are obscure and not commonly used words.

Other comments and suggestions can be found in the pasted file.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

This paper investigated the evaporation and salt contents variation caused by different mulching condition based on an indoor soil column experiment. The results are interesting and can be used to guide salt soil management, However, the drawbacks is also clear. There is only one round soil evaporation and salt accumulation process. The result concluded is not confirmed by another round experiment. In this case, the result is true in this special study and may not be corrected in other situation. Second, this study is not deeply analyzed the evaporation, soil salt accumulation and leaching mechanism and related influencing factors. Without these analyses, the results could be a special one and is not a general rule. Three, the analysis between evaporation and salt content in table 2 and 3 are much experiential. For example in table 2, the regression expressions are greatly influenced by evaporation potential. High and low evaporation potential could result in different expression. And lastly, the language is not good though I am not a English speaker. Some expressions and words are obscure and not commonly used words.

Other comments and suggestions can be found in the pasted file.

Author Response

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Colleagues!

I have read your work with interest and hopefully, after correcting the comments, I will see its publication in Water. The main remark concerns the use of the term "mulching". A mulch is a layer of material applied to the surface of soil (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulch). Therefore, the introduction of a layer of straw into the soil, this can no longer be called "mulching". What is it in terms of soil physics? Both the surface and especially the subsoil layer of straw are CAPILLARY BARRIERS. You can read about capillary barriers, their scientific design and use in soil engineering, for example, in " https://doi.org/10.1134/S1064229321090106 or (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/354575826_Capillary_Effects_in_Polydisperse_Systems_and_Their_Use_in_Soil_Engineering )". The second layer of straw in your experiment interrupts the capillary rise of the salt water. Therefore, washing with fresh water frees the topsoil from salt, and they can no longer return back. So it will be when using crushed stone, peat and other materials as capillary barriers, including hydrogels (https://doi.org/10.3390/polym14235131) or water repellent materials. I recommend that you make changes to the abstract and the text of the manuscript, using instead of "mulching", "capillary barrier", especially for the layer of straw inside the soil. I also ask you to indicate the texture (granulometric composition) of your soil. This is important to understand what the capillary rise can be in it.

For the future (not related to these laboratory experiments), try to answer the question of how in the field to close up the straw to a depth of 40 cm as a separate layer? It seems to me that this is a technically difficult and time-consuming problem. And the inevitable compaction and biodegradation of straw in a few years will destroy such a capillary barrier and its positive effect. Therefore, in small fields it is better to use crush stone or coarse sand, as in the Russian-Arab projects in Gulf (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/28239179; https://doi.org/10.1007/s40333-014-0068 -7). Or for large-scale areas, as it seems to me, the most technologically advantageous way is to use liquid-phase or gas-phase water repellents. I am sure that it is in your great country with a large, creative and hardworking people such large-scale projects will be implemented in the near future and "reasonable water" will stop secondary salinization of lands, the main problem of irrigated agriculture.

04 July 2023.

With best wishes, Yours sincerely, Reviewer

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript entitled Effect of double straw mulching on Water and salt transport regularity in saline soils aimed to identify the most effective straw mulching methods for reducing evaporation and suppressing salinity. I reviewed and found that this manuscript has flaws in the methods

-No information on soil Electrical Conductivity, and Exchangeable sodium percentage, or other indicator of salinity of used soil

-no clear description of how to transfer the original soil to PVC columns

-poor experimental design, no replication

-poor statistical data analysis