Study on the Driving Mechanism of Ecohydrological Regime in the Wandering Section of the Lower Yellow River
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThis article takes the runoff changes of three typical hydrological stations in the lower reaches of the Yellow River as the research object, and systematically analyzes the stages, periodicity, and trends of their changes using various methods. And the relative contribution rates of relevant influencing factors were estimated using effective methods. The research methods used are reasonable, and the results and conclusions obtained are reliable. It has a certain reference value for river management and ecological protection in the lower reaches of the Yellow River.
The specific issues that need to be addressed and modified in the text are as follows:
1. Pay attention to abbreviations, some abbreviations are incorrect, such as: ‘HJT’ on line 28 maybe ‘JHT’.
2. The cited references in the introduction of this article are basically gradually cited according to their serial numbers. This is biased. Because some of the literature cited earlier is also suitable for re citation in subsequent citations. It is recommended to give sufficient attention to this issue.
3. There is a significant deficiency in the introduction of data materials in the '2.1 Study area and data' section. Suggest clearly stating the time span of the hydrological and meteorological data involved.
4. In the section ‘2.1 Study area and data’, the introduction of data materials needs to be more detailed. For example, meteorological data specifically refers to precipitation, temperature, or evapotranspiration, as well as which meteorological station or specific interval within the watershed these data belong to, all of which need to be explained in detail.
5. In the section ‘2.3 Hydrological index characteristics analysis’, there is a lack of citation or inaccurate citation for some research methods (some citations are based on second-hand literature rather than original methods, such as the SCRCQ method, without citing literature 7 that proposed this method).
6. In section ‘3.2 Characteristics of the hydrological regime’, all terms with units with ‘m^3/s’ refer to ‘discharge’ rather than ‘runoff’ (including the vertical coordinate names in Figure 3). Please make careful modifications.
7. Although there seems to be a good correlation between precipitation and runoff changes from the perspective of cumulative relationships, the precipitation data used in this article at the locations of the three hydrological stations in the lower Yellow River are not representative enough. Because the precipitation in this section of the river has almost no impact on the changes in runoff at the corresponding hydrological station, while what affects is the total annual precipitation in the basin above the hydrological station.
8. In the discussion section, there are significant shortcomings in the analysis of certain phenomena in citing relevant research work. For example, the contribution rate of various factors to changes in runoff can be cited from similar research work on the Yellow River Basin; Regarding the impact of the construction of the Xiaolangdi Reservoir, it is also necessary to cite published references related to the research area.
9. The structure of the article needs to be adjusted. For example, the statement in section 4.3 is almost unrelated to the research results, and it would be better to include it in the ‘3. Results’ section.
10. The area data in ‘a total of 124.057 million km² of land in the Yellow River Basin’ on line 472 is incorrect (Note: The total area of the Yellow River Basin is approximately 750000 km²). It needs to be corrected.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for Authors1. In this study wide spectra of modern statistical analysis were applied to hydrological characteristics of large river.
2. The results of the implementation and interpretation of the presented material represent a useful example implementation of a set of the statistical approaches to studies of time series and thus they have remarkable interest in the studies of time series carried out in wide spectra of science, especially ecology.
Comments:
1. Authors used the expressions "baseline period" and "measurement period" (lines 96-98) only once. These expressions look conceptually important, but they appear only once without explanation and further development.
2. There are no Objectives" in the Abstract, though it would be desirable.
3. Some of the Figure legends are absent (e.g., Fig. 3); together with extra small fonts of the legends, this hinders understanding of the figures (e. g., Fig. 4).
4. Authors use the term "mutation" to describe a singular point (1985). I think, that the term "disturbance" would be more correct.
5. In my opinion, the Authors did not properly explain the importance of the search for the "mutation point". Perhaps, the search for the special period which could be considered as a "steady state" of the hydrological conditions would be nor less important..
5. The Authors write "Budyko's hypothesis" without any explanation of what this hypothesis means.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe author has made careful revisions based on the suggestions of the reviewers, and the quality of the paper has also significantly improved. The reviewer believes that the paper has met the academic requirements for publication.
