Development-Ecological Protection Conflicts and Coordination at West Taijinel Salt Lake
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsI recommend that the manuscript be reorganized and shortened to focus on key elements of the study. I did not understand the major impetus for the study until I reached section 3.3. I would bring this section forward to the Introduction so that the reader understands why the study is being conducted.
A major feature of the paper is missing. Nowhere are the ecological benefits of the study defined, whether geographically or topically. As I understand, the ecological value of the original salt lakes has been destroyed by the extraction processes and that Duck Lake by default has the opportunity to retain some of the ecological services that have been lost by the commercial operations in the area. However, for that scenario to occur, it requires changes in the management of the inflows. I recommend reorganizing the manuscript to reflect this situation.
I believe that a successful manuscript would consist of the following:
1. a clear, concise statement of the problem
2. a description of the ecological services that have been lost because of the mineral extraction industry
3. an analysis of how some of these ecological characteristics can be recovered/preserved through better management of Duck Lake.
4. Explain how the problems & solutions presented in this analysis can be generalized to other slat lakes around the world.
Additionally, I recommend deleting Figure 4 because the economics of the mineral extraction are not relevant to the problem and solution. Also, the font for the text on the remaining figures is too small. Change Figure 3 to a bar chart. Figure 5 is difficult to follow because of the similarity of colors and shapes of symbols.
Comments on the Quality of English Language1. Excess wordiness
2. some capitalization issues (e.g., Duck Lake)
Author Response
The specific modifications can be found in the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe topic is interesting and important since salt lakes are important wetlands. But the manuscript is too long and hard to follow. You may consider to reorganize and shorten the text. You may add tables and give important conflicts and issues in these tables. Avoid giving too much details and focus on your main goals. The manuscript can be reconsidered after major revision.
Please see the attached pdf for more comments.
Check email address for Shaofeng Jia [email protected]?
Figure 1,Figure 2,Figure 3 . Increase the font size inside the figure and make them readable
Line 159: you may also give this value in US dollar and readers can have an idea for its importance.(38.5 million US dolllar I guess)
Line 370 give reference not clear
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Minor editing of English language required.
Line 27: They can be found discovered in variousa range of landscapes, such as coastal areas, estuaries, arid grasslands, salt lakes, and desert zones.
Line 210 Figure 5. is can be removed from text.
Line 434 cubic meters can be written as m3 (and other cubic meters in the text)
See the attached pdf for more comments.
Author Response
Specific modifications are shown in the annex
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThis is an excellent and important article. The Qaidam Basin was once among the most remote places on earth, but is now intensively exploited for the salts, which include many minerals, notably including lithium (now so valuable for batteries), as well as sodium salts and a range of alkaline minerals. There are enormous salt mining and extractive industrial complexes on all the lakes. Most of these lakes are within the vastly expanded limits of Golmud City, a middle-sized city in urban terms but one of the larger cities in the world in present geographic area. There has also been rapidly increasing tourism in this area. The present paper discusses the conflict (also rapidly increasing) between industry and ecology. The salt extraction and mining is not only expanding, but the ms opens with citations to Xi Jinping's personal deep interest in developing the mineral potential of the area. The ms goes on to describe the modifications in the lakes. The natural ones they discuss are now largely dry, but floodwaters in the river that feeds them were directed into a dyked area called "Duck Lake," which has become a substantial lake and waterbird migration stop. The article details the fast-changing shapes and water resource situation of the lakes as extractive industries rapidly grow, global warming melts the glaciers that supply the rivers, and global warming also somewhat increases the rainfall, leading to occasional flooding that disrupts mineral extraction. The article concludes with detailed recommendations on what to do to balance extraction and preserving what is left of local ecology. Obviously, the traditional landscape is gone forever, and alterations are now profound and increasing, so policies will have to target water conservation, enforcement of laws (not always done in the past, it appears), and development of preservation zones. The recommendations are good but no obvious efforts to follow them are visible at city, province, or national levels, and one hopes that somebody will take them seriously.
This is an important contribution to the growing literature on endorheic basins with salt lakes. Such lakes are under attack everywhere, and are drying up fast in most of the world, to the enormous loss of local ecosystems. This ms fills a substantial gap in world literature on these lakes. There are few other scholarly articles on the Qaidam Basin hydrology (though many on the mining).
This is an excellently done major article on an area almost totally unknown to the outside world. The main author is Dr. Jia, a well-known water scientist with a background in these dryland systems of inner China. Dr. Zha is a local authority on the mining situation.
The English is good, but capitalization of geographic names is erratic. The lake names should be consistently capitalized throughout. Also in lines 462 and 464 there is reference to "coccyx lakes," a mistranslation of a Chinese term I can only guess at--presumably referring to the placement of the lakes at the tail end of the river drainage. ("Coccyx" means "tail bone," not related to water resources.) Otherwise, Lake Urmia is mentioned once as a model--I wish it were, but it is almost totally dry now.
Finally, one error: several footnotes have evidently been dropped from the text but not from the footnote list, so there are 7 more footnotes in that list than are actually referenced in the text.
Comments on the Quality of English LanguageMinor problems as indicated in report
Author Response
Specific modifications are shown in the annex
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe manuscript is now better than the previous version. Table 1 summarizes the topic and status. Figures can now easily readable. It can be accepted after minor English edits.
Comments on the Quality of English Language
Minor edits
Figure 3 delete shows. A schematic diagram......
Same in figure 4
Line 198 570 kM2 write scientific style 570 km2 (check the whole manuscript for similar mistakes)
Author Response
My revisions to the manuscript are attached.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
