A New Framework to Assess Sustainability of Soil Improving Cropping Systems in Europe

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The identification of indicators that evaluate the sustainability of the soil is a contribution of interest in the study of land use. Althougt the results are not conclusive, the text describes a methodology  that can help quantify the economic, social and environmental dimension of the soil, whicch represents an advance in research on soil quality using cover crops.

For this reason, my assessment is that the work is of sufficient importance to be published, although I would recommend including the biological studies that are cited in the discussion but are not refenced in the results section.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you for your valuable comments and feedback. We provided these references in the results (L369-372) with their implications.

With our best regards

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript deals with a decision tree for assessing  agricultural sustainability. The decision tree was tested for the assessment of the impact of the integration of cover crops into the crop rotation. The topic is of interest and fits the journal. The manuscript is generally well written and easy to follow. I raise two issues that the authors may consider.

1. The authors list the weight of indicators in Table 1. Each value is fixed. Is it possible to give an uncertainty range for each indicator? If so, the final effect may have an uncertainty assessment. And a sensitivity analysis may be required.
2. The authors highlighted  soil improving cropping systems in Europe in the TITLE while the test was only in Germany. The author may give a meaningful TITLE or clarify the implication of the case test to Europe.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you very much for your valuable and constructive comments and feedback.

The authors list the weight of indicators in Table 1. Each value is fixed. Is it possible to give an uncertainty range for each indicator? If so, the final effect may have an uncertainty assessment. And a sensitivity analysis may be required.

Reply:

Sensitivity analysis determines how different values of an independent variable affect a particular dependent variable under a given set of assumptions. By creating a given set of variables, we could determine how changes in one variable affect the outcome. We do not have these input data (from different Sites of the same key topic and under the same conditions). Because the weighting factor values are based on expert knowledge (L127), and the affected dependent variables are qualitative and not quantitative (environmental, sociocultural, and economic dimensions), we cannot do this analysis.

The authors highlighted soil improving cropping systems in Europe in the TITLE while the test was only in Germany. The author may give a meaningful TITLE or clarify the implication of the case test to Europe.

Reply:

The method developed is intended to assess the sustainability of the SICS related to the four key topics considered in study sites across Europe. In paragraph L91-97, we specified “across Europe” to explicitly show that our method was designed to be used at the European study sites. It is also stated that the aim of our method was “to allow comparison and upscaling” L96-97.

In addition, the assessment tool contains the four key topics found at the European level within SoilCare. The user can choose the key topic he/she wants to consider in the calculations (see S1). 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The article is clearly written, presenting in detail each methodological step and discussing the results against the previously published literature. I have just one recommendation to the authors: in a statistical-based approach, they make a statistical assessment of which relationships are statistically significant and which are not, but in the Results section only the final output is presented. I suggest adding the presentation of steps of the analysis in more detail, showing intermediate outputs and the values of the indicator based on which the decision of statistical significance was taken.

Taking into consideration the above-mentioned suggestion I recommend the article for publication with minor revision.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you very much for your valuable and constructive comments and feedback. Please find below our reply and the revised version of the manuscript.

The article is clearly written, presenting in detail each methodological step and discussing the results against the previously published literature. I have just one recommendation to the authors: in a statistical-based approach, they make a statistical assessment of which relationships are statistically significant and which are not, but in the Results section only the final output is presented. I suggest adding the presentation of steps of the analysis in more detail, showing intermediate outputs and the values of the indicator based on which the decision of statistical significance was taken.

Reply:

We added the Supplementary material S3 showing the results of the statistical analysis. We also refer to this SM in L371-372.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx