Relationships between Near-Surface Horizontal Dust Fluxes and Dust Depositions at the Centre and Edge of the Taklamakan Desert
, Meiqi Song 1,2,3,*, Ye Wu 1,2,3, Xiefei Zhi 1,6, Fan Yang 1,2,3,4,5, Mingjie Ma 1,2,3, Chenglong Zhou 1,2,3,4, Xinghua Yang 1,2,3,4, Ali Mamtimin 1,2,3,4,5 and Qing He 1,2
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors have addressed my comments. This manuscript could be sufficient for publication.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer #1's Comments:
Wen Huo and co-authors
(11/06/2022)
Overall comments：
The authors have addressed my comments. This manuscript could be sufficient for publication.
Response:
We really appreciate reviewer #1 for giving full recognition to the manuscript.
Once again, we thank reviewer #1 for recommending our work to be published.
We also appreciate the constructive advice of all reviews on the manuscript and agree with all of the proposed suggestions. They are helpful for improving this paper. According to these suggestions, we have checked the whole manuscript carefully and we have also clarified some issues in the manuscript.
We believe that the further revised manuscript adequately addresses all the reviewers' comments and suggestions. The reviewers can be convinced by our careful revisions. We also followed very carefully to the suggestions of the LAND editor and asked an English editorial officer to help us improve the English presentation in the revised manuscript. We are confident that our manuscript will be more readable and scientific before publication.
The following picture is the proof of manuscript retouching, which is from MDPI.
See PDF file for pictures
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The revised draft has basically completed the modification requirements I put forward, and the quality of the manuscript has been improved. It is suggested to be published after some minor modifications.
Author Response
Response to Reviewer #2's Comments:
Wen Huo and co-authors
(11/06/2022)
Overall comments：
The revised draft has basically completed the modification requirements I put forward, and the quality of the manuscript has been improved. It is suggested to be published after some minor modifications.
Response:
We really appreciate reviewer #2 for giving full recognition to the manuscript.
Once again, we thank reviewer #2 for recommending our work to be published.
We also appreciate the constructive advice of all reviews on the manuscript and agree with all of the proposed suggestions. They are helpful for improving this paper. According to these suggestions, we have checked the whole manuscript carefully and we have also clarified some issues in the manuscript.
We believe that the further revised manuscript adequately addresses all the reviewers' comments and suggestions. The reviewers can be convinced by our careful revisions. We also followed very carefully to the suggestions of the LAND editor and asked an English editorial officer to help us improve the English presentation in the revised manuscript. We are confident that our manuscript will be more readable and scientific before publication.
Specific modifications are as follows:
- We have revised the author's information, please see lines 5-6 for details.
- We have revised the abstract as a whole, including abbreviations. Please see lines 18-38 of the manuscript for details.
- We revised the keywords, paying special attention to the case of initial letters. lease see lines 39-40 of the manuscript for details.
- We have made a lot of changes to the introduction as a whole. Please see lines 43-151 for details.
- We revised the abbreviations of the full text, including figures and tables.
- We have carefully revised chapter 2.
- We have carefully revised the text of the result analysis in Chapter 3.
- We have carefully revised the text discussed in Chapter 4.
- We have carefully revised the conclusions of Chapter 5.
- We have carefully revised the author's contribution.
- We have carefully revised the references.
- The following picture is the proof of manuscript retouching, which is from MDPI.
- See PDF file for pictures
Reviewer 3 Report
the manuscript should be improve including syntax/language, literature, while they make difficult to follow it.
the new revision only added some of text, NOT change the expression. in this regard, the manuscript should be improve, while I could not find any novelty compared with the others. the authors could not make me sense what they want to express in the text, figs, etc. the text is very simple. In general, I will give the authors another chance to improve the text with more details.
Regards,
Author Response
Response to Reviewer #3's Comments:
Wen Huo and co-authors
(11/06/2022)
Overall comments：
The manuscript should be improve including syntax/language, literature, while they make difficult to follow it.
the new revision only added some of text, NOT change the expression. in this regard, the manuscript should be improve, while I could not find any novelty compared with the others. the authors could not make me sense what they want to express in the text, figs, etc. the text is very simple. In general, I will give the authors another chance to improve the text with more details.
Overall Reply:
We are very grateful to reviewer #3 for giving us the opportunity to revise our manuscript.
By following the reviewer #3 comments, we fully agree with the particular comments that the English presentation of our original submission needed significant improvement and that the article needs to be resubmitted with a major revision. During the revision, we have spent considerable time on further improving the descriptions and discussions in the manuscript and correcting a large number of English grammar errors. The quality of resubmitted manuscript has been greatly improved. We believe that the further revised manuscript adequately addresses all the reviewers' comments and suggestions. The reviewers can be convinced by our careful revisions. We also followed very carefully to the suggestions of the LAND editor and asked an English editorial officer to help us improve the English presentation in the revised manuscript. Our detailed responses as follow Particular comments.
It is important to note that by following the reviewer’s comments, we revised the manuscript in many details. The quality of resubmitted manuscript has been greatly improved. We believe that the further revised manuscript adequately addresses all the reviewers' comments and suggestions. Therefore, the line numbers of the re-submitted manuscript may not correspond to the original version and our detailed responses as follow:
- First of all, we have revised the overall format of the manuscript to make it meet the publishing requirements.
- We revised the abbreviations of the full text, including figures and tables.
- We have revised the author's information, please see lines 5-6 for details.
- We have revised the abstract as a whole, including abbreviations. Please see lines 18-38 of the manuscript for details.
- We revised the keywords, paying special attention to the case of initial letters. lease see lines 39-40 of the manuscript for details.
- We have made a lot of changes to the introduction as a whole. Including improving the readability of the introduction, clearly putting forward the scientific significance and innovation of our work, and adding new references to improve the logic of the introduction. Please see lines 43-151 for details.
- We have revised the empirical design section to make it clearer. Please See lines 154-160 of the article for details.
- Revised the title of subsection 2.2. Please See lines 167 of the article for details.
- Revised the content of subsection 2.2. Please See lines 168-172 of the article for details.
- Revised the content of subsection 2.3. Please See lines 188-195 of the article for details.
- Revised the content of subsection 2.4. Please See lines 197-203 of the article for details.
- Revised the title of subsection 3.1. Please See lines 205-206 of the article for details.
- Revised the title of Figure 2. Please See lines 209-210 of the article for details.
- Revised the content of subsection 3.1. The annual variation law of D and Q is expounded. Please See lines 214-218 of the article for details.
- The analysis angles are described, one is the time scale, the other is the vertical section. Please See lines 219 and 232 of the article for details.
- Revised the title of subsection 3.2. Please See lines 241-242 of the article for details.
- Revised the content of subsection 3.2. The reason why the four sandstorm processes are selected is explained, and the reason why the particle composition of the two observation points is inconsistent is explained. Please See lines 245-263 of the article for details.
- Revised the title of Figure 3. Please See lines 274-275 of the article for details.
- Revised the content of subsection 3.3. Make the manuscript more logical. Please See lines 290-291 of the article for details.
- Revised the title of Figure 4. Please See lines 294-295 of the article for details.
- Revised the title of Figure 5. Please See lines 301 of the article for details.
- A number of changes have been made to subsection 3.4，The reason for the vertical distribution difference between the two observation points is explained. Please See lines 327-343 of the article for details.
- Revised the title of Figure 6. Please See lines 345 of the article for details.
- We have carefully revised the text discussed in Chapter 4. Mainly including the polishing of language. Please See lines 348-357 and 374 of the article for details.
- We have carefully revised the text discussed in Chapter 5. Mainly including the polishing of language. Please See lines 388-394 of the article for details.
- We have carefully revised the author's contribution. Please See lines409-410 of the article for details.
- We carefully revised the format of all references and checked the citation order according to the requirements of the article
- The following picture is the proof of manuscript retouching, which is from MDPI.
- See PDF file for pictures.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
Dear authors,
Unfortunately, the text still carries poor phrases, unlike a scientific work, with many mistakes related to concepts. The manuscript should be edited in a scientific expression by an English native. the authors can follow some of my suggestions and comments as bellow.
Line 41-42: the phrase “The migration of dust particles with sandstorms and other disastrous weather patterns has a certain negative impact on the ecological environment”
Line 44: add the refs at the end of the phrase “…., resulting in regional and even global climate and environmental changes (Kok et al., 2018; Kosmopoulos et al., 2017; Schepanski et al., 2018; Valenzuela et al., 2017; doi:10.1175/JCLI4056.1; etc.).”
Line 45: add the relevant refs at the end of the phrase “the transport of dust particles poses a serious threat to human health (refs)
in line 54: add all of following references at the end of this phrase "....: emission, transport, and deposition (refs)" (10.3390/rs14092099; 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.155315; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosres.2020.105364; 10.1016/j.apr.2022.101395; 10.1016/j.gr.2022.04.019; https://doi.org/10. 1007/s11783-017-0904-z).
line 57: add relevant refs. and open the concept in details
line 60: Not start with “we” or some subjects like that. Ex: “The study ...”.
line 65-67: revise the phrase with the stating like “currently, many recent studies ….”.
line 69-71: you should completely revise it
line 77: remove “and so on”
line 78: what does you mean, replace “desertification” to “hyper-arid, arid, semi-arid and lake dried beds”
line 79: what is your mean about “measurement data”? ground-based measurement? or something others such reanalysis, etc??? Make me clear.
Line 80: where is the number of the ref. in front of the “Zhang et al.[?]” and check others in the text. There are many like mentioned: line 84, 92, 94, 100, etc.
Line 81-82: add MODIS at the end of the phrase “moderate-resolution imaging spectroradiometer satellite (MODIS)”. The authors should be checking the all like that in the manuscript.
Line 90-92: it should grammatically re-write
Line 92: I really did not get this “dust flux measurements” what you mean!!!
Line 94-96: rephrase it in a best way.
Line 109: add the refs at the end of the phrase “…..dust transport is influenced by both weather processes (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aeolia.2022.100771; http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aeolia.2015.06.006; https://doi.org/10.1002/2015JD024092; etc. in China)”
Line 115: add some relevant ref. else. You have to extract the deficiencies form previous researches.
Line 115-128: re-write it in a scientific way. Not clear
Line 129-134: same before, not clear
Line 135: what does it mean “observational data”??
Line 136: the phrase “The remainder of the paper” should be rephrase such as “the present study/research follow …”
Line 241-248: re-organize it
Line 258-260: I really could not follow it, so confusing
Line 268-271: rephrase it
Line 275-277: rephrase it. I could not get it
I really could not follow the rest of the text because of the syntax. The manuscript is following a poor syntax/language as previously mentioned.
Regards,
Author Response
Dear reviewer：
Response to Reviewer #3's Comments:
Wen Huo and co-authors
(17/06/2022)
First of all, thank the reviewer #3 for taking the valuable time to comment on our work. The reviewers gave many constructive opinions, which helped to improve the quality and scientific nature of our manuscripts. So, once again, thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Secondly, according to these suggestions, we have checked the whole manuscript carefully and we have also clarified some issues in the manuscript.
Please see the attachment for details. Thank you！
Yours Wen Huo
Best wishes for you
Regards
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
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 deals with horizontal dust flux and dust deposition. Datasets of two stations were used. I find this a worthwhile study in terms of dust transport in the Taklamakan. I am not would recommend this article to be published in its current form. If the authors can address the comments below and clearly demonstrate the aspect of novelty in this study, it potentially could be sufficient for publication.
- In the title, “Dust Deposition” should be replaced by “Dust Depositions”.
- Abstract, I think that authors should offer some messages of the field experiment, for example location and period.
- Generally, F is vertical dust flux, another letter may be suited. Q should be italic.
- Keywords, “Dust storm” should be replaced by “Sandstorm”.
- Line 22, “the understanding” should be “understand”?
- Line 45-46, “The dust emission process includes dust initiation, saltation height, and emission volume”, saltation height?
- Line 50-60, new research results should added.
- Line102, “discussion” should be replaced by “discussions”.
- The graphs are at a low resolution, probably when converted to pdf format. Please make sure that the figures will be at a much better resolution than the present one.
- Line116, The abbreviation “BSNE” should be explained at its first use.
- Figure 2, 4 and 5, the units of Q and F were incorrect, and corresponding parts of the manuscript.
- Figure 3, What standard of the classifications of particle size were in accordance with ?
- The conclusions are not a second abstract summarizing the manuscript, but simply should show how the objectives of the manuscript were fulfilled and the progress of our knowledge.
- The figures (Figure 1-5) are not very clearly.
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper carried out an analysis of the relationship between the horizontal dust flux(Q) and dust deposition (F) in two sites in Taklimakan desert. The topic is interesting for readers. However, there are some parts need to be improved.
(1) In order to construct the relationship between dust deposition and horizontal flux, the sample size should be clearly explained. If the sample number is not big enough, the relationship is not convincing, which can neither explain the relationship in Xiaotang nor explain the influence of topography on the relationship in Tazhong.
(2) The maximum wind speed used in analyzing the relationship between F and Q and atmospheric dynamics in the sandstorm process should be clearly defined the maximum horizontal wind speed or vertical wind speed component. How wind speed variable is defined and measured should be clearly explained, especially how wind speed variable and dust flux variable data in FIG. 5 are matched in time, and how many samples are used to build this relationship? If the sample number is not large enough, the relationship between the maximum wind speed and dust flux（deposition） given in FIG. 5 is unconvincing.
Reviewer 3 Report
Dears,
I could not find any invention and novelty in the work, since the text extremely follow a poor language. It is only illustrated a simple graphs of the data and without any clue(s)
Regards
