Spatial Coupling Characteristics and Factors Influencing Soil–Vegetation Relationships in the Lower Part of the Shiyang River Basin

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

I believe it's a nice study, but it would be better if the changes I suggested were made.

It would be meaningful to include the percentage or numerical data obtained in the summary section.

In the conclusion part, it should be supported a little more with other literature information.

Since the data in Table 3 are all numerical, it is very difficult to interpret. Therefore, I strongly recommend giving the data here by making a bar graph as in Figure 6. After making this table a bar chart, showing each value on the columns will provide a great convenience for both understanding and interpretation. At the same time, readers are more interested in visual materials and increasing the impact of the article.

Author Response

We are very grateful to the reviewers for their support and affirmation of our research.According to your valuable suggestions, we have made some supplements and revisions to the paper. In addition, according to your suggestion, the content of Table 3 has been represented by pictures. Please refer to the revised manuscript for details of the revisions and supplements.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper investigates the spatial coupling of the soil and vegetation in the lower part of the Shiyang river basin. This paper presents most of the information clearly. But there are several major issues as detailed below.

1. Lack of innovation. The analysis methods used in this paper have been well established in literature. 

2. Research models need to be justified. Some examples are listed as follows.

a. NDWI in equation (1) is mainly for water bodies, not suitable for soil moisture in this study.

b. For the coupling model, what is the parameter v before fvci in the denominator of equation (6)? Please provide detailed derivations or references for this equation. 

c. Please provide detailed explanations/analysis on why the weight of the soil moisture was determined to be 0.7 and the weight of soil salinization was 0.3.

3. Results and Analysis sections need to be reorganized. 

a. The analysis should focus more in the area where vegetation cover is more than 20%. Because for very low vegetation cover, it is obvious from the equations that the coupling coefficient and coupling coordination level would be low. But most of study area in this paper has vegetation cover less than 20%.

b. Some plots such as the lower-right figure of Figures 2, 3 and 4, and Figure 8 need more explanations on how these plots were generated and the findings. Some analysis and tables are tedious and need to be simplified, such as Table 3.

c. More analysis is needed for spatial coupling coordination under different vegetation cover scenarios, such as what is the trend and why.

4. There are no significant results. The results presented in this paper are not new.

 

Author Response

We are very grateful to the experts careful review and Give an honest opinion for our work. According to your points, we have responded and explained in the letter, and we have revised the manuscript according to your comments. Please see the revised manuscript for details. We hope that our modifications and answers can be accepted by you.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf