Geochemical Data and Fluid Inclusion Study of the Middle Miocene Halite from Deep Borehole Huwniki-1, Situated in the Inner Zone of the Carpathian Foredeep in Poland
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The ms minerals-1026552, Bukowski et al., deals with basic geochemical data concerning salt deposits and related fluid inclusions from the deepest part of the Carphatian Huwniki-1 well. The ms address a target relevant for paleoenvironmental and paleoclimate restoration although I believe much more efforts are needed to gain deeply detailed results.If that is the case, I suggest the Authors to highlight that this paper is just a first step of a more comprehensive project.
Following some very minor suggestions:
line 83: “belt occupied” instead of “beltoccupied”
lines 90-91: “only” occurs too much times in this statement. The statement may be re-written.
line 145: “halite and was also” instead of “halite was also”.
line 225: “Like bromine contents, also the content” instead of “Like bromine contents; also, the content”
line 236: what does exactly mean “more or less constant”?
line 347: “well, is of” instead of “well,isof”.
Author Response
Thank you for your review. All your comments have been included in the text (red font). According to your suggestion, at the end of the article was attached a sentence that paper is just a first step of a more comprehensive project.
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript by Bukowski et al. presents a geochemical study of Miocene halite preserved below the frontal orogenic wedge from a depth of ~5 km. Primary fluid inclusions provide access to elements that can resolve the Miocene seawater and in addition confirm input from fresh water. One of the key evidence presented is perhaps not immediately evident to the reader is the fact that primary fluid inclusions have survived to depths of 5 km without being compromised. The scientific community generally accepts that halite deforms after 5000 ft depth whereas the authors have convincing evidence of primary halite-hosted inclusions being undeformed at 5 km depth. Maybe the authors are not aware of this valuable finding.
The evidence presented by the authors are solid and convincing, providing the background for a clear and logical discussion. The conclusions drawn by the authors are logical and make sense.
Minor (cosmetic) typos occur and suggestions are made below:
Line 23 – I leave it up to the authors’ choice to use “occurs” but I suggest using “is intersected”.
Lines 24-25 – I suggest changing the grammar of “presence of the chevron structure relics” to “the presence of chevron relics”.
Line 40 – Are the authors referring to “bromine” or “bromide”? Bromine is Br2 whereas bromide is the Br- ion.
Lines 47-48 – The authors need to clarify if they are reporting the isotopic composition of the mineral or the fluid inclusion aqueous phase. For d2H we can assume that the measurement was of the aqueous phase whereas for gypsum, was it the mineral, aqueous phase or the dissolved gas d18O?
Lines 55-58 – It is important to report this. I commend the authors for doing so. Traditionally most believe that primary halite becomes deformed after 1.6 km whereas the authors confirm what I have observed in some settings. Nice observation.
Line 101 – I suggest changing the word “built” as this word does not quite work.
Line 103 – I suggest changing “drilled at” to “intersected from”.
Line 126 – Line ends with 2 periods. Delete one.
Line 138 – Replace the comma in “5,001,7” to make it “5,001.7”.
Line 142 – A space is missing after the comma in “(up to 1 cm thick),could be observed” which should read “(up to 1 cm thick), could be observed”.
Line 157 – I suggest changing the second word “from” and replacing it with “within” to read “collected within the core from the …”.
Line 158 – Similar to line 40, are the authors referring to Bromine or bromide? Please check the remainder of the manuscript, especially section 5.1.
Figure 5. If available, this figure could be improved by providing the analytical error with each measurement. As analyses are reported in integers, the analytical error could be most valuable.
Line 253 – The authors comment that the 3-phase (gas-liquid-anhydrite) inclusions are diagenetic. It is possible to have halite and anhydrite co-precipitating as primary inclusions. The evidence to support this phenomenon would be the 3-phase inclusions occurring as linear primary trails, similar to the banding described in the previous paragraph.
Line 346 – I suggest adding an “a” to change the beginning of this line to “lead to a strontium deficiency”.
Line 347 – Space are needed in the middle of the line so that it reads: “Huwniki-1 well, is of secondary”.
Line 348 – A suggestion is to change the last word in this line from “proved” to either demonstrates or implies or infers. I leave it to the authors to decide.
Author Response
Thank you for your review. Almost all your comments have been included in the text (red font), however, we decided not to include the measurement error in figure 5. Thank you for paying attention to the term "bromide" and "bromine," these names are commonly used interchangeably in the literature. In the manuscript, we corrected it to “bromide” when we write about Br- ions. Traditionally if we write about Br content in halite we use "bromine content" or "Br content".
