Research on Soil and Nutrient Losses through Liquid Runoff, in Order to Mitigate the Climate Risks to Which Romania Is Exposed, in the Context of CAP

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

congrat. for such a highly -demanded reults

I have not direct objection regarding the soundness of the the work, except one suggestion, which can be kept in mind by the authors for further works.

Nutrient leaching from the soil matrix is under influence of rainfall intensity. So, i do suggrst to take your work into further step by testing the amount of nutrient leaching under different rainfall intensities, and then finding the relationship between the nutrient leaching and rainfall intensities.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your appreciation. We will take into consideration your suggestion.

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript is devoted to the study of erosion losses of nutrients in agricultural fields in Romania. The topic of the study is relevant, because in Romania there is a large proportion of erosion-prone lands. The topic is practically in demand. Firstly, measures are needed to rehabilitate disturbed lands. Secondly, the National Strategic Plan to support farmers is developed for this purpose. The interesting practical material presented in the manuscript needs further elaboration. Below are suggestions for improving the manuscript and some comments that may help the authors to do so.

 

General questions to the manuscript and recommendations for improvement

 

The data in Table 2 should be discussed in detail: as a whole for the experimental field, separately for the sections and their raised and lowered parts. And as noted below in the corrections, the order of discussion should be aligned with the order of characteristics in the table.

The data in Tables 3, 4, 5, 6  should be discussed at least something.

Almost the same should be said about the discussion of the data in Tables 7 and 8. It is not enough to indicate the minimum and maximum losses for the studied parameters, it is necessary to describe more detail as et page 12, what factors may have influenced the increase or decrease of these losses (cultivated crop, the doses of fertilizers etc.).

The data in Tables 9 and 10 should also be analyzed.

The numerical values in the tables are presented to the third or fourth decimal place. It is unlikely that such precision is justified in the analysis of field measurements. In addition, the manuscript does not indicate the repetition of measurements in each field.

The authors should describe the methodology for calculating erosion losses. So far, we can only guess about it. What data were taken as a reference point, according to which the losses from erosion were determined?  Etc.

In conclusion, I would like to say that it is not necessary to describe again the conditions and methods of the study.

 

Some proofreading remarks. To improve the look and understanding of the material.

 

Line 18. Monitoring is a long-term observation, assessment, and prediction (prognosis). Based on the basic summary definition of monitoring, the term "quantification" in line 18 is superfluous and can be deleted. Or remove "monitoring": «The current paper presents the quantification of soil and nutrient losses through runoff as the result of the erosion process».

 

Lines 33-35. Also the paper envisaged how the NRDP and the CAP. These abbreviations have already been used in the title. This is permissible for the purposes of a brief formulation of the title of the article. In the abstract, however, their full names should be given, and the abbreviations should be placed after them in parentheses.

 

Lines 33-35 and 50-51. «The most important changes occur in the content of plant nutrients: humus, nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium». “The main macro elements with an important role in plant nutrition are: humus, nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium…” In the common understanding of the theory of plant nutrition, humus is not a plant nutrient. Humus provides the potential fertility of the soil. The phrase should be re-worded.

Line 53. “The ways in which these elements are lost are…” Humus is the system of organic compounds, substances. So the phrase should be re-formulated.

Lines 68-69. «The reduction in humus content is usually associated with losses of organic matter and fertilizers, especially nitrogen and phosphorus». It would be better to replace "fertilizers" with "plant nutrients" because "fertilizers" usually refers not to the nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium already in the soil, but to those that humans apply in the form of mineral fertilizers.

 

Lines 74-75. These hills are crossed by WATER AND WIND (?) torrents with increased erosive power

 

Line 85. SCDCES – MM Perieni – Please describe this abbreviation.

 

Lines 98 and 103. Common Agricultural Policy = CAP. In case this abbreviation was already deciphered in the abstract, you can write simply CAP.

 

2. Materials and methods.

What methods were used to determine the following below (In “Results…”) physicochemical characteristics? A link to the methodological literature would be helpful.

 

Line 119. “the losses of fertilizer elements” … The same comment arises here as the one already made in the lines above. It seems that it is more correct to write "losses of plant nutrition elements", because not only nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, which were applied with fertilizers, are lost from soil, but also these same elements, which are released from the organic substance of soil (humus) during mineralization.

 

Lines 122-133. How were plots 1-5 and 8 fertilized if plots 7, 9, and 10 were not fertilized? Is the information about fertilizer doses (or lack thereof) relevant to this article?

 

Lines 183. “The stage of the implementation of NRDP PNDR 2014-2020 on 20.05.2021”.

Abbreviation NRDP was above (Lines 33-35). What is the difference of  NRDP  and PNDR?

 

 

Lines 172-201 do not contain author's materials and refer to the discussion of the need to study erosion-prone lands. Perhaps this part of the text should be moved from “3. Results and discussions “ to the “1. Introduction”?

 

Lines 206 Table 2. Column “Total salt content mg/100 g sol (val. cond. x 0.34)” needs to be explained. How the formula for converting units was derived.

 

Line 211 and further: it would be better to discuss the results in the order in which the measured values are presented in Table 2 by column, from left to right.

 

Lines 227-228.  “Also, two pedological profiles were made, one downstream and the other upstream of the plots, the analytical results being presented in tables 3 and 4”.  

This text is not a continuation of the discussion of the data in Table 2, so there is no need to mark it with a black circle at the beginning of the line.

 

 

 

References

The list of references does not follow the format. The authors should have studied the requirements of the journal for formatting the list of references. For example, in No. 1 the year is given in parentheses (2018) before the page numbers, in No. 2 - after the authors' names (2015.), and in No. 3 - after the page numbers, separated by commas (,2021).

Dear authors please check and correct the entire reference list.

Author Response

Dear reviewer, Thank you for your helpful comments.
I am attaching the article with the requested modifications!
Thank you

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Specific comments are as follows:

Introduction

1. NRDP in the title doesn’t be mentioned.

2. It’s stated that climate change is one of the drivers of soil erosion at the beginning of the paper, while the title means that soil erosion causes climate change. It’s contradictory. 

3. The fertilizer part starts off a bit abruptly. Maybe the author wants to express that unscientific use of fertilizers, soil erosion and other problems can cause the decrease of soil fertility. So it can add a summative sentence in the beginning.

4. It has been pointed out that the present study obtained the soil erosion process through runoff experiments. So what is the difference of this paper?

5. There is no corresponding content about CAP target in the future in the following paper, which is be emphasized at the end of introduction.

Materials and methods

1. Whether the selected indicators are scientific and comprehensive? There isn’t related basis.

2. Are there any criteria for rainfall in the two selected periods, and what does it represent?

Results and discussions

1. The data of upstream and downstream soil, loss of macro elements and Fe, Mn, Cu and Zn on showers and plots lacked analysis.

2. Some values have no scientific basis or reasons, like “I considered mineral nitrogen to be the sum of nitric and ammoniacal nitrogen”.

3. The analysis of total losses of macro elements just repeated the results. Whether it can represent some problems?

4. Conclusion just considered that soil erosion doesn’t exceed the threshold, whether there are other factors and whether it can be directly concluded?

5. Some spelling problem existed such as “loses” in the header of Table.7, lacking of a capital letter In the previous line, “Cu si Zn” in the header of Table.8

6. Lack of discussion.

7. The result analysis suddenly inserted some NRDP content, which was related to the insurance compensation for the loss of farmers' interests. There was no clear connection with the soil loss problem studied in the whole paper. And it wasn’t mentioned again in the context.

Conclusions

1. “CONCLUSIONS” is not the same as the form of previous title.

2. The content directly copied the sentences in the results without a summative conclusion.

Author Response

Dear reviewer, Thank you for your helpful comments.
I am attaching the article with the requested modifications!
Thank you

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

 

After reviewing the revised version of the manuscript, I have no more additional comments. A great efforts have been made by the authors to improve the manuscript.