Influence of Grain on Green Patterns and Their Underlying Surface Characteristics on Water Conservation: A Case Study in a Semiarid Area

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report (Previous Reviewer 2)

The authors of this paper have corrected possible errors and disagreements and answered all the questions raised, so that the paper can be accepted in this form.

Reviewer 2 Report (Previous Reviewer 1)

The authors corrected the manuscript according to reviewers suggestions. 

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

In this study authors examined changes in water conservation depth (WCD) in the Zhangjiakou section of Guanting Reservoir basin. Besides, redundancy analysis (RDA) and mixed linear model were employed to determine the effects of different reforestation patterns and their underlying’s slope gradient and soil type characteristics on WCD variation. Although the study contains lot of processed data, it does not have much to say and it does not offer any new aspects. The authors should take into account the following corrections to improve their paper:

1. In the introduction part, highlight the novelty and scientific contribution of this study.

2. An error appears throughout the Manuscript, "Error! Reference source not found" and these sentences are unclear. Correct!

3. "Model run under the 2000s meteorological conditions base on 2000 and 2016 landcover." Whether climate change affects the examined parameters and whether this study is applicable to current conditions?

4. Why the warmup periods to 2008-2009, to 2010-2013 and to 2014-2016 were chosen for SWAT model calibration and validation?

5. Correct reference L:276 (Mo et al., 2011b) to the appropriate form.

6. Compare and discus the results of this study with the available literature.

7. In the conclusion part highlight what the findings of this study contribute and where they can be applied.

Reviewer 2 Report

The wrong methodology was taken here because the whole watershed was not taken into consideration, and considering that it is working in water conservation, the watershed represents the basic unit that is taken into research and it cannot follow the border of the administrative area, because the watershed is a natural phenomenon and its influence is different from the elevation of the mouth to the top parts of the watershed. The entire watershed must be included in the analysis because it is affected by various pedological and geological characteristics, as well as physical-geographical characteristics, the way land is used and the structure of the land cover. In the watershed itself, which is a natural phenomenon, various natural processes take place, such as surface runoff, the intensity of erosion processes in the upper part of the watershed, then sediment transport in the central part of the watershed and sediment accumulation in the lower parts of the watershed that have the least slopes. There are similar impacts with the occurrence of surface runoff and the occurrence of torential floods. I believe that this kind of work cannot be published in this paper until it takes the entire watershed (or basin) as a research area in which there are several reservoirs.

There are some irregularities in the text in lines 101 to 106. You have taken the sub-basins that are in the ditectic border with the administrative area, but that is a bad methodology because the basin itself does not follow the impacts of water, ecology, and all others to the borders of the administrative areas.

Looking at picture no. 1, you have the location of the Youyi reservoir, why is it not included in the entire area of consideration surely some influences are acting outside your study area. I have the same questions about Cetain and Huliuhe reservoir.

 

I think you should have taken the whole basin into consideration. Please explain to me why you didn't take this.

The pictures should say which year is 2000 and which is 2016.

Question regarding this picture, why didn't you take a more recent year, Is there data for 2020 or 2022?

You used the HWSD database which is at a resolution of 1 km. If it wasn't becoming a more detailed database of, for example, 100 m, as you used for Land Cover and for DEM?

 

Line 144-147 there is no reference to where you downloaded the data for farm management.

You have errors in citing throughout the paper.