Nutrient Remediation Efficiency of the Sedge Plant (Cyperus alopecuroides Rottb.) to Restore Eutrophic Freshwater Ecosystems
, Khalid H. Mansour 2 and Ebrahem M. Eid 4,5,*Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear Authors,
As per my view manuscript is improved a lot (far better then before).
Line no 406-409: need literature support (kindly cite; Land Degradation and Development, 32 (14), 3856-3869; Chemosphere, 10.1016/j.chemosphere.2021.129996)
Reference number cited two times (line no 438-570), kindly remove once thoroughly, plz
Author Response
- February 2022
Prof. Dr. Marc A. Rosen
Editor-in-Chief
Sustainability,
Dear Prof. Dr. Marc A. Rosen,
Please find attached the revised manuscript titled ‘Nutrient Remediation Efficiency of the Sedge Plant (Cyperus alopecuroides Rottb.) to Restore Eutrophic Freshwater Ecosystems’. Ms. Ref. No.: sustainability-1579836, authored by Tarek M. Galal, Fatma A. Gharib, Hatim M. Al-Yasi, Khalid A. Al-Mutairi, Khalid H. Mansour, and Ebrahem M. Eid.
On behalf of my co-authors, I thank you very much for giving us the opportunity to revise our manuscript. We have carefully studied the reviewers’ comments and have made revisions that are yellow highlighted in the revised version of the manuscript. We have tried our best to revise our manuscript according to the reviewers’ comments. Please find attached the revised version of our manuscript, which we would like to submit for your kind consideration. Once again, we would like to express our great appreciation to you and the reviewers for the comments on our manuscript.
Please find below our detailed responses to each of the points raised.
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Comments of Reviewer# 1:
Dear Authors,
As per my view manuscript is improved a lot (far better then before).
Line no 406-409: need literature support (kindly cite; Land Degradation and Development, 32 (14), 3856-3869; Chemosphere, 10.1016/j.chemosphere.2021.129996)
Response: Thanks so much Sir for your time and for constructive comments and suggestions. The recommended citations were added.
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Reference number cited two times (line no 438-570), kindly remove once thoroughly, plz
Response: Thanks Sir. One of these numbers was removed.
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I would appreciate if the revised version of our manuscript would be considered for publication in Sustainability.
Sincerely,
Ebrahem M. Eid
Kafrelsheikh University, Kafr El-Sheikh, Egypt
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors have considerably improved the quality of the manuscript. However, some questions were not adequately answered. In general, I agree with the study, but it is necessary to increase the quality of the presentation and its content.
Without a location map the article is undervalued. Between Taif University, Helwan University, University of Tabuk, Kafrelsheikh University and King Khalid University find someone who makes a suitable map to publish in a scientific article. Images taken directly from Google are not suitable. They can create a map in any program. The furthest boundary may coincide with the country boundaries.
Authors must adequately substantiate their answers, so that there is no possibility of copying past errors. How do cattle eat the underground part of the plant? Do cattle have the ability to dig or is this pulling work done by man? Authors should give these explanations in detail.
The article has too many self-citations. This point supposedly had already been corrected by the authors, but the problem needs to be fixed. The numbering of the article must also be added in the bibliographic references.
Author Response
- February 2022
Prof. Dr. Marc A. Rosen
Editor-in-Chief
Sustainability,
Dear Prof. Dr. Marc A. Rosen,
Please find attached the revised manuscript titled ‘Nutrient Remediation Efficiency of the Sedge Plant (Cyperus alopecuroides Rottb.) to Restore Eutrophic Freshwater Ecosystems’. Ms. Ref. No.: sustainability-1579836, authored by Tarek M. Galal, Fatma A. Gharib, Hatim M. Al-Yasi, Khalid A. Al-Mutairi, Khalid H. Mansour, and Ebrahem M. Eid.
On behalf of my co-authors, I thank you very much for giving us the opportunity to revise our manuscript. We have carefully studied the reviewers’ comments and have made revisions that are yellow highlighted in the revised version of the manuscript. We have tried our best to revise our manuscript according to the reviewers’ comments. Please find attached the revised version of our manuscript, which we would like to submit for your kind consideration. Once again, we would like to express our great appreciation to you and the reviewers for the comments on our manuscript.
Please find below our detailed responses to each of the points raised.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Comments of Reviewer# 2:
The authors have considerably improved the quality of the manuscript. However, some questions were not adequately answered. In general, I agree with the study, but it is necessary to increase the quality of the presentation and its content.
Without a location map the article is undervalued. Between Taif University, Helwan University, University of Tabuk, Kafrelsheikh University and King Khalid University find someone who makes a suitable map to publish in a scientific article. Images taken directly from Google are not suitable. They can create a map in any program. The furthest boundary may coincide with the country boundaries.
Response: Thanks so much Sir for your time and for constructive comments and suggestions. New map was added.
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Authors must adequately substantiate their answers, so that there is no possibility of copying past errors. How do cattle eat the underground part of the plant? Do cattle have the ability to dig or is this pulling work done by man? Authors should give these explanations in detail.
Response: We are very sorry because we did not understand the question in the first time. Of course, cattle have not the ability to dig, but we evaluated the nutritive value of the underground parts, thus this part can be used as fodder in case it was harvested by man. This comment was clarified in the text.
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The article has too many self-citations. This point supposedly had already been corrected by the authors, but the problem needs to be fixed.
Response: Self citations were reduced to fit the Journal Policy.
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The numbering of the article must also be added in the bibliographic references.
Response: The numbering of the article was added in the bibliographic references.
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I would appreciate if the revised version of our manuscript would be considered for publication in Sustainability.
Sincerely,
Ebrahem M. Eid
Kafrelsheikh University, Kafr El-Sheikh, Egypt
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors significantly improved the quality of the article. As they answered all questions illuminatingly, I believe that the article "Nutrient Remediation Efficiency of the Sedge Plant (Cyperus alopecuroides Rottb.) to Restore Eutrophic Freshwater Ecosystems" may continue the process for publication in the journal Sustainability.
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
There are several short comings. The samples were collected from winter to autumn. However there was no justification why the sample was selected during these period. Inorganic and organic nutrients alone will not add value to the manuscript.
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear Authors,
As per my view manuscript theme of the paper is good and falling under global needs but the present manuscript having many shortcoming (state-of-the-art is missing, objective not clearly mentioned, implementation of the study to global is missing). Besides, manuscript is not prepared as per the journal guidelines.
Reviewer 3 Report
The article “Nutrient Remediation Efficiency of the Sedge Plant (Cyperus alopecuroides Rottb.) to Restore Eutrophic Freshwater Ecosystems” addresses a topic of high importance in the current context, where water quality is degraded in various parts of the globe.
In general, the document is well structured, however, it is necessary to correct some aspects so that it can be published in the Sustainability journal.
The Introduction topic is well developed, but it would reinforce the idea that the decrease in precipitation may contribute to the stagnation of water in rivers and reservoirs.
The methodology is adequate, however, it would be more interesting to replace the location of the study area with an image produced in the ArcGIS program or similar, which includes the north reference and the respective map scale. Although the Nile River is well known worldwide, it would be valuable if the authors put its context at the level of the African continent. Images taken from google are not suitable for scientific articles.
The Results are well presented and do not raise relevant doubts.
The authors developed the discussion well and validated the results through comparison with other similar studies. However, why do they refer to cattle as the underground part of the plant?
In the final part, I suggest that the authors mention what to do with the cut plant biomass from contaminated areas. Heavy metals must have a definite destination.
Regarding bibliographic citations, authors must follow the standard format for articles in the Sustainability journal. Also, it seems to me that there are excessive self-citations. I therefore ask authors to use only essential articles.
