Water Budget of Urban Turf Field and Optimal Irrigation Schedule Simulation in an Ecotone between Semi-Humid and Semi-Arid Regions, Northern China
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear authors,
Please see my comments below. In general I found the research interesting although there is a lack of discussion of the results.
Line 41: is 117 and 221 L/d referred to L of water per inhabitant and day?
Line 52: I don´t understand the expression “for a per capita”
Line 98: Poa pratensis is a species, not a variety. If you mean a variety, please provide the name of the variety.
Lines 98 and 108. Poa pratensis in Italics
Line 111: 23 mm of irrigation during one year is very low. Is it a mistake?
Lines 11-112: Use of English, two different verb tenses “was” and “will be” in two consecutive sentences. Please use the same tense at least within the same paragraph.
Lines 130-131: is the water content, volumetric or gravimetric? I guess it is volumetric but you should say it.
Lines 154-156: I don´t understand what you say about the soil parameters of Table 1. You say they come from a calibration process, but they are normally determined in the lab when using models. Can you please explain it a little bit better?
Lines 179-182. There is no explanation of the “R” (runoff?) and the “D” of equation 4.
Lines 253-254 and figure 3: I don´t understand why you concentrate irrigation during the rainiest season of the year, and also, why don´t you irrigate in several months of the year. I know during autumn-winter water necessities are lower for Poa pratensis than in Spring-summer, but they are not null. In figure 3 you don´t irrigate from January to June 2020, I don´t understand this.
Lines 256-257: Same year 2020, is it ok or it is a mistake?
Figure 3: I also don´t understand why after a good rainfall event (first January 2021) the soils continues so dry during the rest of winter. It seems there is not a good correlation between rainfall-precipitation events and soil water content in depth.
Lines 292 to 312: When you talk about seepage, which is the depth you are considering? 1.2 m, the lysimeter box depth?
Table 3: Is this table necessary? All values in table 3 have been also shown in Figure 7.
Table 4: The same comment as for Table 3. Values are the same as in Figure 8.
Line 393: what do you mean by dynamic? You mean lowest?
General: I don´t see too much discussion, authors are just showing results but not comparing them with other studies performed on turf or other crops
Author Response
请看附件
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Most of the current irrigation scheduling in turf grass is based on monitoring soil water content or evapotranspiration. Irrigation scheduling based on historical climate data needs analysis of long-term data. However, in this paper, the use of optimum irrigation scheduling based on two-year data is unclear. This study analyzed different scenarios and compared soil water content, turf ET, and seepage; however, there are no details on turf growth. How is turf growth in different irrigation scenarios? Leakage, leaching, and seepage are not interchangeable terms. Several figures and texts mixed these terms, which needs to be corrected. This paper needs all these clarifications/revisions, including the following:
Lines 85 – 86 and Lines 125 - 126: “Furthermore, long-term meteorological data (2000-2021) covering the study area were also analyzed.” – I did not see the analysis of this long-term data.
Line 112 – “.. will be applied..”?
Line 131: Insentek – I did not see any information regarding the soil moisture sensor calibration. If water contents were measured at 20, 40, 60, and 80 cm depths, how was Figure 3 prepared from soil depths 0 to 100 cm?
Line 152: “model defaults” – Are these model default parameters?
Line 154 – 155: Soil physical parameters measured or calibrated?
Line 166: Texts are not subscripted or superscripted.
Line 198: Table 2: 40% of 355.14 should be 142.07, not 113.65.
Line 245: Outside soil profiles – Is this correct?
Line 267: Figure 4 is daily ET and Cumulative ET, not monthly and yearly ET.
Line 325: “model simulation” should be “model calibration”
Line 334: The simulated water content results at 20 cm depth are comparatively poorer than at deeper depths. Is this due to the difference in turf growth?
Lines 351 and 366: MRE is not Mean Square Error. It should be a Mean Relative Error.
Line 141: “irrigation time” should be “number of irrigation”
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
I recognize the big effort authors have made in order to improve the manuscript, however they should at least correct the following:
Line 110 and… There is no need to use quotation marks (“) with Poa pratensis
Line 116: were applied instead wasapplied
Author Response
Please also refer to the attachment.
#Reviewer: 1
COMMENT: I recognize the big effort authors have made in order to improve the manuscript, however they should at least correct the following:
RESPONSE: Thanks for your agreement. We tried our best to solve the problems in our manuscript.
COMMENT 1: Line 110 and… There is no need to use quotation marks (“) with Poa pratensis.
RESPONSE 1: We have deleted the quotation marks ("").
COMMENT 2: Line 116: were applied instead was applied.
RESPONSE 2: We have substituted “was applied” with “were applied” in line 126.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper is improved; however, it needs extensive English language and style editing. Some limitations of this paper are
· Soil physical properties are calibrated, not measured.
· The soil moisture sensor used in the study is not calibrated.
Author Response
Please also refer to the attachment.
#Reviewer:2
The paper is improved; however, it needs extensive English language and style editing. Some limitations of this paper are
RESPONSE: We have invited the professional English teacher in our school to improve the manuscript’s English language and style editing. Since the revision time is limited to 2 days, we have no time to find a professional organization to achieve the entire polish process of our manuscript.
COMMENT 1: Soil physical properties are calibrated, not measured.
RESPONSE 1: We quite agree with you. We did not measure the parameters of soil physical properties during the test, which really has limitations. we have calibrated the sensor and tested its stability when installing the equipment. We will try to improve this limitation in future experiments.
COMMENT 2: The soil moisture sensor used in the study is not calibrated.
RESPONSE 2: Thank you for your reminder. We calibrated the sensor and tested its stability when the equipment was installed. At the same time, the sensor has been calibrated and tested for stability when the test equipment is installed, and the collected daily scale data is processed with hourly average data to eliminate the error in the data. We have added the calibrated part of the sensor in the text.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
