Restoring Soil Cover and Plant Communities with Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi as an Essential Component of DSS for Environmental Safety Management in Post-Industrial Landscapes

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

In your introduction and abstract, you focused on a Decision Support System，but its not your key content based on the full text. is the paper a research paper or a concept or theory. if the point is a desicion support system, your should clarity it, if the point is a research about the influence of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi on the process of vegetation formation, your need more data. so i suggested that your must modify the abstract, introuduction, and conclusion.Make the main idea of your essay clearer

Author Response

Thank you for your feedback! We have made the main idea of the article clearer due modifying different sections of the article.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript aimed at determining the influence of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi on the process of vegetation formation in post-industrial landscapes of the sulfur quarry. Despite the work deal with an important topic and lot of work was done by the authors, the manuscript needs substantial improvement before considering it for publication. I need to read it several times since the manuscript is structured in a very confused way. Moreover, several methodological details were missing and therefore a complete evaluation of the obtained results is impossible.

Title. The title needs to be better focused on the specific aim of the work and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi should be mentioned.

Abstract. The abstract does not adequately present the obtained results and the employed methodologies. On the contrary, the literature background should be shortened.

1. Introduction. The Introduction Section is excessively long. Some parts are too general. On the other hand, several concepts are not adequately supported by literature citations. The overall Section should be significantly shortened and better focused on the final objective of the study. Despite the excessive length of the section, too little space has been dedicated by the authors to the use of mycorrhizae in processes of vegetation formations in mines/quarry. Which is the state of the art? Were mycorrhizal fungi employed for quarry landscaping in previous studies? And what were the obtained results?

2. Materials and methods. The title of the section 2 must be adequately corrected according to the Instruction of the journal and the section must be subdivided in subsections. The section is very confused, and literature not adequately cited. The section must be substantially integrated to provide the readers enough information on the investigated site and the employed methodologies. Materials and methods for botanical investigation, chemical analyses, and mycorrhizal determinations must be rigorously described, and literature must be provided for each stage of the employed methodologies. Moreover, the number of samples for each station and the statistical analyses must be integrated.

3. Results. The results are difficult to be evaluated since the correct methodological premises have not been given. In addition to this general criticism, some specific questions can be asked.

Where were collected the samples used for identification of the species listened at lines 312-321? Were these samples the same of those presented at lines 348-349? If yes, the text must be reorganized, otherwise differences must be explained. Information on sampling strategy must be integrated in section 2.

Line 350. “Based on the calculations”. What is the analysed parameter? The method must be explained in section 2. The same at Lines 393-394 and for Species diversity analysis.

Table 1. What are the numbers in the columns of “soil types” and “season”

Line 435. This information must be transferred into the section 2. In section 3 results must be exclusively illustrated while the methods have to be previously explained in “2. Materials and methods”. The same for lines 464-492, methods and results must be clearly separated. As far as concerned the obtained results, it was impossible to me to link the experiment illustrated in figure 5 to the aim of the study.

One crucial point in the study is to provide sufficient data to support the hypothesis that “phenomenon of industrial melanism is not observed [in this study] that is explained by positive processes of restoration of mycological structure of soils, especially on trial areas”. This conclusion is very speculative and must be adequately supported.

In lines 535-540, an experiment in a semi-controlled environment was presented. The experimental design must be clearly illustrated in section 2 and the mycorrhizal fungi used as inoculant must be listened and the methods for their cultivation described. Moreover, results presented in table 2 must be supported by a statistical analysis.

In table 3, what does the used statistical test? and how many replicates ? Why did you exclusively presented results obtained with Pinus sylvestris? What were the results with the other plant species?

In table 4 what is “Zh ± m”?

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Editors and Authors,

I have carefully read your manuscript entitled: "RESTORING SOIL COVER AND PLANT COMMUNITIES AS AN ESSENTIAL COMPONENT OF DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEMS FOR ENVIRONMENTAL SAFETY MANAGEMENT IN POST-INDUSTRIAL LANDSCAPES". Phytoreclamation in enormous areas after the mining activity is a crucial problem nowadays. In my opinion, the paper is interesting and valuable. The described results are a big novelty and are very important for remediation planning. I have only minor comments:

- please use different keywords than words in the title;

- please use - the first time in the text full Latin name of the species after that short form (first letter of the first word, dot, whole second word);

- please correct the way of citing publications in the text where you write, for example, "As noted in [95, 96].." the name of the first author must appear followed by et al. and then the numbers in brackets;

- can you add to Figure 1 a screenshot of the whole country view indicating where the main screenshot is located with the map that is in the current version?

Best regards,

Reviewer

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx