Construction of an Early Warning System Based on a Fuzzy Matter-Element Model for Diagnosing the Health of Alpine Grassland: A Case Study of Henan County, Qinghai, China
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The literature support of the data obtained in the discussion section is not provided.
REPORT
Page 4, in Table 2: Uppercase letter , in the fist column- Derive.. and, in the last column-Number of species
Page 9 line 256: Please check the font style and size and correct it!!!
Page 11, Line 300: Different font style and size!!!
Page 12, line 324-359: The results should be concluded with the support of the literature. However, if there is no direct related literature support, it can be supported by secondary related literatures.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Comments and Suggestions for Authors
The literature support of the data obtained in the discussion section is not provided.
Response: Thanks for your comment. We added some published papers to support the discussion section.
REPORT
Page 4, in Table 2: Uppercase letter, in the first column- Derive. and, in the last column-Number of species
Response: Thanks for your comment. We revised the format of Table 2.
Page 9 line 256: Please check the font style and size and correct it!!!
Response: Thanks for your carful comment. We revised the font style and size of Fig.2.
Page 11, Line 300: Different font style and size!!!
Response: Thanks for your carful comment. We revised the font style and size of Fig.3.
Page 12, line 324-359: The results should be concluded with the support of the literature. However, if there is no direct related literature support, it can be supported by secondary related literatures.
Response: Thanks for your comment. We have suppled some related literatures for supporting the conclusion.
Reviewer 2 Report
Following are some remarks to your text:
Row # 50: This sentence sounds like it has no ending.
Rows # 72 – 95: I do suggest moving this section to “Research methodology”
Row # 73 and Figure 1: Maps on the fig.1 are hard to interpret. You better draw one whole country map, and then the second map of the province with clearly marked locations of study points. Use only Latin letters while describing maps.
Row # 84: The term ‘grass species’ was used incorrectly. It refers to plant's family name but Kobresia or Potentilla are not grasses (Poaceae). Try to change ‘plant species’ instead of ‘grass species.
Row # 104: This sentence should be changed. Here is my proposition: “These plots cover five types of grassland, including shrub Potentilla fruticosa (PF) and forbs species as Elymus nutas (EN), Kobresia humilis (KH), Ligularia birgaurea (LB) and Kobresia tibetica (KT) ...(...).”
Row 117 and Table 1: Species richness: what does it mean? You mention the numbers in this column refer to the number of plant species per location. If so you should specify them in a separate table in Supplementary.
Rows # 122 – 125: You better find some more original references considering the methodology used. These are only the secondary sources of data.
Row # 155: please correct reference.
Rows # 274, 275: misuse of the word 'grasses'. You better say: ‘plant species’ instead ‘species of grasses’.
Row # 342, 370, 373, : Species name should be typed in Italics.
Author Response
Comments and Suggestions for Authors
Following are some remarks to your text:
Row # 50: This sentence sounds like it has no ending.
Response: Thanks for your good comment. The punctuation mark was misused in sentence 50 and we had revised it.
Rows # 72 – 95: I do suggest moving this section to “Research methodology”
Response: Thanks for this comment. We think that the introduction of the research area is important, and this part is better to be retained.
Row # 73 and Figure 1: Maps on the fig.1 are hard to interpret. You better draw one whole country map, and then the second map of the province with clearly marked locations of study points. Use only Latin letters while describing maps.
Response: Thank you for the helpful suggestion. We have added the whole country map and the map of the province with clearly marked locations of study points in Figure 1.
Row # 84: The term ‘grass species’ was used incorrectly. It refers to plant's family name but Kobresia or Potentilla are not grasses (Poaceae). Try to change ‘plant species’ instead of ‘grass species.
Response: Thanks for your comment. We revised the plant’s family name.
Row # 104: This sentence should be changed. Here is my proposition: “These plots cover five types of grassland, including shrub Potentilla fruticosa (PF) and forbs species as Elymus nutas (EN), Kobresia humilis (KH), Ligularia birgaurea (LB) and Kobresia tibetica (KT) ...(...).”
Response: Thanks for your comment. We revised the writing format.
Row 117 and Table 1: Species richness: what does it mean? You mention the numbers in this column refer to the number of plant species per location. If so you should specify them in a separate table in Supplementary.
Response: Thanks for your comment. Species richness is one of the measurement indicators of biodiversity refers to the number of species composition in a community. As shown in Table 1, the grassland type in winter pasture consists of 48 species, with the dominant species of Potentilla fruticosa.
Rows # 122 – 125: You better find some more original references considering the methodology used. These are only the secondary sources of data.
Response: Thanks for your comment. These methods for determining the soil properties have been widely applied in various literatures, and these methods have been very matured for years of develop. We cited these papers to demonstrate their universality.
Row # 155: please correct reference.
Response: Thanks for your comment. We revised the reference.
Rows # 274, 275: misuse of the word 'grasses'. You better say: ‘plant species’ instead ‘species of grasses’.
Response: Thanks for your comment. We revised this error.
Row # 342, 370, 373, : Species name should be typed in Italics.
Response: Thanks for your comment. We revised these names.
Reviewer 3 Report
Attached
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
Agronomy manuscript ID: 2496479 Title: Construction of an early warning system based on fuzzy matter-element model for diagnosing the health of alpine grassland: a case study of Henan County, Qinghai, China
This paper studied an early warning system based on a fuzzy matter-element model to diagnose the health of alpine grasslands. It is interesting and useful in the early diagnosing of the grassland ecosystem. The methodology and results are well written. However, the introduction and discussion were weakly written, and it is not suitable for publication in Agronomy now. More specific comments are listed below.
- The authors didn’t address anything about why this model to study the early warning system in the introduction. This is one major limitation of this study since there is no support for the usefulness and validation of this model.
Response: Thank you for pointing this out. The background of the model used in this study is of great significance for readers to understand both the model and the research. Considering your suggestion, we have added the reasons and background for choosing to this model in the introduction section.
- The discussion was poorly written, and it didn’t have an in-depth explanation of the results, validation, and limitations of the model. For example, to name a few, how did this model method align with traditional diagnosing using plant and soil chemical and physical properties or indicators? What are some advantages and disadvantages? How can this model be applied to other similar or different grassland ecosystems per authors’ address in lines 316 and 320 and conclusion in Lines 377 and 380No references were used, and it was just readdressing the results, which is acceptable.
Response: We appreciate the reviewer for the positive and supportive commendation on our work. We have added several cases to support the conclusions of this study, and the advantages of applying fuzzy matter-element model to alpine Grassland.
- Some minor comments:
Line 66-70 is too arbitrary and strong in assessing the usefulness of this study.
Response: Thanks for your comment. We revised this sentence.
Line 299 is confusing and needs to be clarified.
Response: Thanks for your comment. We are sorry for our careless, we deleted this ambiguous sentence.
Line 357-358 is speculative without any support from current studies and other published reference.
Response: Thanks for your comment. We added a published paper to support it.
