Microbial Biomass Is More Important than Runoff Export in Predicting Soil Inorganic Nitrogen Concentrations Following Forest Conversion in Subtropical China
, Teng-Chiu Lin 3,*, Jr-Chuan Huang 4, Zhijie Yang 1,2, Xiaofei Liu 1,2, Decheng Xiong 1,2, Shidong Chen 1,2, Minhuang Wang 5, Liuming Yang 1 and Yusheng Yang 1,2Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear Authors,
I have read this manuscript, I think it is a high quality one that fits in the scope of the journal.
Introduction, methodology, results, discussions and conclusions are well-described and it is easy for the reader to understand the significance of the experiment.
Please re-read the manuscript to correct the few grammatical and linguistical mistakes, and the formatting errors of the references part, such as bold, italics and abbreviations.
Please restructure figure 4. It is hardly visible because of the huge number of data you want to represent on it. Dividing into 2 different figure could be better (1st: a and c part, 2nd: b and d part)
Regards,
Author Response
Comment 1: Please re-read the manuscript to correct the few grammatical and linguistical mistakes, and the formatting errors of the references part, such as bold, italics and abbreviations.
Response: We have carefully check through the manuscript and to corrected some linguistical and formatting mistakes.
Comment 2: Please restructure figure 4. It is hardly visible because of the huge number of data you want to represent on it. Dividing into 2 different figures could be better (1st: a and c part, 2nd: b and d part).
Response: We have divided figure 4 into two figures (now figures 4 and 5).
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear authors of the article. I am sending you some (minor) remarks on your article:
Line 53, enter the abbreviation for carbon dioxide correctly
In chapter 2.1 Site description, if the data on the amount of precipitation and air temperature are the result of your measurements, everything is fine. But if you downloaded them from an author, then you need to add a quote.
Line 117 for Castnopsis carlessi should be added to the author (Castanopsis carlesii (Hemsl.) Hayata), and for Chinese fir the scientific name of the species should be added.
In section 2.8 Data analysis, state whether the conditions for one-way ANOVA (Levene homogeneity test of variance) are met and write what was the limit of significance in using the test although this is later stated in the results section.
Add the name of the program, the software in which you processed the data.
The font size in the image representations of the results (x and y axes) is not the same everywhere (for example in Figure 4 compared to other figures).
Figure 5. needs to be technically better edited. One part of the numbers is on the display with circles.
Author Response
Comment 1: Line 53, enter the abbreviation for carbon dioxide correctly.
Response: Revised
Comment 2: In chapter 2.1 Site description, if the data on the amount of precipitation and air temperature are the result of your measurements, everything is fine. But if you downloaded them from an author, then you need to add a quote.
Response: We have added a reference to indicate the source of the data.
Comment 3: Line 117 for Castnopsis carlessi should be added to the author (Castanopsis carlesii (Hemsl.) Hayata), and for Chinese fir the scientific name of the species should be added.
Response: Added.
Comment 4: In section 2.8 Data analysis, state whether the conditions for one-way ANOVA (Levene homogeneity test of variance) are met and write what was the limit of significance in using the test although this is later stated in the results section.
Response: We have revised this expression as “Differences in soil mineral N concentration, microbial attributes, and annual runoff NH4+ and NO3- export among the four forest types were examined using one-way ANOVA after Levene Homogeneity test followed by least significant difference tests at P < 0.05” (lines188-191).
Comment 5: Add the name of the program, the software in which you processed the data.
Response: We have added the software we used as following:
“The analyses were performed using SPSS 22.0 (SPSS Inc.,
Chicago, IL, USA)” (lines192-194).
“we calculated the predicting power of each predictor and compared it with the predicting power of all predictors combined using R version 3.3.1 (R core team, 2016)” (lines202-203).
Comment 6: The font size in the image representations of the results (x and y axes) is not the same everywhere (for example in Figure 4 compared to other figures).
Response: We have checked through the manuscript to assure consistence in font size.
Comment 7: Figure 5. needs to be technically better edited. One part of the numbers is on the display with circles.
Response: Corrected.
