Synergetic Use of Bare Soil Composite Imagery and Multitemporal Vegetation Remote Sensing for Soil Mapping (A Case Study from Samara Region’s Upland)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This manuscript is poorly organzied and badly writtten. It lack novelty in both the idea and methods. In addition, there are nemerous format errors in this manuscript. The structure is also confused. The authors should pay more attention on checking their manuscript before submission. And it could provide very limited value or implications for potential readers. Therefore I have to suggeste rejection for this manuscript. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript

Synergetic Use of Bare Soil Composite Imagery and Multitem-2 poral Vegetation Remote Sensing for Soil Mapping (A Case 3 Study from Samara Region`s Upland)

presents an interesting approach to soil mapping in order to predict soil classes. These maps are important for identifying soil types and their properties, and can improve agricultural planning and practices. The developed methodology is well conducted and the statistical approach is really good. The results are important and the discussion is well supported on them. Due to the interesting and important results, I believe that the manuscript should be published after some moderate revisions, mainly related to the presentation of the work. Authors should better organize the different aspects of the manuscript. Paragraphs or comments that are clearly introductory are presented as conclusions and discussion. This reorganization would help improve the readability of the article. For example:

- The abstract does not provide the necessary information. This includes phrases that are more suitable for an introduction. It is not informative enough about the work and the results obtained.

- In the discussion, the authors include general information that is not relevant here and should be moved to the introduction..

- The main results are analyzed and discussed in section 3. I think this section should be renamed Results and Discussion, and section 4 should be integrated into this.

- The first paragraph of the conclusions is not a conclusion and is not important here. It should be carried over and integrated into the introduction.

- Some of the information that should be reassigned is highlighted in the manuscript.

Two additional comments:

-       Figure 4 is not a histogram. It is the non-parametric probability density function or histogram envelope.

-       It is best to present the results of the confusion matrix as a fraction or percentage.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors,

I reviewed your manuscript and found it scientifically interesting. I have some minor comments which you could find them on the attached pdf file. My major concern is addressing the limitation of spatial resolution of Landsat (30m) on determining soil characteristics and the uncertainty that subjective threshold estimating induce into the model. The figures are very nice and clear; however, it would be beneficial if you show the spectra of bare soil. It helps to understand the quality of the spectra.

Kind regards

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I still suggest rejection on it since some major flaws I pointed our in the first round review still valid.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

I still suggest rejection on it since some major flaws I pointed our in the first round review still valid.