Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I have few suggestions regarding this manuscript:

In abstract section authors used CD....correct it to Cd.

What are the recommendations of this study to the scientific community needs to be added in the end of this section.

Add reference....................deterioration caused by vegetation loss..............

pollution and obtain biomass at the same time.................add reference.

on the morphological changes of heavy metals in soil...............add reference.

heavy metals to the rhizosphere environment...................add reference.

different from the growth environment of natural plants...............add reference.

conditions, is of great significance to understand the environmental 63 behavior of heavy metals in the soil plant system, explore the toxicological effects of soil 64 heavy metals on plants and Phytoremediation of heavy metal contaminated sites..................add reference.........................etc.

There are many large sentences without references. Authors should cite appropriate references in order to improve the quality of this work.

Add the following few references in order to improve the quality of this work.

A meta-analysis of potential ecological risk evaluation of heavy metals in sediments and soils.

Pollution assessment of heavy metals in soils of India and ecological risk assessment: A state-of-the-art.

Heavy Metals in the Environment. Impact, Assessment, and Remediation.

What are the QA/QC used for estimation of heavy metals in CP-OES. Needs to be added.

Discussion lacks references. Authors should add references. Many sentences without references...................

 

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

The article “Speciation distribution and influencing factors of heavy metals in rhizosphere soil of Miscanthus floridulus in tailing reservoir area of Dabaoshan iron Polymetallic Mine in northern Guangdong” reported the field investigation and experimental analysis, the forms, contents and distribution of heavy metals (Zn, Pb, Cu, CD, Ni, Cr) in the rhizosphere and non rhizosphere soils of Miscanthus floridulus. Some statements need to be considered prior to further consideration in the journal of Processes and after addressing the reviewer’s minor concerns:

(1)   The manuscript needs further grammar polish.

(2)   There are some mistakes in symbols and units such as cadmium (Cd) not CD, and there is space between the number and units as on page 3 such as 350m and 1000m, and heavymetals on page 11 line 291.

(3)   In page 4, line 152, the author mentioned “1:1 HCL constant volume”, it should be HCl, and what is this ratio with? HCl and what?

(4)   Please adjust the alignments of most of the tables.

(5)   Do you mean figure 2 on page 12 line 305?.

(6)   Please mention table 10 through the text in section 3.3.3.

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

Speciation distribution and influencing factors of heavy metals in rhizosphere soil of Miscanthus floridulus in tailing reservoir area of Dabaoshan iron Polymetallic Mine in northern Guangdong.

# Title is too long. Rewriting suggested.

Line 14-18: Authors are advised to use small, simple sentences to make it more understandable.

Whenever symbols are mentioned for the first time, it should be accompanied with full forms. Authors are advised to do the needful.

CD…?

Abstract: Rewriting suggested.

Keywords: ok

Introduction:  permissible limits for each metals should be included.

Materials and Methods

Which sampling methods have been adopted. Disclose with suitable example.

How accurate is the elemental quantification process? Did the authors compare their findings with any CRMs or SRMs?

What is n=?

Results and Analysis….are these two different? Justify

Quality of English language need to be improved.

Why the authors have put the equation in line 300, in the results section? Justify

Relationship between Forms of Heavy Metals in Soil and Soil Properties…further elaboration required.

Relationship between Speciation of Soil Heavy Metals and Soil Properties…further elaboration required.

In my opinion, the article has local and regional impact. However, the MS has some serious issues, need to be addressed. I am suggesting MAJOR REVISION.

Author Response

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Reviewer 4 Report

 

Review: Speciation distribution and influencing factors of heavy metals in rhizosphere soil of Miscanthus floridulus in tailing reservoir area of Dabaoshan iron Polymetallic Mine in northern Guang-dong

The manuscript reports some interesting findings with respect to the availability of heavy metals in the surrounding of mine tailing ponds. However, it needs to be improved in several places as outlined below. Partly these concern the text per se and the formatting, notably of the tables, partly things that are not mentioned.

General:

Rather excessive use of capital letters and very long sentences. This applies throughout the manuscript.

Pay attention to the idiom. For instance, line 111: “No tailings have been discharged … five years ago”. I guess what is meant is that the discharge of tailings stopped five years ago.

No space between the unit and the value: on lines 127 and 128 for instance, “50g” and “1mm”. It is more usual to write “50 g” and “1 mm”. Sometimes a space is used, as on line 130.

The formatting of some of the tables is awkward. It makes it less than pleasant to read them.

Many of the numbers that appear in the tables are presented with unnecessarily many decimals. For instance, in table 2: 2395.25 +/- 160.35 – the uncertainty is roughly 7%, so that the decimals “.25” are swamped by that uncertainty. Please reduce the number of decimals.

Abstract:

Pay attention to the capital letters at lines 15, 18, 23 and 26. In particular, the chemical symbol for cadmium is “Cd”, not “CD”.

Materials and methods:

Lines 134-137: What is the relation between A. pentatidis and M. floridulus that the first was collected in response to the other “growing strongly”? The size groups refer to the sizes of the plants?

Lines 143-147: The description is rather messy and difficult to understand as well as grammatically incorrect. Please rephrase.

Section 2.4 Data processing: Rather terse description of the analyses!

Results and analysis:

General: the various plant species should be introduced with their complete name. “T. latifoli” is not enough ad there are a number of such names.

Line 173: “Compared with the natural soil” – is the rhizosphere soil not natural then?

Line 179: “Pentatitudes” – should that be “pentatidis”? (Lines 134-137)

Lines 191-192: “the important value … is 66.25” – how is this value defined? What does it mean?

Line 201: “longer succession time” – how is this determined? The description of the tailing ponds only gives implicit hints. Perhaps add a table indicating how long the ponds have been left undisturbed?

Table 1: The p-values that are presented are very small and indicate that whatever is examined is statistically significant. However, that is the problem: what is examined? The data handling section is silent about it and judging from the uncertainties I would say that the p-value represents the probability that the measurements in the rhizosphere and the non-rhizosphere are different, hence one can conclude that the two types of measurements mostly have the same distribution (for some plots and some metals this might not be the case, perhaps). This is in contrast with the statement in lines 220-221.

Lines 209-217: This description of the metal concentrations is confusing. On the one hand “they are all within the national soil secondary standard” (line 212), but on the other hand (lines 213-214) “the contents of Zn, Pb, Cu and Cd exceed the secondary soil quality standard”. So, what is it?

Line 215: Use capitalization for the names of the two plots.

Table 2: Check the formatting of the headers and the numbers as they are spread over two lines! Same for table 1.

Table 2: What are the two categories? Ah, that appears below the table. What is the role of the t-tests? They have not been mentioned in the data handling paragraph.

Line 230: What are “pentatils”?

Line 232: “Table 3-8” -> “Tables 3-8”?

Line 235: “rhizosphere soil of four five nodes” – what does this mean? Please explain.

Lines 242-252: The percentages that are given to show the differences between the non-rhizosphere and rhizosphere soils have the same order of magnitude as the measurement errors. Can you conclude that they are really significant then?

Line 290: “from the transformation of other forms” – any indications of what these other forms are?

Line 298: “Figure 1” -> “Figure 2”

Figure 2: Typos in the titles for parts A and B.

Lines 322-323: “Regression analysis” – again a statistical procedure not explicitly described in the data handling paragraph.

Table 10: “connections” – should I read that as the correlation coefficient?

Table 10: The forms are very difficult to connect to the numbers. There are four forms mentioned, but there six rows of numbers and dashes – or do they indicate a minus sign? Please reformat the table so that the numbers, including their signs appear as a single item.

Line 356: “we should pay attention …” – does this mean that the soil must be treated to make sure the metals are not freed?

Discussion:

Line 408: “For the absorption of a single plant …” – this brings to mind: how many plants would be needed to sanitize the region? How many years would it take? This ought to be a fairly simple, if crude, calculation but it may help to determine if plant growth and harvesting alone is enough. Although, the amount of metals in the plants has not been measured and the difference in content does not seem very large, it may not even be significant. This will make such an estimate more difficult.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Editor, 

Authors have addressed all my queries so I recommend acceptance of this manuscript to the journal. 

Author Response

Thank you very much for your good suggestions.

Reviewer 3 Report

Editor will tell you.

Author Response

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