Changes in the Microbiological Properties of Soils along the Gradient of the Altitude Zone of Mount Kivaka in Eastern Fennoscandia, Russia

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

In this paper, the authors have demonstrated the effect of microbial characteristics on altitude. It provides a direction and theoretical basis for microbiology.

1.The purpose of research and results should be written in the abstract.

2.Line 61: “Xu et.al. it was assumed that the spatio-temporal regularity of temperature and humidity changes is associated with altitude” ... Delete "it"?

3.Do different colors mean different things in Figure 2?

4.Are the data in Table 2 researched by the author? If not, please add the reference.

5.Line 260: The microbiological and biochemical parameters and chemical properties of soils (C/N ratio, ash content, P content) was established. However, there is no data of C/N ratio, ash content, P content, please add it. 

6.Conclusion writing should be a summary of the results of your own research rather than a personal evaluation of others' opinions. The statement like "We can agree with K. Ivashchenko that..." Our study confirmed the statement of Zhao et al... "We can agree with S. Shen that..." I think it had better not appear in the conclusion.

Author Response

Dear reviewer! Thank you so much for your comments, everything is correct, I completely agree, I fixed everything at your discretion. A particularly good comment was to the "Conclusion". I fully agree that it was not worth "sticking out" other researchers, especially since there are a lot of articles on this topic and there is no consensus on the question of what is primarily "height or soil or temperature"...The question is rhetorical...Thanks for the work...Edits in the text

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

In general, the authors have done a good job explaining the background information necessary to appreciate the rationale and results of the experiments. The manuscript was prepared correctly.

Methodology and analysis of results rather don't raise any objections.
However, some minor amendments are needed.

The discussion of the results is written a bit generally. There are papers related to this topic that the authors did not cite. An assessment putting the findings into perspective and make a solid conclusion is missing. The authors should emphasize more the novelty and usefulness of the results.

Author Response

Dear Editor! Thank you so much for reading my manuscript and for your optimistic review. Your feedback gave an incentive to work, making individual changes, reading again difficult places in the work...Thank you very much! We have made changes, I think you will like them. I want to note that there are a lot of works in this area! very much! However, there is no general answer to the question of what is primary: "soil- elevation gradient-temperature"...The question is rhetorical... Therefore, the list of references included those works that gave us a fairly clear idea of the functioning of the microbiota in mountain conditions. I think that's enough. Our work is the first step in this direction, we hope it will not be the last" Thank you again for your feedback! Thank you very much!

Author Response File: Author Response.docx