Experimental Study on Landslides in Terraced Fields in the Chinese Loessial Region under Extreme Rainfall

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Main impressions

 I think this paper is novel and very interesting for publication in “Water”. It has a sufficient impact and it represents an advance in the subject matter, thus it is constituting a remarkable contribution to knowledge about this subject. It falls within the thematic scope of “Water”, well carried out, and with results that may be of interest to other scientists

The Introduction is correct, with a notable bibliographic review. The methodology and work development seems correct, in general. The conclusions are supported by the results and are consistent with the aims set.

 Reviewer specific comments and suggestions

 I think the paper is suitable for publication in “Water” with minor revision.

I suggest the following changes, comments and questions:

1) The keywords should not be contained in the title, to facilitate the operation of search engines. That's why I recommend swapping "terraces" and "shallow landslides" for other words.

2) Line 41 and line 45 (figure 1 caption), please indicate the country.

3) Line 50 and 54 and all paper: Please, change “Shallow” to “shallow”.

4) Table 1: Can you indicate the classification of the soil according to the Soil Taxonomy or the WRB (FAO)?

5) How can the use of altered soil (with changes in structure and bulk density, for example) influence the experiment? Can this change reality? Can you explain this in Material and methods?

6) Can the conclusions obtained in this laboratory experiment be extrapolated to reality or are there important factors that prevent it? Could you explain this in the paper?

7) How was the rainfall intensity chosen? Have you relied on natural rainfall intensities? How can this influence the results of the experiment?

8) Lines 240-241: This sentence (beginning and end of the experiment) has already been written in Material and methods.

9) Line 395: Please, change “shape” to “Shape”

10) In the Results and Discussion section, the results obtained in this work are not sufficiently compared with those obtained by other authors.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

I consider that your paper is very interesting and could be considered to be published if some issues are solved. Attached, you can find a pdf with my comments.

1. The format does not follow the mdpi rules.
2. The resolution of several images is very low.
3. The title is too long.
4. The abstract contains several aspects of the results (qualitative) and anything about the methods and implications of this research.
5. The introduction contains several sentences without references. I suggested 3 general works (reviews and applied work) be possibly cited, but I cannot suggest more since there are several sentences without references. Please, check these works to get more ideas and references, and not only from Chinese authors.
6. Methods: Please, use an international soil classification. Add a description of the image analysis and statistics.
7. The results are very qualitative, long sentences and few numerical descriptions.
8. Discussion: No mention if this work can be used to explain larger scales.
9. Conclusions: too long.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

water-1060870

The manuscript “Experimental Study on Shallow Landslides and Deep Slip Surface in Terraces in Loess Hilly and Gully Areas Under Extreme Rainfall Conditions” addresses an interesting and up-to-date subject, which adhere to Water journal policies.

In this research there was established a controlled environment for testing soil from the Loess Plateau in order to evaluate the complex the shallow landslides and erosion processes.

There are numerous articles regarding research on the Loess Plateau, and even though the manuscript does not have high novelty, but it presents a good case study and controlled experiment, with genuine work, preparation and measurements. Even if the conclusion was predictable, it was interesting to read about each stage and the figures and results are clearly presented.

In my opinion the manuscript must be improved before publication with the following:

• A good English and citation check of all the text, as there are some mistakes (eg [1–2] -> [1,2])
• There are some inappropriate citations placement, that need to be corrected and addressed (eg R182 where you cite [41–43]; that is your method description, not citable)
• This is more of a question for the authors, but why is there such a long period (over 3 years) between experiment and publication? Maybe even briefly address is in the text

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper was highly improved and can be accepted.

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.