Effects of Climatic Variability on Soil Water Content in an Alpine Kobresia Meadow, Northern Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau, China
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Some comments follow.
- Line 21: Capital letter after “ ; “. Please correct.
Results showed soil water content increased insignificant in the during the study period (p=0.480), and in the growth season, showed a trend of decreasing, then increasing and finally decreasing” Somethingh appears wrong in this sentence, in English, particularly here soil water content increased insignificant in the during.
- Line 31: “con-trolling”. Please correct. Please be careful to the formatting
- Line 48: Please replace “it’s” with “its”.
- A question regarding the measurements: why authors just start from weight measurements, and do not use more usual (up to my knowledge) type of observations, such as TDR for soil water content, or soil psychrometer?
- The whole paper in my opinion is missing of an important point of view: the modelling of infiltration. Why not performing soil water infiltration numerical experiments, by solving Richards’ equation? That could be also done by treasuring observations, in a data assimilation framework (see for instance Berardi et al, CPC 2016 https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.1016/j.cpc.2016.07.025 ) or also accounting for permafrost condition in heterogeneous soils (see for instance Stepanov et al, Mathematics 2021, https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/math9202545)
Finally, I think the paper could deserve to be published, but just after a significant revision, in which English should be deeply reviewed.
Author Response
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Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The manuscript by Si et al. presented the vriation of soil moisture under climate change in an alpine Kobresia meadow. It falls within the scope of the journal and the issue. The study was interesting and could be published after a major revision.
The language need further revision, not only the words used, but also the logistic, the structure. Please refer to some of the comments in attached.
The data needs further analysis. If the authos could present analysis on variations of the data with years or month, it will be much more interesting and worth to publish. Presently, there is no anlysis results, eapecially in Fig 4, which is not good method to present this kind of data. Please include more analysis.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
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Reviewer 3 Report
This study has assessed the variation of soil moisture is assessed for thirteen years in an alpine Kobresia meadow, northern Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau, China.
First and foremost, assessing trends of any land system process over a brief period such as 13 years cannot be deemed as climate change. It is just trying to assess the variability, not climate change.
The authors need to revise the whole idea of climate change presented in this manuscript.
Abstract:
Ln no 12: What is artificial monitoring?
Introduction
It is wrong to build the context of this work on climate change as 13 years of data does not represent any climate change phenomenon (Check IPCC AR^ definitions of climate change and how they have calculated it for different land system processes; what is the length of data they have used? etc.)
Materials and methods:
How 13 years of soil moisture data were collected is not clear. Elaborate
Results
Using spatial visualization tools such as GIS is suggested to show your results.
Discussion:
It requires a lot of cross-referencing and revision in the climate change context. Using the concept of climate change to discuss the results is not acceptable. So authors need to discuss the results in the context of the variability of temperature and precipitation and drought indexes.
Conclusion
It is not well written.
Limitations, gaps, and future scope have to incorporate in this section. Also, as policy and decision-making implications.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Authors mainly answered to my comments.
The rationale of my comment about the modelling of infiltration phenomena was intended as a possible hint of future work, not necessarily a suggestion to implement infiltration modelling in this paper. I still think it would be valuable, for outlining future research scenarios, refer -for instance, but it is just an idea- to data assimilation methods, or taking also into account heterogeneities, both topics in the infiltration framework.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors perfromed extensive revisions during the first round of revision.
I would suggest publication of the paper once all previous coments have been fully addressed. For example, Fig. 4 is stil not correct. Please see all my commens in the last revision.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The authors are suggested
1. Instead of "climate variation," use "climatic variability."
2. Provide more literature review in the Introduction, and Discussion section, particularly from the Himalayas
3. The authors are suggested to conduct a significance test of all the meteorological elements' trends, such as temperature, soil moisture, rainfall, drought index etc. and discuss the same in the results and discussion sections.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 3
Reviewer 3 Report
Thank you for incorporating all the suggestions.
