Influence of Reclaimed Water Quality on Infiltration Characteristics of Typical Subtropical Zone Soils: A Case Study in South China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

To further improve the text, I suggest the following changes in the manuscript.
Abstract: Abstract should be written in concise. I would suggest listing only some of the most important results to justify the implications and conclusions of the study.
The background of an introduction should be revised accordingly.
The introduction is very good. It doesn't reflect the goal; please rewrite it again, it is suggested to include some latest reference. 
Objectives of this study must be included at end of introduction part. 
I highly recommended to authors, if possible, please modify the figure with good quality images. 
The economic intuition behind the results are missing. The author/s should revise the discussion part. The result should be supported with recent studies.
What is contribution of this work to existing literature? 
It has been observed that the authors have used old references and ignored the latest studies. So it is suggested to add recent references. Please check reference section some references are missing.The policy implications also required elaboration. The implications should go along with the results and the course of action should be discussed in this part. In some places, some grammatical errors are found that need to be fixed.

please read following articles and cite properly, 

DOI: https://doi.org/10.15244/pjoes/134292

10.5004/dwt.2020.25119

10.5004/dwt.2019.24925

10.5004/dwt.2019.24156

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

Title: Influence of Reclaimed Water Quality on Infiltration Characteristics of Typical Subtropical Zone Soils: A Case Study in South China

Effect of reclaimed water irrigation on soil infiltration was investigated. Some concerns are as follows.

1. What are the main components of reclaimed water determining the soil infiltration characteristics? What are the main changed characteristics of soil after reclaimed water irrigation. Supply such information in abstract. Thus, abstract should be rewritten with focusing most novel data.
2. Since the authors have emphasized on the importance of soil infiltrations on the crop quality, can the authors supply some data to evaluate such things?
3. What is the logic for the four different dilution levels of reclaimed water?
4. What are the components (e.g. humic acid, elemental) of the investigated soils? I think such characteristics are also important to predict the effect of reclaimed water.
5. What is the chemical oxygen demand of used reclaimed water? What is treatment method in the Huaqiao municipal wastewater? How much water can the plant treat at one day? What is the pretreatment method of used reclaimed water?
6. Were all experiments conducted in triplicates?
7. Figure 2. What are the reasons for changed soil infiltration properties? Try to discuss the results, and support the data with literature.

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

Report summary

This paper provides an important contribution. The use of recycled water is becoming more important in the face of a changing climate, and yet the environmental impacts of this intervention need to be researched. This paper is looking at the impacts of using recycled water on the soil’s physico-chemical properties, and that is a useful contribution in agricultural water management.

 

General comment(s)

1. One main weakness of this paper is the lack of proper discussion of the findings. There is no clear demonstration of understanding of other research done in the area, no comparison of results with existing research available. The results have not been put in context. In my opinion, the authors need to be more engaging in their results and discussion, which currently is significantly lacking.
2. The introduction is not properly written, it seems to be a longer version of the abstract as the authors have included the methodology, results and conclusion in the introduction, which is not supposed to be the case.
3. The use of distilled water as a control is questionable as it is not commonly used for irrigation. In my opinion, farm water would have been the appropriate control. Distilled water exaggerates the comparison as it is corrosive in its nature when compared to just farm water. Please provide justification for the use of distilled water in your study.

 

Specific comment(s)

Line 37: suggesting the use of cost-effective instead of cost-benefit

Line 65: SAR being Sodium Adsorption Ratio, not rate

Line 68: suggesting the removal of ‘exceptional’

Line 219: “Each assay is performed twice in triplicate”, please explain, are these replications? Please clearly explain how many treatments, and how many replications.

Tables 5 & 6: Tables show soil physico-chemical properties after a year. How were the properties at the beginning of the experiment, that will present a full picture of what happened.

Author Response

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Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

-

Reviewer 2 Report

all my concerns have been well incorporated