Research on the Non-Point Source Pollution Characteristics of Important Drinking Water Sources
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The work carried out by the author is good and also suitable for publication in this journal. However, there are some modifications needed before acceptance.
Comments
- An improvement needed in abstract part, in term of results of the sudies.
- Introduction part must be elaborate according to some new references.
- It is necessary to indicate the significance of this work more clearly in conclusion section.
- There are some grammatically mistakes together with long sentences in the manuscript. So long sentences should be rewrite.
- The most of the figure's quality is not good and even very difficult to understand so change with clear figure.
- Some typo errors are also exit as author use a lot of coma(,) throughout the manuscript like page no 12, line 385, 387 (no need of coma), 377, 378 etc.
- In the captions of the figures, author must write the full form of terms which are mentioned in short form.
After explanations and clarifications of above mentioned comments it can be considered for publications.
Author Response
Dear Editor, Dear reviewers
We would like to thank you very much for your valuable comments and good suggestions that greatly helped to improve our manuscript. Thank you very much for your time and efforts. Based on the comments and suggestions, we have revised the manuscript accordingly. And we have uploaded a version of the revised manuscript with all the changes highlighted by using the track changes mode in MS word and a version of the revised manuscript with all changes accepted.
Appended to this letter is our point by point response to the comments raised by the reviewers. The comments are reproduced and our responses are given directly afterward in a different color (red). The line number in Reply refers to the revised manuscript with track changes.
We appreciate for Editor and Reviewers' warm work earnestly, and hope that the correction will meet with approval.
Once again, thank you and all the reviewers for the advice and consideration.
Sincerely,
Lei Hou
College of Water Conservancy and Civil Engineering, Shandong Agricultural University
Tai’ an, Shandong Province, China
E-mail: houl@sdau.edu.cn
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
The reviewed manuscript is an interesting example of the use of modeling and simulation to assess the risk of drinking water sources contamination with biogenic compounds (nitrogen and phosphorus) of anthropogenic origin. Particularly interesting is the analysis of possible scenarios for non-point source pollution reduction in a given catchment area using a modified export model and simulation results in order to select the optimal strategy. The manuscript has the correct layout, the research part and the discussion of the results are satisfactory, however, several elements need to be improved before publishing:
1) the weakest element of the work is English - there are a lot of grammatical and stylistic errors in the work, which is why I believe that an extended linguistic correction is necessary (for example MDPI English editing service)
2) section "4. Conclusions" contains practically the same information as provided in section "3. Results and discussion"; in this form it is unnecessary. Conclusions should contain remarks and observations resulting from the conducted research, but not previously included in the discussion part.
In addition, I would like to highlight a few minor deficiencies / doubts:
line 69 - "Tp and TN in the Huangqian Reservoir’s water source drastically exceed the standard." - Authors should provide short information about TP / TN concentration in the river and compare it with standard (required) values to support this statement;
line 123 - Table 1, row 1, column 2: value 30 m as resolution / coverage range is not clear in this case - is it the grid size (30 x 30 m) or linear dimension?
lines 137-141 (and further) - the description of the parameters in the equations seems a bit chaotic (random order of the parameters), wouldn't it be better to describe the parameters in the order as they appear in the formula?
line 150 - equation 2: there is no description of parameters L(r) i L(r_ave) in the text
line 177 - equation 3: applying arithmetics rules, parameter c could be removed as it appears in nominator and denominator; what is the meaning of this constant for the beta-factor?
line 180 - authors assume some values for c and d constants - what is the justification of this choice?
lines 30, 61, 314 etc. - in the text authors often use ">" instead of "more than"
lines 308, 309 etc. - instead of "=" in the text, I think it is beter to use "is" /"was"
Author Response
Dear Editor, Dear reviewers
We would like to thank you very much for your valuable comments and good suggestions that greatly helped to improve our manuscript. Thank you very much for your time and efforts. Based on the comments and suggestions, we have revised the manuscript accordingly. And we have uploaded a version of the revised manuscript with all the changes highlighted by using the track changes mode in MS word and a version of the revised manuscript with all changes accepted.
Appended to this letter is our point by point response to the comments raised by the reviewers. The comments are reproduced and our responses are given directly afterward in a different color (red). The line number in Reply refers to the revised manuscript with track changes.
We appreciate for Editor and Reviewers' warm work earnestly, and hope that the correction will meet with approval.
Once again, thank you and all the reviewers for the advice and consideration.
Sincerely,
Lei Hou
College of Water Conservancy and Civil Engineering, Shandong Agricultural University
Tai’ an, Shandong Province, China
E-mail: houl@sdau.edu.cn
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
All my comments in the review were taken into account and the manuscript was corrected accordingly. I am satisfied with the changes introduced by the authors. I have only some doubts about the Conclusion section, which does not contain any new information in relation to the previously presented content, however it is acceptable in its current form.
