Impact of Historical Agrarian Landforms on Soil Water Content Variability at Local Scale in West Carpathian Region, Slovakia

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors analyzed effect of agricultural landforms on soil water content in the West Carpathian region, Slovakia and explored the main driving factors of soil water content change in the study area. The results provide some useful information for studying the soil hydrological function of the West Carpathian region, but there are many problems in this paper at present. This study was conducted only for the variability of soil moisture. No in-depth analysis of the results was conducted. Some sentence and paragraph structures in the abstract, introduction, results, discussion and conclusion need further revision. The specific suggestions are as follows：

1. Abstract section: In the abstract, the authors only state the results of the study, without clearly stating the status and significance of this study, and the necessity of this research cannot be reflected.
2. Introduction section: The introduction section should be reorganized. The present introduction cannot convince readers of the importance of this study.
3. Discussion section: The discussion section lacks novelty as well as deeper analysis.
4. Conclusion section: At present, the conclusion is a simple listing of the results of the study, and the conclusion is the same as some parts of the abstract, so this section needs to be rewritten.
5. Line 73: The author gives only the geographical coordinates of Liptovská Teplička, the specific scope of the study area should be provided.
6. The locations of ground meteorological stations are suggested to be labeled in Figure 1.
7. Lines 98-101: The data for the total area and division of agricultural land are from 2011, while the rainfall and soil moisture data are from 2018, and the time should be consistent.
8. Line 129: Five various types of agrarian landforms were selected, please explain the type of selection and the reason for selection.
9. 9. Lines 138-143: The study area is divided into three levels according to permeability. The detailed scope of the classification should be explained instead of just the dividing point, and the theoretical basis of the classification should be explained
10. Line 184:SWCj should be .
11. Lines 329-330: This conclusion is not analyzed in the text, and the available results do not provide strong support for this conclusion.
12. There are some errors in the text, such as "moun-terraces" in line 101 and "According to [12] [13] and," in lines 295-296, etc. The parameters in some graphs lack units, and the abbreviations are inconsistent. Improper use of many mathematical symbols.
13. Most of the references cited in this paper are older.
14. Authors should give the paper to read and correct by professional proof reading. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

In the reviewed paper, the authors have undertaken a statistical evaluation of the influence of different agrarian landforms and selected environmental factors on the water content in the topsoil - up to 30 cm and its point variability on the Liptovská Teplička research object.  For this purpose, they used direct measurements of soil moisture carried out at five selected locations within the research object including location on slope and 2 depths of 10 and 30 cm.

The subject matter of the study is important because it concerns the water cycle in the environment, however, the basic shortcoming of the study is basing the analysis only on the results of the research coming from 1 measurement year 2018 (April - December). This immediately indicates that the obtained results can be referred only to this year - which should be specified in the title. The question is then what was the year adopted for the analysis in terms of precipitation, air temperature and soil moisture conditions? To what extent did it correspond to average conditions for this location - this is important because precipitation as a random element is characterized by large variability both in time and spatial scale. How representative for the site was the location of the rain gauge used to obtain 10-minute precipitation information, which was the basis for the determination of precipitation episodes? Furthermore, their characterization presented in Section 2.1 is insufficient.  My doubts are raised by the adopted time step of analyses - Q. What is the reason for such division into periods Q1 - Q4?  The analyses cover the months of winter half-year - how reliable is the measurement of soil moisture under conditions of freezing ground temperatures, especially in the surface layer (Fig. 3 shows that the average air temperature in that period reaches negative values - below -10°C).

Other remarks:

  - the introduction should be improved and more recent literature should be added. Out of 28 items mentioned in the Introduction only 9 were published in the last 10 years,

- conclusions should be redrafted,

- table 1 is not very readable (especially bottom part),

- Figures 4 and 5 are not very readable.

In my opinion, in its current version the paper is not suitable for printing in MDPI Water journal.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

The papers present a methodology for assessing the impact of historical agrarian landforms on soil water content variability. The author clearly states the topic and problem, the overall design and approach are appropriate. The paper is well organized. The paper needs some adjustments before being accepted for publications

Here are comments:

General comments:

The title is too long and provides too many details, I suggest the authors consider reducing the length of the title.

As a general rule, all abbreviations/acronyms should be written out in full on first use (in both the abstract and the paper itself) and followed by the abbreviated form in parentheses. Please make sure after all use after first is in abbreviated form. For example, agrarian landforms at lines 85, 137…

The language should be improved. Grammatical errors and wrong words need to be corrected

Specific comments:

• Line 9, (Al) should be (AL)?
• Figure 1. I assume the scale bar is for the left map, if so, please move the scale bar into the map. And please provide a geo-referencing grid or latlong for the reference map, so the audience knows where it is located.
• Figure 3, label for Oct is not in English, please correct it.
• Line 324, CV – coefficient of (?);
• Line 538, you do not need to abbreviate again here.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

In the version 2 of the article submitted for review, the authors expanded the Introduction, Discussion, and Reworded Conclusions sections.

They also expanded the section on characterization of precipitation conditions. However, I have objections about it. There should have been a consistent and correct characterization of precipitation conditions in the period adopted for analysis in 2016 in relation to the normative multiyear (for 2016, at least, these are the years 1981-2010). I find the characterizations of the hydrological year (November 2015 - October 2016) and the information provided in Figures 2a (contributes nothing) and 2b (I suggest the simulated data be replaced by multi-year averages of the actual values (from the normative multi-year) to be unjustified.

I still maintain that the course of precipitation is random and only in this context should the obtained statistical data be interpreted. It would be different if the authors had many years of information about precipitation episodes and soil moisture from this area. Therefore, in the title instead of “annual”, Authors should add “on the example of 2016”.

Author Response

Assessing the impact of historical agrarian landforms on annual soil water content variability and stability at local scale in West Carpathian region, Slovakia

Response to Reviewers Comments,

Response to second review (23 Dec 2021) – minor revision         

Response to Reviewer #2:

 Response to Reviewer comment No. 1

„They also expanded the section on characterization of precipitation conditions. However, I have objections about it. There should have been a consistent and correct characterization of precipitation conditions in the period adopted for analysis in 2016 in relation to the normative multiyear (for 2016, at least, these are the years 1981-2010). I find the characterizations of the hydrological year (November 2015 - October 2016) and the information provided in Figures 2a (contributes nothing) and 2b (I suggest the simulated data be replaced by multi-year averages of the actual values (from the normative multi-year) to be unjustified.“

• The figure 2a and related text has been removed from the revised manuscript. Regarding the second comment suggesting the replacement of 30 years monthly regional simulation data with multi-year averages, it is difficult to incorporate the reviewer request, since such data are not freely available and therefore cannot be retrieved from official source at SHMI within 5 days review period. Thus, due to restricted accessibility, we have used simulated data, which were freely available.

Response to Reviewer comment No. 2

„I still maintain that the course of precipitation is random and only in this context should the obtained statistical data be interpreted. It would be different if the authors had many years of information about precipitation episodes and soil moisture from this area. Therefore, in the title instead of “annual”, Authors should add “on the example of 2016”. “

• The title has been adjusted according to reviewer suggestion to: Assessing the impact of historical agrarian landforms on example of 2016 soil water content variability and stability at local scale in West Carpathian region, Slovakia

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

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.