Sediment Grain-Size Composition in the Permafrost Region of the Greater Khingan Range and Its Significance as a Material Source
, Xiaodong Wu 3, Rui Liu 1,2, Tianrui Li 1,2, Jiaju Zhu 1,2, Li Sun 1,2, Shaoqiang Wu 1,2, Xingfeng Dong 1,2 and Zihao Zhang 1,2
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
I enjoyed reading the revised version of the article entitled "Sediment grain-size composition in the Greater Khingan Range permafrost region and its implication of material sources."
The article presents an interesting method regarding grain size composition, sedimentation information. I recommend publishing the article after minor revision, mostly technichal.
Fig.1: The maps are missing the regional context. Name of main countries would help to get an idea about the area of the research.
Fig. 2: Label of the location of each profile is missing.
Line 414: Please erase one coma, next to the word “period”.
I would add general photos of each of the sites where the drills were conducted, this will give an idea about the area, for the reader who is not familiar with the area.
I would add the ages of the sediments on fig. 2.
Author Response
Thank you for offering us an opportunity to improve the quality of our submitted manuscript (land-2523603: Sediment grain-size composition in the Greater Khingan Range permafrost region and its implication of material sources). We appreciated very much the reviewers’ constructive and insightful comments.The comments and suggestions definitely helped us to improve the quality of the manuscript. In this revision, we have addressed all of these comments. We hope the revised manuscript has now met the publication standard of your journal.
We highlighted all the revisions in red colour.
On the next pages, our point-to-point responses to the queries raised by the reviewers are listed.
Reviewer 2 Report
Permafrost degradation is closely related to the physical properties of the soils. The provenance of the soils is the basis of sediment grain size distribution, so understanding the sources of frozen soil is important for predicting the variations of frozen soil degradation. This study assessed the sedimentary sources of the permafrost deposits in the Greater Khingan Mountains using the EMMA of the GSD from four drilling cores. The records capture the information of provenances and evolution for the winter monsoon since the MIS3a periods. The strengthening of the winter monsoons in the past few thousand years will cause the transport of coarser grain sizes and further exacerbating permafrost degradation. Generally speaking, this is a relatively complete work, especially the 14C dating work provide age frame for paleoclimate reconstruction in the Greater Khingan Mountains area. The manuscript is short and concise, it's worthy publication. However, I think the article still needs to be carefully revised before its publication. I would also strongly recommend revising the English. I will outline my main concerns below, and I hope my following comments can help to improve the manuscript.
1. Abstract: What is the significance of studied paleosol and its continuity and provenance? Some sentences should be added to make the work more meaningful. In my opinion, it is better to condensed and polish this part to helpful for increasing the interesting of reader.
2. Introduction: The introduction of the previous researches is too brief, resulting in prominent innovation points in this part are obscure.
3. Materials and methods: The sampling interval for grain size samples was not specified in the text. This is very important and it will determine whether the grain sizes data can be used to analyze H events.
4. Results (4.3 End-Member Modeling Analysis Results): Inconsistency between the data in the text and Table 2. Such as the R2 and θ of drilling core C is 0.26 and 3.92, respectively. However, the corresponding data in the table 2 is 0.271 and 3.953, respectively. Please check the consistency of the full text data and tables.
5.Line 82：source.e. should be corrected.
6.Line 141. The EMMA software [39,40]. The sentence was not complete.
7.Figure 3: Depth (cm) should be marked as vertical axis, and the 14C ages should be added in the horizontal axis.
8. Remove excess C from Table 1.
9. Figure 7: Please mark the numbers (a, b, c, d, e and f) in each of the 6 images.
10. Line 316-323: Using sediment types as the subject of sentences instead of reference numbers.
11. Line 390: 18 should be superscripted
12. Line 399: The North Taiping Ocean should be North Pacific.
13. I noticed that the references format is not uniform, please check them carefully when revised the manuscript.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
I would recommend revising the English.
Author Response
Thank you for offering us an opportunity to improve the quality of our submitted manuscript (land-2523603: Sediment grain-size composition in the Greater Khingan Range permafrost region and its implication of material sources). We appreciated very much the reviewers’ constructive and insightful comments.The comments and suggestions definitely helped us to improve the quality of the manuscript. In this revision, we have addressed all of these comments. We hope the revised manuscript has now met the publication standard of your journal.
We highlighted all the revisions in red colour.
On the next pages, our point-to-point responses to the queries raised by the reviewers are listed.
This article has been polished by a native English speaker through a professional institution, and the polishing proof is as follows word.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
Please see the docx file for my detailed comments/suggestions.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
There are many grammar mistakes and non-standard expressions. It is best that the English of the manuscript can be improved by a native speaker
Author Response
Thank you for offering us an opportunity to improve the quality of our submitted manuscript (land-2523603: Sediment grain-size composition in the Greater Khingan Range permafrost region and its implication of material sources). We appreciated very much the reviewers’ constructive and insightful comments.The comments and suggestions definitely helped us to improve the quality of the manuscript. In this revision, we have addressed all of these comments. We hope the revised manuscript has now met the publication standard of your journal.
We highlighted all the revisions in red colour.
On the next pages, our point-to-point responses to the queries raised by the reviewers are listed.
This article has been polished by a native English speaker through a professional institution, and the polishing proof is as follows.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
I think the paper can be accepted for publication.
A minor problem, please use "cal ka BP" during the discussion of palaeoclimate change throughout the text.
