Decission on manuscript: soil-2015-78
Effect of grassland cutting frequency on soil carbon storage - A case study on public lawns in three Swedish cities by C. Poeplau et al.

Thanks to the reviewers for their enriched and detailed reviews. The authors have thoughtfully replied to their comments and it seems that they have addressed most of them, particularly those of referee 2. The answers to the comments that have not been addressed are also quite reasonable. We will check later if the changes in the manuscript follow and satisfy the main requirements established by the referees.
Concerning to the comments of referee 1, I understand the explanations of the authors however I would advice:
1. If you do not have a complete soil description, as referee 1 requested, and taking into account that Table 1 and 2 provide already some basic information on the main characteristics of those soils. If available, is possible to add to Table 1, or in the study area section, any other information about those soils (electrical conductivity, nutrients, description of soil structure, average size of aggregates etc.)?.
2. Can you describe shortly in the results section differences not only between treatments but among sites within each variable? This seems especially relevant for NPP and SOC, is possible that local differences exert an important control on the treatments?
My decision is “revision” because it seems that the authors have addressed most of the comments of the reviewers, we will check the final version to see the improvements in the clarity of the manuscript and if the changes satisfy the main comments pointed out by the referees. My feeling is that the advice of the referees have been taken into account and we hope that the manuscript will reflect that.

Dear C. Poeplau and rest of the authors,

Thanks very much for your diligence improving the manuscript according to the revisions of the referees and comments of the editor. You addressed efficiently the changes and improvements proposed, and you anwsered reasonably when this was not possible. The paper is ready for publications, just a couple of very little technical corrections are needed:
1. Please can you rewrite the objectives of the work in a formal infinitive way such as for instance:
i) to examine how cutting frequency affected NPP...
ii) to analyse how the impact of management practices affected the mechanisms...

2. Please can you add between brackets in lines 100 -102 how many times in total de utility lawn was mowed? (to be more clear and equiparable to the description of the meadow-like lawn).

3. Line 224, Table 3 is mentioned, is that wrong? should not be Table 2?

4. Line 231 can you change "ns" by "not shown" (sometimes ns is also used for not significant and it can be confusing...)

5. Table 1. Can you change CN by C:N ?

Thanks, Carolina

Thank you for considering SOIL. Please consider the final suggestions of the Topical Editor before submitting your final manuscript. I also insist that you take a close look at statistics used in Fig 5 and 6: please report the p-value. For Fig 6: the R2 is meaningless, please consider using the individual datapoints or a non-parametric test to evaluate the relationship.