Thank you for the response to the referees. The response looks good but you have not addressed this comment adequately and it is important: "In Table 1 the carbon data should be presented on a volumetric basis. You should also determine the total carbon storage over the soil profile by accounting for bulk density. Express this on an area basis."

If you read recent soil carbon papers, data are corrected for bulk density and expressed as a per area basis. You have the data to do this easily. You can also integrate over the entire profile depth to determine total carbon.

The follow on comment from the reviewer asks for a comparison between ecotypes, and not to the beginning of the experiment. Please get in touch with me if you need further clarification.

Dear Damaris,

Thank you for considering SOIL for publication of an interesting paper. Please make the final corrections as indicated in the letter from the Technical Editor, shown below.

Technical Editor comments: "Thank you for the response to the referees. The response looks good but you have not addressed this comment adequately and it is important: "In Table 1 the carbon data should be presented on a volumetric basis. You should also determine the total carbon storage over the soil profile by accounting for bulk density. Express this on an area basis."

If you read recent soil carbon papers, data are corrected for bulk density and expressed as a per area basis. You have the data to do this easily. You can also integrate over the entire profile depth to determine total carbon.

The follow on comment from the reviewer asks for a comparison between ecotypes, and not to the beginning of the experiment. Please get in touch with me if you need further clarification."


In addition, when making the final corrections please also submit the corrected manuscript, showing in "track changes" where you modified the original manuscript.

All the best,
Lily Pereg