Dear authors,
Thank you for providing answers to the reviewer comments and thank you as well to the two reviewers for their helpful and extensive feedback. After evaluating both reviews and your response I recommend to go forward with a major revision for this manuscript which involves reworking the manuscript and in parts more analyses to provide further details to methods and the interpretation of your results.

In particular, I think it is important to address the comments of both reviewers considering the presentation and statistical analyses of your data (improving methods description and in parts revising the way the results have been presented); and to provide a substantially revised discussion, referenced with relevant international literature for framing and comparison of your findings to former research in other tropical regions.

While these comments involve extensive revision of the text, I do believe their implementation is straight forward since the reviewers gave very detailed advice. Additionally, I want to point out that the relevance of your work is high and I would much appreciated to see a revision of this manuscript. When providing the revision, please also provide a point-by-point response letter to all reviewer comments and a track-changes version of the manuscript for an easier tracing of the modifications made to the MS.

Dear Authors,
we have received now two reviews for your re-submitted manuscript. Both reviewers were involved in the first round of reviews. Both also see improvements with the manuscript. However, one reviewer indicated that some of the key concerns that were raised during the last round remain not addressed or addressed superficially. I do think the reviewers concern were valid in the raised cases and that implementing them will make the manuscript much stronger. Given the potential of the manuscript, I would therefore advise to re-consider how you addressed them and suggest another revision. Below the comments that need your attention is needed for. I added my own comments to each point in brackets:

Reviewer 1.
- I highly suggested that the authors re-read the manuscript carefully and correct minor issue with tense (i.e. "is" vs "was, etc.), grammatical errors, and typos, which are minor but scattered throughout the manuscript. (Editor: Agreed. Please go through the MS top to bottom before resubmitting and check for consistency in writing)

Reviewer 2.
- In the response letter, the authors did not really indicate how they have addressed my major criticism. (Editor: I noticed that the response letter from the last round was quite brief in this regard. Please explain in your response letter in detail how you address these issues and where to find your changes in the document. Bring examples if changes were done throughout the manuscript and not just for a specific issue. Please also explain in the response letter more explicit why certain comments can be ignored / do not need to be addressed in the extent suggested by the reviewers.

- The authors did not study drivers of soil organic carbon although indicated in the title. (Editor: Agreed. The manuscript is rather on SOC and other soil parameters as an indicator for a specific soil status and soil health in general, but not focused so much on the aspects of drivers as suggested by the title)

- I do not see that they expanded the section on drivers of SOC as indicated in the response letter. (Editor: Indeed, aspects of soil degradation and consequences for restoration were explained much better now. but I do agree that the section on drivers should give a broader picture still to guide the reader and put results into perspective).

- In the introduction the authors discussed the shortcomings in the assessment of land degradation and restoration very correctly (starting in line 62) and they introduced SOC as a universal / key indicator. In the next paragraph (starting in line 75), the authors addressed different indicators without given any explanation what indicators they have in mind. That illustrates one of the shortcomings of this manuscript. In the introduction the authors imply that only one universal indicator is used, however, that is not the case giving the variety of different indicators they analyzed. (Editor: I agree that the introduction is only in parts aligned with what later is analyzed and presented. More information and guidance for the reader to arrive at what you describe the study will do in l. 117 and following is needed and this should include a brief description of the other indicators you plan to look at).

- I would expect from the manuscript an introduction / motivation of the used indicators as e.g. vegetation composition, tree density, species diversity, hydraulic conductivity, 13C. Unfortunately, that was not done. The authors should also decide whether SOC is an inherent soil property (e.g. line 123) or controlled by inherent drivers. (Editor: agreed)

- After a thorough introduction of the indicators, I would expect hypotheses related to these indicators and how they might be interrelated. (Editor: Agreed. The formulation of testable working hypotheses related to your objectives as listed in l.120-122 and the data you want to use for that would be important and quite helpful for a reader).

- The general approach of the used framework (LDSF) has not been explained in detail although being decisive for the whole manuscript. I think it is much more than just the field sampling design. (Editor: I tend to disagree with this comment. LDSF has been described in the cited publications in great detail. However, the reviewer has a point. I think the fact that the manuscript does rely heavily on LDSF justifies to add a few extra lines on the motivation behind LDSF and how it relates to the study at hand).

- In the discussion, the reader of the journal would expect an evaluation how useful these indicators are in assessing soil degradation. This part is too superficial. (Editor: Agreed. A thorough analysis of the usefulness but also the limitation and uncertainties related to the use of the suggested soil health indicators would strengthen the discussion greatly. Especially if it can be related to a case study such as the one presented here).

Dear Authors, I have checked the revisions that you provided to your article and I am happy with the changes that you suggest based on the reviewer comments. I dont see any larger problems remaining and I think we can proceed with this manuscript.

A few remainign issues:
- In the abstract, avoid the repetitive use of the word "landscape" in the same sentence found in the newly added part.

- I would recommend to look over the wording in l. 635 - 639 again. The new part with "soil erosion maps will be used..." is confusing me a bit in its relation to the current study.

-Check the font type and formatting of the added new literature to be consistent with SOIL guidelines.

Dear authors, I am pleased to inform that your manuscript will be accepted to publish in SOIL subject to some technical corrections indicated by the Topical Editor.

Sincerely

Jorge Mataix-Solera