Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: GORGONOPSIAN THERAPSIDS (NOCHNITSA GEN. NOV. AND VIATKOGORGON) FROM THE PERMIAN KOTELNICH LOCALITY OF RUSSIA
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: I have read the response to reviewers and the revised manuscript and feel that the authors have done an adequate job revising the paper.  I have no additional concerns and am happy to see the paper accepted for publication.
Experimental design: No comment.
Validity of the findings: No comment.
Additional comments: Good job. Looks ready for publication.


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: GORGONOPSIAN THERAPSIDS (NOCHNITSA GEN. NOV. AND VIATKOGORGON) FROM THE PERMIAN KOTELNICH LOCALITY OF RUSSIA
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: The writing is clear, and unambiguous.
Experimental design: The research questions are well defined and relevant, the taxonomy is sufficiently adressed.
Validity of the findings: The data is well presented and taxonomic conclusions are fine.
Additional comments: After reading through the script again, the edits the authors have made to all three reviewers seem acceptable to me.

I am glad the phylogenetic comments have been rectified which appear to have been unanimous among the reviewers.

I would note some points on the reviewers interpretation of my comments on figure 9. Perhaps there are no better specimens in the authors mind, but a few specimens of Lycaenops also show this well and conspicuously. My comment here is driven by the really not all that differing morphology between B-C, D could be real but looks broken. If the author is right about this character, that is fine. I just wonder how variable this is within species or through ontogeny. It is not worth holding the paper up on that note however. I defer to the authors here.

Also, I still disagree with your use of Hag, I think some classicists might take offence too (especially relying on the Websters-). If you have studied the field (of Classics (also not necessarily Myth), then you might know the severity of language and interpretations in their discipline (ie the subject of entire Phd's). Daemon, is still the most correct term- I ran this by some classicists at U of T. But thats again a personal opinion on my part and will not hold up this contribution.

thanks for the opportunity to review the study.

-Arjan Mann


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: PROCESS-BASED ALLOMETRY DESCRIBES THE INFLUENCE OF MANAGEMENT ON ORCHARD TREE ABOVEGROUND ARCHITECTURE
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: The paper is well written, makes good use of citations (though I have problems with one in particular and would like to see some additional ones). The structure is fine, raw data is available.

The manuscript is generally self-consistent, though some papers I recommend citing change at least one conclusion.
Experimental design: No comment
Validity of the findings: Data is robust and freely available, so others can replicate the statistical analysis.

In general "Flow Similarity" is a good addition to scaling theory, but I have problems with the fact that a major paper cited in this manuscript has not been peer reviewed. That weakens the overall conclusions.
Additional comments: Paper title: Process-based allometry describes the influence of management on orchard tree aboveground architecture

Using two orchard tress species (cherry and apple) the authors examined inter- and intraspecific scaling relationships, comparing results to those predicted by the WBE model and the "Flow Similarity" model.

General comments: The paper is clearly written and addresses a question I have thought about myself--do the scaling relationships of managed crop trees that are pruned differ from, say, wild trees or trees grown in a plantation setting. In general I enjoyed the paper and find their methods and interpretation of results sound. I have some specific concerns, however, which fall into a few categories:
        1.) materials cited
        2.) possible conflation between WBE idea of branching and flow similarity's concept of branching
        3.) way data is presented

See below for details.

Specific comments:

The Flow Similarity model builds on actual branching where as the WBE concept of branching is more abstract and is more geared at less-macro scales. I am slightly concerned you are conflating the two branching ideas. At teh very least it would be nice to discuss the differences (and more importantly the similarities) between the two, and why they can be treated as equivilent in this work. Maybe cite Duncan 2013 "Deviation from symmetrically self-similar branching in trees predicts altered hydraulics, mechanics, light interception, and metabolic scaling."

Line 41: The citation of Huxley as 1972 is misleading. "Problems of Relative Growth" was initially published in 1932, and predates the joint paper by Huxley and Tessier where they unified the language used (allometry/isometry) and established the accepted equation form y=bx^a. Consider using the 1932 publication year or cite the 1936 paper that first introduced the word "allometry" into the literature.
Huxley, Julian S, and Georges Teissier. 1936. “Terminology of Relative Growth.” Nature 137 (3471): 780–81.

Line 46: In keeping with talking about Huxley and the 1936 paper, the equation on line 46 different from the accepted standard format established by Huxley. I recommend y=bx^a vs using y0

Line 48: The term "fitted parameters" is slightly misleading in my mind. In log-log space, alpha is the slope of the line and beta is the Y intercept. This description (I think) makes the allometric equation more accessable.

Lines 50-51, 68-69: "Because many of these models predict only a single value of a for any particular x-y relationship, the exact value an importance of a is much debated." Enquist at al 2007 "Biological Scaling: Does the exception prove the rule" discusses an expansion of the WBE and specifically shows a plot of branch length vs branch diameter for seedlings and small plants( a=~1.8), and small to large trees (a=0.655). That the WBE allows for a range of a depending on the developmental stage of the tree contradicts your assertion that WBE predits " only a single value of a for any particular x-y relationship." It should also be noted that the values provided in Enquist 2007 match the FS predicted changing exponent values for L vs D (2 to 2/3)(Table 1)

Line 51: "...the exact value an importance of a is much debated." This debate goes all the way to Huxley's publication of "Problems of Relative Growth" in 1932. D'Arcy Thompson was critical of Huxley's allometric equations saying "Julian Huxley holds, and many hold with him, that the exponential or logarithmic formula, or compound-interest law, is of general application to cases of differential growth-rates.  I do not find it to be so: any more than we have found organ, organism or population to increase by compound interest or geometrical progression, save under exceptional circumstances and in transient phase.  Undoubtedly many of Huxley's instances shew increase by compound interest, during a phase of rapid and unstinted growth; but I find many others following a simple-interest rather than compound-interest law." (Thompson 1942. "On Growth and Form"). You could also cite any number of modern papers by Packard that present arguments similar to Thompson's (Packard 2014. "Assessing Allometric Growth by Leaves and the Hypothesis of Diminishing Returns")

Lines 53-55: The following sentence could use a reference to back it up: "Determining whether empirically estimated a support an expected value is challenging because while the values of exponents tenS to be constraineS, there is still variation within and across species."  Citing Niklas 1999 "Plant allometry: is there a grand unifying theory" would work, though you might already cite a paper that covers it.

Line 58: The Price paper is problematic in my eyes. The paper you list as a preprint was uploaded to arXiv in 2015. Papers submitted to arXiv are not peer reviewed. I am at all opposed to papers on arXiv. I simply bring it up because the flow similarity model is a major component in the paper, and as far as I know there has never been a peer-reviewed follow up to this preprint. Your paper heavily relies on material in a paper that hasn't undergone the peer-review process.

Line 60, 83-84, 96-98: "area-preserving branching," archetecture manipulated by pruning, how trees respond to human manipulation: There is a very long and historically relevant history around this idea. Leonardo da Vinci is the first person known to propose what would eventually become known as the “pipe model”. In his backward writing he noted:

“All the branches of a tree at every stage of its height when put together are equal in thickness to the trunk [below them]. All the branches of a water [course] at every stage of its course, if they are of equal rapidity, are equal to the body of the main stream.

“Every year when the boughs of a plant have made an end of maturing their growth, they will have made, when put together, a thickness equal to that of the main stem; and at every stage of its ramification you will find the thickness of the said main stem as i k, g h, e f, c d, a b, will always be equal to each other, unless the tree is pollard--if so the rule does not hold good.” (see attached image for the sketch the letters refer to. Remember that he wrote backward, so flipping the image will correct the labeling)

It strikes me that his passage is directly applicable to this paper because the authors are looking at pruned orchard trees. Pollarded trees are an extreme form of pruning, but a form of pruning never-the-less. Leonardo made the observation about water flow in the same section in which he discussed tree branches, hinting that he sensed some relationship there. With the authors looking at both pruning and discussing hydraulic flow, it seems like a perfect quotation to at least mention.

The author’s assertion that “Management of these orchard trees does appear to have some effect on the allometric relationships in the manipulation of the length dimension and the relaxation of biomechanics constraints” confirms da Vinci’s anecdotal observation. The authors and journal might be able to use that to promote the paper in popular press outlets.

The more modern citation for the pipe-model is:
Shinozaki K, Yoda K, Hozumi K, Kira T. 1964. A quantitative analysis of plant form–the Pipe Model Theory: I. Basic analysis. Japanese Journal of Ecology 14: 97–105.

Lines 178-181: I definitely appreciate your acknowledgement that there is a vocal group of researchers that question the use of log-log plots when examining data. For some background you could cite the "Differing Persepctives" papers in 2014 175:7 "International Journal of Plant Sciences": Niklas and Hammond "Assessing Scaling Relationships: Uses, Abuses, and Alternatives" and Packard "Assessing Allometric Growth by Leaves and the Hypothesis of Diminishing Returns"

Lines 212-213: Is listing the license in the paper necessary? The authors should list the license on the GitHub page. I very much approve of the authors providing the data and code used in the analysis, though.

Lines 185-187: I very much appreciate that the raw data and tools for analysing the data are available on github.

Line 251: "idealized plants from physics first principles" is awkwardly phrased.

Figure 1: This is a VERY minor thing, but figure 1 could be more attractive if rendered using an L-system/context free graphical package.

Figure 2: I again applaud the author’s presentation of data in a graphical fashion, but I’m not sure presenting predicted exponent values, 95% confidence values, and r2 as a series of figures is necessary. From a practical perspective, tables are cheaper to publish than tables. From a reviewer’s perspective, presenting this data in a graphical format does improve my understanding over the same data in a table.

Figure 2, Supplemental S1: to clarify, do you mean R^2 or r^2? In the paper you use "r^2" which referrs to simple linear regression, but the figures use R2.

Supplemental Figure S1: Is it necessary to include this? Also, does it make the most sense to convey r2 values as a figure? While it graphically shows qualitative differences, it is difficult to get quantitative values when the data is presented in this way. But, again, is Figure 1S necessary?

Supplemental Figure S2: Similar comment about how the data is conveyed as said for Fig S1. I have not encountered allometric exponent expectations, measurements, 95% confidence intervals, and r^2(or R2^2?) portrayed like this before. That is not a bad thing: I think it is important to think about how to present data in meaningful ways. But, for example, circle size indicating r^2 doesn't tell me _values_ for the r^2. I can make estimates in certain ranges, but am less secure in assigning actual values. Can Supplemental Figure 2 (and all it’s sub figures) be presented as a table?

Supplemental Figure S3: It seems like the authors plotted everything against everything. I am not convinced all these plots are necessary.


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: PROCESS-BASED ALLOMETRY DESCRIBES THE INFLUENCE OF MANAGEMENT ON ORCHARD TREE ABOVEGROUND ARCHITECTURE
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: no comment
Experimental design: no comment
Validity of the findings: no comment
Additional comments: This is a nice paper that compares empirical allometry data for branches of two orchard trees to predictions from two mechanistic plant allometry models.  The authors find that data generally agree with predictions of the models, and for cases where data do not, authors discuss why orchard management practices may cause these deviations.  The paper is very well written and the research questions are clear and well-defined.  The discussion of why orchard trees deviate in some aspects from theory predictions is interesting.  I also enjoyed the discussion of how allometry and process-based models can inform management techniques.  The data and analyses appear to have been conducted properly.  I have only a couple of minor comments for the authors.

First, support for FS is interpreted as falling within range of predictions for elastic similarity and flow similarity. This is a weak test however since the ranges are generally large (Table 1).  Nevertheless, the fact that two relationships do not fall within this range might be interpreted as stronger evidence that FS doesn’t control these relationships in orchard trees.  These issues could be noted in the text.

Second, Fig. S1, S2 – I’m confused by the caption.  Are these just plots of the r2 for various fits?  How does this relate to “strongest model fitted?”  Why does caption mention AICc, is that shown in Figure?  Perhaps a different symbol or color could be used to identify best fitting model.


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: PROCESS-BASED ALLOMETRY DESCRIBES THE INFLUENCE OF MANAGEMENT ON ORCHARD TREE ABOVEGROUND ARCHITECTURE
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: My previous review of this paper noted that the submission was well written, made good use of citations, was structured in a reasonable way, and made the raw data available for validation.

The authors have only improved on their previous draft.
Experimental design: No comment
Validity of the findings: As stated previously: data is robust and freely available so others can replicate the statistical analysis.

My major concern--regarding the role of "flow similarity" in the absence of a peer reviewed paper--has been removed. I think your approach to presenting as a contextual piece is a good way to deal with the issue.
Additional comments: Follow-up review of the paper "Process-based allometry describes the influence of management on orchard tree aboveground architecture."

It's gratifying to see that the authors chose to incorporate so many of the references I had suggested--in spite of my getting some names and years wrong. That's what happens when you try and site things from memory instead of looking things up. I was especially pleased that they found the Equist 2007 to be useful. It's my hope they find the additional referneces helped their work.

Figure 2: r2 instead of R2, please


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: PROCESS-BASED ALLOMETRY DESCRIBES THE INFLUENCE OF MANAGEMENT ON ORCHARD TREE ABOVEGROUND ARCHITECTURE
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: no comments
Experimental design: no comments
Validity of the findings: no comments
Additional comments: Line 16: “processed-based” should be “process-based”


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: A NEW THEROCEPHALIAN (GORYNYCHUS MASYUTINAE GEN. ET SP. NOV.) FROM THE PERMIAN KOTELNICH LOCALITY, KIROV REGION, RUSSIA
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: The original matrix file cannot be read directly by Paup, please change it.
Experimental design: The phylogenetic analysis should include all taxa such as Shiguangnathus.
Validity of the findings: This is a new therocephalian species, and it is correctly described.
I am not convinced it is the sister-taxon to Eutherocephalia.
The author did not mention Scylacosuchus moved as the sister taxon of Akidognathidae. This needs to be discussed. If they coded the new species in the matrix of Liu and Abdala (2017), the result is slightly different: Gorynychus is more basal than Scylacosauridae in most cases. There should be a paragraph discussing the position of the new species based on the morphology, other than just the phylogenetic analysis.
One error is on postfrontal, the author described it but later say it is absent.
Additional comments: Other see annotated pdf file.


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: A NEW THEROCEPHALIAN (GORYNYCHUS MASYUTINAE GEN. ET SP. NOV.) FROM THE PERMIAN KOTELNICH LOCALITY, KIROV REGION, RUSSIA
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: The figures are good but I would like to see close up of the postcanines as it is indicated as one important feature in the description. Other suggestions are in the uploaded pdf.
Experimental design: No comments
Validity of the findings: In the discussion it is assumed a correlation with the Pristerognathus AZ, even when in the introduction it is said that the correlation with the Tropidostoma AZ seems more likely. Considering one or the other case change the conclussion about the timing in the evolutionof Eutherocephalia. Thus if the correlation is with the Pristerognathus AZ then the conclusion about the early evolution of the group in Laurasia is supported but if the correlation is with Tropidostoma AZ then this conclussion will change or woud be less strong.
Additional comments: This is a very important research of a new therocephalian from the Kotelnich fauna from Russia. It is clearly written with a clear and logic structure, presenting in an apropriate way the subject. I present all my comments and suggestions in the attached pdf. The article should be published after minor revision.


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: LITERATURE-BASED LATITUDINAL DISTRIBUTION AND POSSIBLE RANGE SHIFTS OF TWO US EAST COAST DUNE GRASS SPECIES (UNIOLA PANICULATA AND AMMOPHILA BREVILIGULATA)
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: The authors use clear writing throughout and did an excellent job researching their topic. There were a few small grammatical errors that I noted in my PDF.  The three goals laid out in the intro end were great and all topics explored by the authors in great detail.

With regards to the figures:
1) please denote the number of citations found in total as well as per group in the figure captions for table 1 and 2.
2) Please change figure organization for table 1 and 2 to be chronological as opposed to alphabetical.
3) Figure 2 - having a simple line map from lat 31 to 39 shown (overlayed in some way or perhaps above both graphs?) would really help strengthen this figure.

With regards to structure:
1) Parts of the discussion (lines 153-159) belong in methods and results as opposed to the discussion and then similarly, the discussion of the topic or warming and germination (line 160) needs to be fleshed out more in the discussion.  I have included references for the authors in the comments of my PDF.
2) I believe that a lot of the discussion actually belongs in the introduction. While the introduction has a lot of information, I believe that it is too short and topic specific as opposed to more broadly specific on range shifts in general- ie other non-coastal plants that have undergone range shifts and even animals would all be great topics for the authors to discuss that would greatly improve the broad interest level and applicability of the paper in the intro.
3) in general, I believe that the discussion should be rewritten to put the author's findings in the context with what has been found previously. As it currently reads, I felt the authors very much understood what their findings show, but struggled to show not how this fits into the realm of other findings and the applied context for ecosystem services, which is a topic the authors indicate is important in the introduction. More clear topic sentences laying out the broad topic of the paragraph in terms of the finding to be discussed would help make it feel less like information is just being piled on instead of put into context.

Of note:
1) 260 mentioned throughout as the sample size, but spread sheet shows 264?
2) Interactive map link either currently inactive or does not work as I could not review this.
3) Unclear what supplementary files were what as they are labelled in the document and in the reviewer package differently
4) The USDA stated range for both of these species differs from that of the authors in that it is much larger.  I believe that the authors should reference and discuss this given that this is a very USA centered paper.  Below are the links to this information:
-Ammophila breviligulata - https://plants.usda.gov/core/profile?symbol=AMBR
-Uniola paniculata - https://plants.usda.gov/core/profile?symbol=UNPA
Experimental design: Great! Seems like a very solid literary review of the searchable published literature. I have one issue. On line 86, the authors state that

"E.B. Goldstein and E.V. Mullins wrote the search protocol with guidance from L.J. Moore to determine inclusion/exclusion criteria. All the authors participated in the search."

I believe that this aspect of the research is important as knowing it would allow someone else to use their search criteria for a similar review style study. However, no more detail is given beyond this though it should be more clear. Similarly, this statement is strange to me as it denotes a serious responsibility to two authors Mullins and Goldstein and vague responsibility to all else who assumedly "participated in the search." Given that the search was only one day, on December 19, 2017 (as stated) and participation in this would not in most cases result in a publication for all those that used a search engine...I think this line needs to be removed and all responsibilities discussed for all involved or none singled out as such.
Validity of the findings: The findings are important, interesting, and relevant.  The science is sound.  As stated previously, I think the authors need to rework their intro and discussion. The into in my opinion need to be more specific to range shifts in general, not just of 'their' species and also the implications of the range shift with regards to ecosystem services.  The discussion doesn't discuss their findings as much as it does others, but they are not  necessarily in context with one another though they should be.
Additional comments: I made my review in a PDF editor on a tablet so there are both hand written notes in and typed PDF-style notes - I hope that you find them legible where hand-written!  I colored the line numbers green where I made a note, change, addition, etc, so that they would be easy to find and not miss. I included a number of citations in the notes that should be helpful to the authors.  I think that given that this paper is being submitted to an open journal, the authors would like to see it viewed by a broader audience, otherwise why would they be paying the publication fee when JCR would take this and it would reach the coastal audience.  Given this, I strongly feel that the authors should make this paper more broadly scoped as opposed to jumping immediately into coastal dunes.  Similarly, this is a topic very interesting and relevant to climate change, but climate change is a very peripheral topic as discussed throughout with the depth.


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: LITERATURE-BASED LATITUDINAL DISTRIBUTION AND POSSIBLE RANGE SHIFTS OF TWO US EAST COAST DUNE GRASS SPECIES (UNIOLA PANICULATA AND AMMOPHILA BREVILIGULATA)
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: I found this paper to be largely well and clearly written, with a strong review of the context for the study and an unusually clear statement of the goals of the study.  The article structure was sound with easy to follow, well constructed figures and tables, and access to most of the raw data needed to support the study.

 I have a few minor concerns that are really more requests for increased clarity:

Figure 5 (GBIF data) where the large Symbol size may be obscuring data points.  That or there’s only one Ammophila observation in this entire data set within the zone of overlap.   Given that this image isn’t zoomable, and there doesn’t seem to be a table of these data even in the Supplemental materials from which one could check actual observations, an insert focusing on the zone of overlap with more detail on the records of each species in that area may be beneficial.  Either that or a supplementary data table similar to that provided for the literature-derived data sets might be provided to allow detailed follow up of the locations for each sample documented (Actually I think this might be a valuable addition to the paper, even if the figure is modified to allow more detailed display of the data in the zone of overlap)

Discussion 175  Needs clarification   “Seneca (1969, 1972) found that A. breviligulata had higher germination rates at low temperatures of 18˚C.”    Winter low?  Spring low?  Summer low?    Higher than what?   Low temperatures below this?  Low temperatures higher than this?

Discussion 188.  Again needs clarification:  “This reduction in performance may explain the lack of a clear southern range shift”.   Why would one expect a Southern range shift in Ammophila?  Rather to the contrary, I’d expect to see this species’ range shifting north as climate warms.  The data described on Uniola’s abilty to outcompete Ammophila in areas where the two co-exist would tend to exacerbate this, I would have thought.    Maybe I’m misunderstanding something here but ….

Discussion 190-191  There is a logical dissonance for me in following a series of statements about how Uniola outcompetes Ammophila where the two species coexist with the statement “Woodhouse et al. (1977) notes that A. breviligulata tends to grow faster than U. paniculata and spread more rapidly.”  It seems to me that a modifying phrase is needed here to the effect of “in areas where each is growing absent the presence of the other, A. breviligulata tends to grow faster than U. paniculata and spread more rapidly” or something similar.

Paragraph starting Discussion 199: I am not clear what the Author’s point is in this paragraph.  They state that observations of Ammophila are absent from more southerly locations despite being planted there.  Is this because the dataset is incomplete and Ammophila would be found there if a more concerted search was conducted?  Or is it that Ammophila may have been planted in these locations but failed to thrive due to heat / competition with Uniola and therefore this species is no longer present in these locations?
Experimental design: The Methods were clear and well documented.  The meta-analysis was appropriately conducted and appears to have been a rigorous attempt to collect all relevant data, including use of older Genus species names.

The PRISMA flow diagram for literature review was helpful in visualizing the process and would make a strong addition to the methods section of the paper.  If space precludes its inclusion in the paper itself, I’d at least like to see its inclusion in the supplemental materials with a specific reference to this flow chart from the materials and methods.
Validity of the findings: The results documented Figures 2 and 3 represent valuable contributions to the field.  The interactive map is particularly nicely collated (and rather fun to explore!).  The authors are very clear on what they can quantify (eg trends in temperature data) and what is only a qualitative trend (eg data on changes in Northern Range of Uniola).  The conclusions drawn from the data are appropriate and well substantiated.
Additional comments: I found a number of s
maller errors especially in the references cited format that probably should be fixed before publication.  My apologies for the knit-picking, but I'm currently teaching a class with a focus on citation and plagiarism, so my radar is on high for these at this point!

Line 50 introduction.  Need to Fix spelling of "Wootton et al."

207-8 Discussion I think there is an extra word in this sentence   “also did not mention the occurrence of A. breviligulata IN AT several sites in coastal SC".

216 Discussion …"observations from within the zone of overlap (Figure 4)" references the figure number incorrectly.  Figure 4 is the figure about temperature change. It is not a map of zones of overlap

References

525  Incomplete citation

507 Missing Journal name

292, 370, 390 , 412, 437, 479, 480, 486, 537 Missing volume number

253 342, 346, 381, 422, 491, 503, 505, 523, 530, 532 Italicize journal name

261, 278, 280,  282, 294, 296, 299, 344, 357, 359, 365, 368, 372, 374, 378 , 384, 397, 400, 402, 410 , 422, 424, 427, 436, 440, 447, 450, 452, 456, 458, 460, 462, 467, 470, 473, 474, 477, 482, 484, 488, 492, 503, 505, 507, 512, 514, 516, 518, 520, 530, 539 comma not colon between issue and pages

284. 291, 383, 389, 391, 392, 395, 405, 415, 447, 449, 451, 454, 460, 462, 470, 471, 490, 515, 516, 517, 534, 536  Italicize genus species

301 engineering should be capitalized

326 east coast should be capitalized

348  trends should be capitalized

312, 358, 364, 375, 383, 385, 423, 430, 439 , 454, 457, 459, 496, 511, 517, 531 Words in title should be lower case except proper nouns

351  Punctuation of initials in Ed names: should not be periods

352 spurious dash in middle of Soci-ety, Journal name should be italicized

354 spurious dash in the middle of geomor -phology Journal name should be italicized

544 spurious dash in middle of Ecol-ogy, Journal name should be italicized

368, 445, 473, 475, 492 background highlighting of DOI number

386, 527.  Remove All Caps

403.  Capitalize proper noun “Island Beach State Park”

487, 493 Remove comma between name and initial (Stalter, R) (Tatnall, RR)


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: LITERATURE-BASED LATITUDINAL DISTRIBUTION AND POSSIBLE RANGE SHIFTS OF TWO US EAST COAST DUNE GRASS SPECIES (UNIOLA PANICULATA AND AMMOPHILA BREVILIGULATA)
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 3

Output:
Basic reporting: 1.	The abstract needs more detail in describing the methods.  On line 26, it refers to “other records”.  I think listing your other data sources (in particular iNaturalist) would not only make the abstract a better summary of the paper, but might drive more interest in the work itself.
2.	The abstract should also briefly describe all the methods used such as the temperature analysis and the herbarium and iNaturalist records.  I was surprised to see these in the paper since it wasn’t mentioned in the abstract.  It’s good work, so let people know it’s in there.
3.	The Acknowledgements section contains funding information that should get moved to the Funding Statement.
Experimental design: 1.	The Materials & Methods section needs to be expanded to include all of the analysis discussed in the Results and Discussions sections.  The Discussion section talks about the thermal tolerances of the grasses in the first paragraph, but the methods of investigation aren’t in the Methods section.
2.	The Discussion section contains results of the thermal range investigation that should be moved to the Results section (around lines 155-159).
Validity of the findings: no comment
Additional comments: The work you’ve described in this paper shows a novel, interesting, and useful synthesis of several sources of data.  The integration of non-traditional data like the published scientific literature and herbarium records is something that interests me a great deal and I’m glad to see your take on this.

The paper is clearly written and easy to understand.


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: LITERATURE-BASED LATITUDINAL DISTRIBUTION AND POSSIBLE RANGE SHIFTS OF TWO US EAST COAST DUNE GRASS SPECIES (UNIOLA PANICULATA AND AMMOPHILA BREVILIGULATA)
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: Looks great. Very clear and understandable. References sufficient and relevant and figures that were already god are now even better
Experimental design: experimental design was always sound.  Changes made to the presenting of it in the methods have greatly improved the clarity.
Validity of the findings: solid
Additional comments: Great job addressing the changes requested by all reviewers.


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: LITERATURE-BASED LATITUDINAL DISTRIBUTION AND POSSIBLE RANGE SHIFTS OF TWO US EAST COAST DUNE GRASS SPECIES (UNIOLA PANICULATA AND AMMOPHILA BREVILIGULATA)
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: no comment
Experimental design: no comment
Validity of the findings: no comment
Additional comments: This paper is much improved.  The methods description is much more clear.  Thank you for taking the time to incorporate the changes suggested by all the reviewers.


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: THE FIRST TETRAPOD FROM THE MID-MIOCENE CLARKIA LAGERSTÄTTE (IDAHO, USA)
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: This article meets the basic reporting guidance, with only minor suggestions/revisions as shown in the attached file.
Experimental design: Very good background for the significance of this fossil specimen, and sufficient discussion to support the research.
Validity of the findings: Sufficient detail to support the information and conclusions.  Inconclusive information clearly identified.
Additional comments: No additional comments


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: THE FIRST TETRAPOD FROM THE MID-MIOCENE CLARKIA LAGERSTÄTTE (IDAHO, USA)
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: This manuscript describes the first tetrapod from the mid-Miocene age Clarkia lagerstatte in Idaho. That site is known for its amazingly well-preserved plant fossils, as well as a variety of insects and fish. The authors describe a specimen, which is accompanied by detailed stratigraphic data and narrow age range, that consists of a carbonaceous film of the body/skeleton and some fragmentary dental material. The material is thoroughly described and the accompanying figures are of high quality.

In the introduction, there are few places where additional references should be cited:
1. Introduction, line 42 – I recommend citing Zachos et al. (2008) as well.

Zachos, J.C., Dickens, G.R., Zeebe, R.E. (2008). An early Cenozoic perspective on greenhouse warming and carbon-cycle dynamics. Nature 451, 279–283.

2. Introduction, line 51 – A recent revision of the Mascall Fauna by Maguire et al. (2018) should be cited here as well.

Maguire, K. C., Samuels, J. X., & Schmitz, M. D. (2018). The fauna and chronostratigraphy of the middle Miocene Mascall type area, John Day Basin. PaleoBios, 35,1–51.

3. Introduction, line 58 – Chaney 1925 is only one of the studies describing the Mascall Flora, the authors should cite Knowlton (1902), Chaney (1959), and Chaney and Axelrod (1959) here as well. Similarly, the Succor Creek Flora (note the name difference from the Sucker Creek Formation) was also more recently analyzed by Fields (1996).

Chaney, R.W. (1959). Miocene floras of the Columbia Plateau. Part I. Composition and interpretation: Carnegie Institute of Washington Contributions to Paleontology, v. 617, p. 1–134.

Chaney, R.W., and Axelrod, D.I. (1959). Miocene floras of the Columbia Plateau. Part II. Systematic considerations: Carnegie Institute of Washington Contributions to Paleontology, v. 617, p. 135–237.

Fields, P.F. (1996). The Succor Creek flora of the Middle Miocene Sucker Formation, southwestern Idaho and eastern Oregon; systematics and paleoecology [Ph.D. dissertation]: East Lansing, Michigan, Michigan State University.

Knowlton, F.H. (1902). Fossil flora of the John Day Basin, Oregon: U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin No. 204.

In the Description, lines 147 to 165 – This text is really not descriptive in nature, rather it represents comparisons to some extant and extinct taxa.  As such, the description should be expanded somewhat to describe those postcranial elements and the existing text should be incorporated into the Comparisons section.

In the Comparisons section, the taxonomic assignment and justification for it is well-reasoned, though there are some important omissions that should be addressed:
1. There are currently no comparisons made to Protosciurus, the most common and best-known North American tree squirrel (Sciurini) from the Oligocene and early Miocene.  That genus has many records from the Oligocene (Arikareean) and early Miocene (Hemingfordian) (Black 1963, Goodwin 2008, Korth and Samuels 2015).  There are even a few questionable records from the mid Miocene (Barstovian), Lezak (1979) and Albright (1996) reported Protosciurus at the Hidalgo Bluff and Trinity River local faunas from the Gulf Coast of Texas.

Three species of Protosciurus are known from skulls: P. condoni, P. mengi, and P. rachelae.  While none are complete, they are complete enough to allow comparisons of various dimension to the Clarkia rodent and they also show substantial variation in size.  For example, the 3.3 mm lower incisor diameter listed on line 134 is the larger than the lower incisor diameters of 4 specimens of P. mengi from the Arikareean age John Day Formation in Oregon (Korth and Samuels 2015), which range from 2.02 to 2.61 mm. Lower tooth row lengths for those specimens range from 11.49 to 12.72 mm (Korth and Samuels 2015).  The lower tooth row length of the type of Protosciurus condoni (UOMNH 5171, described by Black 1963) is 15.56mm. Those sizes bracket the estimate of lower tooth row length provided for the Clarkia rodent in line 174.  While none of the Protosciurus skulls are complete, Korth and Samuels (2015) also list occiput to orbit length for P. condoni and P. mengi, which could be compared to the Clarkia specimen.

A partial postcranial skeleton of Protosciurus mengi (UCMP 86368) was also recently described in the article by Korth and Samuels (2015).  Like the Clarkia rodent, that specimen displays gracile forelimb elements similar to those of extant tree squirrels.

2. Geomys (Nerterogeomys) can also be ruled out by the fact that it has a flattened chisel-like lower incisor (Gazin 1942, Flynn et al. 2008), while the Clarkia rodent has a convex faced incisor (line 135).

3. There is another mid Miocene tree squirrel (Sciurini) record from the Mascall Fauna of Oregon that was just recently described by Maguire et al. (2018), which is similar in age to the Clarkia record.  The subfamily assignment of that specimen was based on aspects of postcranial morphology, in both the humerus and astragalus.  Those specimens showed similarity to both extant Sciurus and Protosciurus, and the astragalus (JODA 15793) was most similar to Protosciurus (Maguire et al. 2018).  The other specimen (JODA 6725) is a partial skeleton still mostly embedded in a block of matrix.  The specimen is exposed enough to allow some measurements, the skull length (48.2 mm) and lower incisor diameter (3.9 mm) are both fairly similar in size to the Clarkia rodent (measurements listed in lines 134 and 139).

There are several places in the text (lines 163, 176, 178, 185) where the terms “Aplodontidae” and “aplodontid” are used.  These commonly used in the paleontological literature, but they are technically incorrect. Brandt used “Aplodontidae” in 1855, but In 1896 Thomas corrected the spelling to “Aplodontiidae” to be in accordance with nomenclature codes.

Thomas, O. 1896. On the genera of rodents: An attempt to bring up to date the current arrangement of the order. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, 1896: 1012-1028.

Since Thomas, the two names have been used largely interchangeably, but Aplodontiidae is technically correct according to the ICZN code (http://www.nhm.ac.uk/hosted-sites/iczn/code/index.jsp?article=25).  29.3.1 indicates the family name should be the type genus name ("Aplodontia"), minus the suffix ("-a"), with "idae" added at the end. Recent studies like the Wilson and Reeder (2005) Mammal Species of the World and a molecular phylogeny by Piaggio et al. (2013) use “Aplodontiidae” and “aplodontiid”.
Experimental design: No comment
Validity of the findings: The taxonomic assignment and justification for it is well-reasoned, though there are some important omissions in comparisons and discussion that should be addressed.  There is a well-known genus of tree squirrels, Protosciurus, that is not mentioned anywhere in the manuscript.  With 3 species known from skulls and partial skeletons in the late Oligocene, confirmed records from the early Miocene, and some questionable records from the mid Miocene, it is certainly a relevant taxon to consider.  Given the Clarkia specimen's similarity in size and also cranial and postcranial morphology to described specimens of Protosciurus, it suggests that taxon needs to be a key component of the discussion.  Since that genus has a number of possible Barstovian occurrences, including one in Oregon, it makes make it an excellent candidate taxon for the specimen from Clarkia.

In the Discussion, line 281 the authors suggest the Clarkia squirrel is a remarkably large one for its age, but I don't think that is actually the case.  Early North American squirrels, from the late Eocene and Oligocene, include a number of species larger than the Clarkia specimen, including some very complete Protosciurus specimens from the Arikareean of Oregon mentioned above.  That taxon is also known from the Hemingfordian and possibly the Barstovian (Goodwin 2008), and an unidentified tree squirrel (Sciurini) from the contemporaneous Mascall fauna of Oregon is also similar in size to the Clarkia specimen.  Sciurus olsonii (Emry et al. 2005) is definitely smaller than the Clarkia specimen and most older tree squirrel records, but it is really the anomaly in terms of tree squirrel size, representing a possible dwarf species like Oligocene species of Miosciurus (Korth and Samuels 2015).  Given the fact that the S. olsonii record is more than 3 million year later than Clarkia, the two are certainly not comparable in age.
Additional comments: No additional comments


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: EFFECT OF ACUTE AUGMENTED FEEDBACK ON BETWEEN LIMB ASYMMETRIES AND ECCENTRIC KNEE FLEXOR STRENGTH DURING THE NORDIC HAMSTRING EXERCISE
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: -	English language is clear and unambiguous.
-	To better understand the independiet variable I suggest to  provide an “augmented feedback” definition
-	Line 65 to 68 provides the benefits of augmented feedback improving the acute or chronic performance even thought provides references in  the examples a referece is missing in the definition.
-	Check please reference management
-	Improve the description of line 91, to better undertand the % values
-	check references, for example in the reference of the line 379 there is no name to identify the author, also me authors are listed with last name and initials and some others with last name and full first name.
-	I suggest to provide information in the description of the figures to better understand it
Experimental design: In the results has a description of participants, I suggest include the description of participants in materials and methods

-	When you refer to submaximal exercise, could you be more specific, providing more information (there is a way to measure it?)
-	Could you improve line 125 explanation, it say that session involves 3 set of 3 repetitions with 15 seconds inter-repetition rest , but it doesn’t explain the pause between sets.
-	To better understand and improve the methods (experimental design) I suggest to use a figure to explain it step by step
-	Many explanations in the discussion are without references
Validity of the findings: 1.	Validity of the findings OK
Additional comments: The article is very valuable and practical, therefore it is recommended to be accepted for publication, considering the minor recommendations made and the point of views of the other reviewers. Especially it is proposed to improve the clarity on materials and methods.


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: EFFECT OF ACUTE AUGMENTED FEEDBACK ON BETWEEN LIMB ASYMMETRIES AND ECCENTRIC KNEE FLEXOR STRENGTH DURING THE NORDIC HAMSTRING EXERCISE
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: First of all congratulate the authors for the originality of the study carried out, the use of augmente dfeedback (AF) during the realization of Nordic hamstring is from my point of view really novel.

From my point of view, the authors must implement the introduction section providing bibliographical references:

-In line 83 of the manuscript, I consider it would be necessary to have a bibliographic reference that supports this argument: “Given the positive effects of using AF on force output, incorporating visual feedback during strengthening exercises that have been shown to reduce injury rates may help to increase the rate of learning and improve the effectiveness of such exercises”.

-In line 100 of the introduction section, it would be recommendable to include more current references that give the manuscript more current relevance, such as: Breno de A R Alvares J, Marques VB, Vaz MA, Baroni BM. Four weeks of Nordic hamstring exercise reduce muscle injury risk factors in young adults. J strength Cond Res. 2017.

- Obviously and as correctly indicated and justified by the authors of the manuscript, Nordic hamstring has become a useful exercise in the prevention of hamstring injuries, however, recent studies show that it is not the exercise that causes greater activation (Bourne et al., 2017), and that a proper injury prevention program must be global (Oakley et al., 2017), so I believe that both ideas should be reflected both in the introduction section (end of paragraph 3 on line 107) and in the discussion section.

Bourne MN, Williams MD, Opar DA, Al Najjar A, Kerr GK, Shield AJ. Impact of exercise selection on hamstring muscle activation. Br J Sports Med. 2017 Jul;51(13):1021–8.

Oakley AJ, Jennings J, Bishop CJ. Holistic hamstring health: not just the Nordic hamstring exercise. British journal of sports medicine. England; 2017.

The results shown by the authors are not entirely clear, the beginning of the third paragraph of the results section (line 214-216) I consider from my point of view is not correct. This paragraph indicates that: “There was a significant increase in mean peak force production when feedback was provided compared to NFB following the crossover…” However, these significant differences, based on the figures shown and the results shown above, only occur when the limbs are analyzed separately (weak and strong limb) Figure 4, but no in figure 3. Therefore, I consider it necessary to specify this aspect to facilitate the understanding and application of the results by possible readers.

In line 220 of the manuscript, the concept of mean force, would it be more correct to mean peak force?

From my point of view the section that requires a major revision to the results and discussion section to make the document more consistent.

Of the different figures proposed by the authors (Fig 2: asymettry, 3: Mean peak force and 4: mean peak force between weak and strong limb) only figure 4 shows significant differences, while figures 2 and 3 do not show significant differences.

Therefore, it is necessary that the authors explain or modify discussion and conclusion sections, phrases such as:

“In contrast to the lack of change in interlimb asymmetries, AF resulted in a significant increase in the mean peak force production compared to NFB” Line 251-252.

“In conclusion, the use of real-time visual feedback during the NHE resulted in significant increase in mean eccentric knee flexor force (with the majority of this change occurring in the weaker limb) for sub-elite and school level cricket players”

The reason for this necessary correction is that the results, figures, discussion and conclusion are coherent.
Experimental design: The methodology applied by the authors is adequate to respond to the stated objetives, however from my point of view, in this section I believe that authors should include:

- Recovery time between series carried out in the familiarization session (line 125-125 of the manuscript) and add a bibliographic reference of the correct movement sequencing and technique in Nordic hamstring exercise (line 127).

- In addition to the correct technical execution, was there any criterion to exclude the repetitions made by the cricket players? All the repetitions of the second series were included?
Validity of the findings: The results obtained by the authors show validity, but it is necessary to clarify in the different sections of the manuscript (results, discussion and conclusions) whether the improvements occur only when the results are analyzed in terms of weak and strong limb or in the totality of the sample, since there seems to be incoherence between the results (only significant diferences between weak and strong limb) and the discussion/conclusion (AF resulted in a significant increase in the mean peak force production compared to NFB)
Additional comments: No additional comments


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: EFFECT OF ACUTE AUGMENTED FEEDBACK ON BETWEEN LIMB ASYMMETRIES AND ECCENTRIC KNEE FLEXOR STRENGTH DURING THE NORDIC HAMSTRING EXERCISE
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: - English language is clear and unambiguous.
-The structure of the article is correct.
Experimental design: -The methodology used is adequate to meet the objectives.
Validity of the findings: Validity of the findings OK
Additional comments: From my point of view with the clarifications made by the authors the article is suitable for publication


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: SPATIAL-TEMPORAL VARIATION AND IMPACTS OF DROUGHT IN XINJIANG (NORTHWEST CHINA) DURING 1961–2015
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: The paper is clear and unambiguous, professional English is used throughout.

The references are fine.

Some minor suggestions were made to a few of the figures in my review.

This paper is self contained.
Experimental design: Perhaps the only issue could be that the paper is from the Physical Sciences, but with implications to the Environment, and therefore is within the Scope of the Journal.

Research question is not that clearly stated though.

The research is rigorous.

Methods are described in detail.
Validity of the findings: All this is fine.
Additional comments: Review of “Evaluation of drought in Xinjiang, Norwest China: Spatial-temporal variation and uncertainty analysis”

By Yao et al.

PeerJ

General comments

This paper uses drought indexes to identify changes in a vast region of China. Trends and relationships between the indexes and also to precipitation and temperature are presented.  I found the paper interesting and worth publishing with major corrections, that I will describe next.

The first comment that I have is that the title suggests some type of uncertainty analysis and I was expecting something else, not just the simple statistical probabilities of trends and correlations. Usually this sort of calculations is necessary whenever correlations and trends are calculated in the study and it is not required to specify their use in the title of the article.

I was concerned about the representativeness of a single set of time series to represent the spatial aggregation of such a vast area. I am glad to see that some maps were provided, but the authors should emphasize that although the signal of the region agrees predominantly with many parts of the region, there are still some places where that have a different response (see for example Fig. 9b, where not all the region has positive trends).

How did you deal with the calculation of ET in the SPEI index when Temperature was below zero? Is there any case of that?

Specific comments

L47-48. Change “has been become” to “became”.

L48. Over ALL China?

L54. What other perspective could we been talking about?

L73. Change “(SPI)” to “(SPI; WMO, 2012)”.

L74. Change “(PDSI)” to “(PDSI; Palmer, 1965)”.

L75-76. Change “The PDSI is a climatic water balance” to “The PDSI is based on a primitive water balance”.

L109. Altai is not identified in the map. Label of Kunlun Mountains is difficult to read in the map. Include small map of location with respect to entire China.
L122. It is necessary that Kaidu River and Tianshan Mountains be included in Fig. 1.

L137-138. Change “To quantify drought, SPI and SPEI which have a multiscalar character to determine drought variability, were used.” To “SPI and SPEI were used to quantify drought as their multiscalar character helps to determine drought variability”.

L140-141. Change “Thornthwaite” for “Thornthwaite (1948)” and remove “(1948)” from L141.

L142. In Figure 3, we also see time scales of 36 and 48 months. Either include those to the list or remove them from the Fig. 3, as they are not mentioned any more in the analysis. I suggest the latter.

L154. Are those mountains in Fig. 1 also considered arid? Are you referring that you used only the stations in the low-lands?

L155. Add the word “respectively” after “0.25oC/10a”.

L158. What do you mean by highly volatile? I can see that the standard deviations before and after 1997 are similar. If in doubt use a statistical test.

L161. Add “(not shown)” at the end of the paragraph.

L166. Add “(not shown)” at the end of the paragraph.

L167-170. I think this idea is repeated here.

L171. Change “a warmer and wetter” to “a warmer and wetter trend”.

L178. What do you mean by “high consistency”? Change “consistency for most stations” to “consistency between stations” to see if this helps clarify the idea.

L185. Change “More wet events” to “More wet events of less dry events”.

L193-195. AE responds lo energy and water availability. In arid regions, the AET is considered water-limited, as there is ample energy (radiation) available for evaporation.

L199-206. What is the purpose of showing these correlations?

L211-212. But for ET the correlation from the figure seems insignificant.

L215-217. High precipitation will produce more availability for ET, and therefore ET will approximate P (it is still water-limited). That is the reason for the higher correlations of ET-P for higher P.

L229. More positive values of what: SPEI or SPI?

L240. Do you mean SPI here instead of SPEI? SPEI depends on ET.

L242. How about radiation? It is a very important control on PET.

L249. What about the sharp decrease in PET from 1975 to 1995?

L264-274. It is expected for the higher time scales to present lower frequencies and therefore the 12-month is expected to have a higher number of dry months as the high frequency noise is attenuated. Periods where the temperature increase will probably increase this difference. So, I don’t agree with the statement in L272-274 that the difference is a result of previous (multiyear) moisture deficiency.

L326-327. 1.1oC annually for two decades, that implies an increase of 22oC! Please revise.

L349-351. In my experience the correlation between NDVI and Precipitation changes from season to season, and that could be a reason of the poor correlations.

L369-370. I couldn’t see this correlation. What do the numbers inside the figure 16 mean?

Fig. 10. How can ET be negative? Are these standardized values?


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: SPATIAL-TEMPORAL VARIATION AND IMPACTS OF DROUGHT IN XINJIANG (NORTHWEST CHINA) DURING 1961–2015
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: no comment
Experimental design: no comment
Validity of the findings: no comment
Additional comments: This research seems interesting to the field of climatic changes in arid regions of Asia. The structure of the manuscript is appropriate, while a better separation of the aspects between the chapters need to be improved.
1. In Introduction, some case studies or related articles on the impacts of drought in Xinjiang should be presented.
2. Numerous studies already concluded that temperature and precipitation experienced significant increase since 1997 and 1987, respectively. So, this should not be accentuated in your ABSTRACT.
3. It’s really hard to understand why the authors listed figure 4? If it is not used, please remove it out.
4. Line 30: please provide full name of SPEI, SPI.
5. Line 81: please provide full name of WMO.
6. Line 89-90: Please clarify this statement of evaporative demand (ET).
7. Line 102: evapotranspiration (ET)?
8. Please clarify this statement of the ET, AE, and PET in your paper.


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: SPATIAL-TEMPORAL VARIATION AND IMPACTS OF DROUGHT IN XINJIANG (NORTHWEST CHINA) DURING 1961–2015
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 3

Output:
Basic reporting: The goal of the study is to analyze the temporal and spatial changes of drought in Northwest China. For this the authors use two standardized drought indices, the SPI and SPEI at different accumulation time scales and include other sources of information, including satellite and river discharge data. The authors then explore whether these changes are associated to changes in precipitation and temperature through time. The study has the potential to be an important contribution, but the study could be better structured to facilitate its readability, and the different parts could be better connected to fulfill the overall aim. The different steps of the methodology could be better motivated to understand why these are done and used to test your hypothesis. Besides, the title refers to uncertainty and I could not find any uncertainty analysis or discussion in the study. I hope the authors find the comments below constructive.

It seems to me that the overall aim is not clearly stated. If I understand correctly (inferring by the title and the analysis) the authors aim at analyzing the temporal and spatial changes of drought. Aims one and two, as written now, seem to be three specific objectives within that aim. Number one says that the study aims at evaluating the sensitivity of SPI and SPEI to precipitation and evapotranspiration. Perhaps the authors mean to changes in precipitation and evapotranspiration? In addition, it is not clear why is the sensitivity test needed. Note that, if what is sought is to compare the sensitivity of both indices to variations in P and ET, this would require that the two indices being evaluated are based on both P and ET (in this case doing that is not be possible because the SPI is only based on P).

L 141: Thornthwaite reference incomplete, it should be (Thornthwaite, 1948).

Scientific writing and English should be revised. (e.g. L48 'drought has been become', L181: 'these differences was'.
Experimental design: The description of the methods could be improved. For example, which distributions were used to fit the data when calculating SPI and SPEI? Please give the specific details of the correlations that were calculated.
This section seems to include a description of the study area as well. It would be interesting to know how populated is this region, and how common are drought related problems, to further motivate the study.

‘Continuous observed monthly climate variables…’: state which climate variables.  It would also be valuable to have some information about data quality, e.g. whether all the variables had data for the period 1961-2015 or not.
L147: ‘This method has been used to investigate the significance of trends in various hydrometeorological factors’. Please state all of the ‘factors’.
Validity of the findings: L177: ‘According to historical records’ … What do you mean with this? Are there independent data (e.g. reports on historical drought events) in this region? If so, it would be good to reference these to show that these two indices are capturing the events.
L188: ‘but from 1966 until 2015, drought events were qualified only using the SPEI…’ This sentence is not clear, do you mean ‘identified’ instead of ‘qualified’ or do you mean that you only calculated the SPEI for this period?
L192-198: this seems to be part of the discussion.
Why do you think that the correlations between SPEI and SPI are stronger in northern Xinjiang than in southern Xinjiang?
Figure 6: caption is not clear. Did you use data from different meteorological observatories? If you used more than the one from CMA, please state it in the materials section. It is not clear what the plot means: why do you plot the temporal Pearson r’s correlations of the SPI and SPEI with mean P and ET values? What is the physical meaning of this? Motivate this analysis.
L209, ‘The correlation between SPI and SPEI is primary [should be primarily] dominated by mean P’: this is not surprising since SPI is only based on precipitation, thus a high correlation with ET could not be expected.
Figure 7: I still have difficulty understanding why to perform at correlation of an index based on only precipitation, with ET.
L211, ‘These results support the perspective that drought sensitivity is related to changes in average P and ET’: This sentence needs to be re-written or discarded.
L231, ‘This was due mainly to the ET method used to calculate the SPEI indices’: How did you come to such conclusion? Did you compare different ET methods? Why do you think that the reason behind the SPEI identifying an increase in drought severity relative to the SPI is a consequence of the method used to calculate the ET and not e.g. the temperature rise?
L251-252: this sentence describes the methodology. Consider moving it to the methodology section.
L273: Can antecedent moisture deficits really result in a meteorological drought?
L289-303: I really like that the authors refer to the impacts of drought in this region for specific events captured by the indices, but these should be referenced (e.g. L 295 ‘It was reported…’ by whom?).
Additional comments: Iit is not clear in the abstract what is referring to background for the study and what is referring to the results of the study. It starts discussing about the changes in temperature and precipitation, but this information is part of the results (trend analysis)? In order to get an overview of your study, it would be easier for the reader to have a summary that follows a logical order, that is: one or two sentences presenting the background of the problem, the aim of the study (which I could not find in the abstract), the methods and results/conclusions.


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: SPATIAL-TEMPORAL VARIATION AND IMPACTS OF DROUGHT IN XINJIANG (NORTHWEST CHINA) DURING 1961–2015
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: The basic reporting is fine. There are sufficient references.
Experimental design: It is good, but sometimes the objectives of performing some of the analyses are not clear
Validity of the findings: This is fine.
Additional comments: Second Review of:
Spatial-temporal variation of drought in Xijiang, Northwest China during 1961-2015

By:
Yao et al.

General comments

The authors have made a major effort in correcting some of the issues I found in the previous version of the manuscript and I think this a much more acceptable work.  Some issues still remain:

1.	It is not clear what happens to PET when T<=0. If by definition PET=0 when T<=0, then establish that as a definition. It is not correct to suggest that i=0 when T<=0 would result in PET=0, as the equation 2 would make really "i" an imaginary number (unless by definition i=0 if T<=0). Still, if you decide that by definition i=0 when T<=0, "I" (the heat index) would not be zero as other months of the year could have T>0. However even if I>0, equation 1 could still result in an imaginary number depending on the exponent "m" as T<0.
2.	In the abstract, I would think that NDVI is the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, so it is not necessary to refer to "vegetation NDVI" as the "V" in the acronym means vegetation. However, the first time you use NDVI you should spell out what it means: Normalized Difference Vegetation Index.
3.	The first time it is mentioned that Xinjiang is in the western part of China is enough information for the reader. It is not necessary to remind the reader that we are reading a study from a region in China (see lines 65, 178, 184, 185).
4.	I am still not sure the objective of the correlations shown in Figure 7. Please mention, why they are important. Establish if they are statistically significant.
5.	Results are presented in the discussion section by making references to analyses in Figures not previously presented in the results. The first time the reader is directed to an analysis should be in the results section. (See for example lines 366 and 379).
6.	In lines 418-422 and in the figure of soil moisture, the results that imply reductions in streamflow and soil moisture are only valid for the latest period of the record. In most of the streamflow longer record the trend is actually positive. The cause is mainly the increase in precipitation and not the increase in snowmelt, as the time series of Runoff/Precip does not show significant trends. The effect of earlier snowmelt is a seasonal effect, that may or may not influence the annual totals (depending of the seasonality of Precip and PET and their changes under increasing warming conditions).


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: SPATIAL-TEMPORAL VARIATION AND IMPACTS OF DROUGHT IN XINJIANG (NORTHWEST CHINA) DURING 1961–2015
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: This study analyses drought evolution in Xinjiang, northwestern China from 1961 to 2015. This study has also provided evidence for increasing drought severity caused by temperature rise and has discussed the effects on vegetation and water resources. The study topic is interesting and the general structure of the manuscript is suitable. The paper is clear and unambiguous, professional English is used throughout.
Experimental design: This is an interesting manuscript on drought trends in northwest China (Xinjiang) and such deserves scientific merit. It falls within the scope of PeerJ. Generally, the logical of paper is good, and the overall of this manuscript is better than the previous version. The description of the methods is sufficient that can clarify the readers.
Validity of the findings: The manuscript has been greatly improved, and I believe that the paper is now ready for publication and only a slight improvement would be to add 2-3 more lines in the Introduction regarding the international context of this study: i.e. could these indices be applied to other countries and continents? Furthermore, there are several aspects authors should carefully reconsider before the paper go publication, and I suggest that a minor revision is required before the paper go publication.
Line 33: what do you mean by “urgent”?
Line 87: Define what is P-ET. Please provide the complete description of the acronyms.
Line 108: The area of Xinjiang is not correct (may be ten times of the actual area).
Line 137: Please, provide the full description of the acronym “GIMMS-NDVI3g”.
Line 201: “until” should be “to”.
Line 226: “correlations” should be “correlation”.
Line 240: Delete the point at the end of sentence.
Line 242: “1962” should be “1961”?
Line 248: “nouthwestern Xinjiang”? It should be northwestern Xinjiang.
Line 279: Add the comma before the respectively.
Line 285: “1951” should be “1961”?
Line 292: Again, please add the comma before the respectively.
Line 321: Please, provide the full description of the acronym “CMIP5”.
Additional comments: No additional comments


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: SPATIAL-TEMPORAL VARIATION AND IMPACTS OF DROUGHT IN XINJIANG (NORTHWEST CHINA) DURING 1961–2015
Review round: 2
Reviewer: 3

Output:
Basic reporting: The article has potential to be an important contribution, the authors have addressed some of the comments and that is good, however some important aspects that remained unaddressed. The English and scientific writing were not properly revised as suggested during the first revision. For example, at the first revision it was pointed out that the expression ‘has been become’ (now in line 53) was not correct. The authors changed it to ‘become’ and this still seems incorrect as it should be in past tense.

The text is sometimes difficult to follow. There are sentences that are difficult to understand, for instance in line 61-62: ‘… widespread drying is common because precipitation strongly depends on a few precipitation events’, or line 2010, ‘More wet events of less dry events were identified…’. Among other examples.
Experimental design: The article has potential to be an important contribution, however there are some major aspects that need to be addressed. The most important is that it is not clear what is the scientific contribution or the novelty of the study. What does this study adds to those findings of e.g. Vicente-Serrano (2015) and Fang et al. (2013)? How are the three individual objectives reaching the major aim, which is suggested by the title of the study? In addition, the discussion is not used to link the results from the different analyses and it feels that it is up to the reader to do this. Going more into detail into the methodological design, the purpose of the sensitivity evaluation is not clear and there is no description of how this evaluation was done in the Methods section. Some aspects about the calculation of the SPI and SPEI were not included (e.g. an aspect already asked in the first revision: to which distributions did you fit the precipitation (for SPI) and climatic water balance (SPEI) data? Gamma? ). Finally, part of the description of the methods are in the results section, such as the sentence in line 199-201.
Validity of the findings: I liked that the authors find the role of temperature on drought monitoring to be important, this seems to be a new and important finding with respect to previous studies such as that of Li et al. (2016a; 2016b). Ufortunately, the authors could have highlighted more the importance of this novel findings.
Finally, since the large research question is not clearly stated, it is difficult to assess whether this was answered or not.
Additional comments: Given all the later, I think that the manuscript is not ready yet for publication unless it is thoroughly revised.


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: SPATIAL-TEMPORAL VARIATION AND IMPACTS OF DROUGHT IN XINJIANG (NORTHWEST CHINA) DURING 1961–2015
Review round: 3
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: The basic reporting is good. The study topic is interesting and the general structure of the manuscript is suitable.
Experimental design: It is fine.
Validity of the findings: The manuscript has been greatly improved, and I believe that the paper is now ready for publication.
Additional comments: I am happy with the current manuscript.


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: MODELLING DAILY WATER TEMPERATURE FROM AIR TEMPERATURE FOR THE MISSOURI RIVER
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 1

Output:
Basic reporting: In this paper the authors compare the performance of three different machine learning models to predict river water temperature based on air temperature with that of three well-known and widely used statistical models. The case study is the Missouri River (USA), along which the authors selected three river and weather stations. The results show that the machine learning models outperform the statistical models, in terms of Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), Coefficient of Correlation (R), and Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency Coefficient (NSC).

The manuscript is generally well organized and structured and it is well written. The authors should possibly improve the clarity of some paragraphs in section 2.3 where the machine learning procedures are described, in order to make them clearer also to readers that have no or little familiarity with this type of models.

While several fundamental works are acknowledged in the bibliography, I believe that others are missing and should be mentioned in the Introduction section. I provide a list of works that in my opinion are missing in the Comments for the author below. In general, I suggest reviewing the structure of the Introduction section as in its current form the logical flow could be improved in some parts (see Comments for the author below).

The authors provided the raw data used for the analysis, but they should also explicitly indicate the website where the data have been retrieved (see also my comments in Experimental design below). According to the Journal’s policy, I also believe that the scripts used for the modelling could be made available, possibly with a brief description of their usage.

Figures are esplicative, but I suggest modifying Fig 2 showing all stations. In fact, the air temperature series (i.e., the forcing of all models) is shown only in this figure, thus this information is not available for stations 1 and 2 (only station 3 is shown in Fig 2). In doing so, please improve the readability of the two series of data by reducing the dimension of the symbols or using a line. Possibly, showing also streamflow could be useful to better discuss the results, and in particular the low performance at station 1 (where I believe that streamflow plays a key role, see also my comments below). I suggest indicating the date instead of sample number in all figures with time series of water temperature.  Probably Fig 1 could be simplified making it larger and indicating north, scale, and location of the stations directly in the left panel. Please, check the aspect ratio of the figure.
Experimental design: The research questions are well defined and are within the scope of the Journal.

The description of the methods could be improved in section 2.3, in order to make the paper clearer and accessible also to people which are not experts of machine learning techniques.

I ask the authors to revise the mode inter-comparison. The correct way to estimate the relative performance of the different models would be to use an information criterion, in order to properly account for the trade-off between the goodness of the results and the simplicity of the model (number of parameters). The authors should identify a fair criterion to be used when comparing machine learning and regression models, or otherwise comment on why this was not possible. If it is possible to univocally define the number of parameters in the proposed machine learning methods, an information criterion as e.g., BIC or AIC could be easily introduced in the analysis.

Please, consider also that given the strong seasonality river water temperature it would be better using a modified definition of the NSC, according to Schaefli and Gupta (2007). See also Piccolroaz et al., 2016, both for the use of this index and model inter-comparison based on an information criterion (AIC in that case).

Among the simple models to predict river water temperature based on air temperature, there is a third category of models characterized by a hybrid formulation that combines a physical derivation of the key equation with a stochastic calibration of parameters (Toffolon and Piccolroaz, 2015 air2stream model freely available at https://github.com/spiccolroaz/air2stream). I believe that the overall analysis would benefit if the authors could include also this type of models in their analysis as a model grounded on physical principles is missing. This is just a suggestion and not a request. I have no doubts that, if the authors decide to include it, they will be able to easily and competently add this model to the analysis (e.g., the 5-parameter version, which depends only on air temperature).
Validity of the findings: The time series of the three stations used by the authors have different duration. In particular, stations 1 and 2 have a much shorter time series for calibration and station 2 has an incomplete year for model validation. Model performance is certainly affected by the duration of the series used for calibration, making the comparison among the different stations unfair. I was wondering whether other data are available. Looking at the USGS website (https://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/), which is from where I believe the authors downloaded the data, I found that other stations are available along the Missouri River, some of those with much longer time series. I ask the authors to verify if other data are available for the stations that they used, and/or to add other stations with longer/comparable time series. At this link all stations in the Missouri region with available data are listed: https://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/dv?referred_module=sw&huc2_cd=10&site_tp_cd=ST&index_pmcode_00010=1&index_pmcode_00011=1&group_key=NONE&sitefile_output_format=html_table&column_name=agency_cd&column_name=site_no&column_name=station_nm&column_name=site_tp_cd&column_name=lat_va&range_selection=date_range&begin_date=2000-03-07&end_date=2018-03-06&format=gif&date_format=YYYY-MM-DD&rdb_compression=file&list_of_search_criteria=huc2_cd%2Csite_tp_cd%2Crealtime_parameter_selection (it takes some minutes to load the whole list).

I could not find water temperature for stations 1 and 3 in the USGS website, and station 2 covers a different period compared to that used by the authors. Please, make clear the source of data used in the analysis. In addition, station 1 is not along the main course of the Missouri River, but along a small tributary (Apple Creek). This explains the significantly different annual cycle of water temperature, and also the worse model performance. In fact, I believe that the shape of the temperature cycle of this river is likely affected by streamflow, a variable that is not included in the models used by the authors but that can significantly affect water temperature in many rivers (Isaak et al., 2010; van Vliet et al., 2011; Arismendi et al., 2014; Toffolon and Piccolroaz , 2015; Sohrabi et al., 2017). This should be explicitly commented in the discussion of the results. In this respect, adding also streamflow to Fig 2 could be useful.

The results part should be expanded commenting on why in some stations the models behave better than in others, why some models behaves better than others, what are the limitations of the models considered in the analysis (e.g., the effect of discharge). Notice also that the Missouri River is acknowledged for ice formation and floating, how this can affect the model predictions? It is also known that river water temperature is chiefly modulated by the hydrological regime of the river (Webb and Nobilis, 2007; Kelleher et al.2012; Lisi et al., 2015; Piccolroaz et al., 2016). What are the hydrological regimes of the Missouri River and of the Apple Creek? Can the authors prove or speculate the portability of the proposed models to rivers with other hydrological regimes? In this sense, considering the main course of the Missouri River and also some tributaries (e.g., the Apple Creek) could be of interest. Can the author comment of the possible extension of this type of model to regulated rivers (e.g., dammed rivers)?

In conclusion, I find the analysis proposed by the authors promising and potentially a valuable contribution in the field of water temperature modelling in rivers, but I ask to carefully consider the above comments before possible publication on this Journal.
Additional comments: Abstract: choose better wording than “creating” and “constructed”

Line 76: I would say that these are factor affecting river water temperature and not the “prediction” of river water temperature. Among these factors, acknowledge also anthropogenic impacts (Hester and Doyle, 2011) and the hydrological regime (Webb and Nobilis, 2007; Kelleher et al.2012; Lisi et al., 2015; Piccolroaz et al., 2016).

Line 81: remove “quite”

Line 84: add references, as e.g., Stefan and Preud'homme, 1993; Mohseni and Stefan, 1999; Caissie, 2006.  Please, acknowledge also the limitations of using only air temperature, discharge may also play a crucial role (e.g., among others van Vliet et al., 2011; Arismendi et al., 2014; Toffolon and Piccolroaz , 2015).

Line 85: go to new line

Line 97-101: please, acknowledge also hybrid statistical-physical based models as air2water (Toffolon and Piccolroaz, 2015; Piccolroaz et al., 2016).

Line 116-119: it actually depends on the hydrological regime.

Line 119-122: see also (Stefan and Preud’homme (1993), Isaak et al. (2012), Toffolon and Piccolroaz (2015) for a discussion on the thermal inertia (depending on the hydrological regime of the river).

Line 124-125: please, reformulate.

Line 126-127: the annual component is the long-term component. What is missing here is the fluctuating short-term component. This is also discussed in Cassie, 2006.

Lines 131-132: please expand this sentence otherwise the 5th point is not very informative.

Line 133: what do the authors mean with “suitable lags”?

Line 138-140: people may do not know what are MLP, RBF, ANN, and GPR models. Probably this paragraph should start with an introductory sentence on machine learning models.

Line 149-151: the prediction of river flow is not the subject of the paper, so I would remove this sentence.

Line 133-161: this is a long paragraph that should be revised (see also the previous comments). The first sentence introduces the question of selecting appropriate model inputs (predictor variables) and lags (not sure what do the authors mean), but then this question is not answered in the coming sentences, where the focus shifts on model inter-comparison.

Section 2: please, provide information about the hydrological regime of the river, location of the stations (main course, tributaries). See also my previous comment about the use of additional stations. Add also all the necessary details about who provided the data and how they can be accessed.

Lines 196-197: … a non linear regression models and a stochastic regression model

Section 2.3: Do I correctly understand that the authors used t, Ta(t), Ta(t-1) and Ta(t-2) as predictors?
At line 230, Tw(t) should be water temperature not air temperature. I ask the authors to make the description of the machine learning models simpler to make it clearer for readers not familiar with this kind of models. A schematic of the three models could be helpful.

Equation 9: please, consider the use of the modified NSC, according to Schaefli and Gupta (2007)

Line 319-321: probably referring to calibration and validation periods would be better than “training dataset” and “test dataset”.

Table 3: do these values refer to the training (calibration) or test (validation) period? From the caption of the table I understand that they refer to the testing (validation) period. Is this correct? I would probably show all performance metrics for both periods.

Line 375: the possibility to easily include additional input variables is an important statement. Probably this goes beyond the scope of the current analysis, but an interesting extension of the study could be adding also streamflow in input and compare the three machine learning models with other models that use both air temperature and streamflow (Toffolon and Piccolroaz , 2015; Sohrabi et al., 2017). This could be commented in the conclusions or at the end of the results section.

Lines 378-380 are a repetition of lines 263-265

Section 3: I feel like in this section a detailed discussion of results is missing. I would rename the section as Results and Discussion and add some detailed comments on the results. See also my previous comments in “Validity of the findings”

Bibliography

Arismendi I, Safeeq M, Dunham JB, Johnson SL. 2014. Can air temperature be used to project influences of climate change on stream temperature? Environmental Research Letters 9: 084015. DOI:10.1088/1748-9326/9/8/084015

Caissie D. 2006. The thermal regime of rivers: a review. Freshwater Biology 51: 1389–1406. DOI:10.1111/j.1365-2427.2006.01597.x

Hester, E. T., and M. W. Doyle (2011), Human impacts to river temperature and their effects on biological processes: A quantitative synthesis, JAWRA Journal of the American Water Resources Association, 47 (3), 571{587, doi:10.1111/j.1752-1688.2011.00525.x.

Isaak, D. J., C. H. Luce, B. E. Rieman, D. E. Nagel, E. E. Peterson, D. L. Horan, S. Parkes, and G. L. Chandler (2010), Effects of climate change and wildfire on stream temperatures and salmonid thermal habitat in a mountain river network, Ecological Applications, 20 (5), 1350{1371, doi:10.1890/09-0822.1.

Isaak, D. J., S. Wollrab, D. Horan, and G. Chandler (2012), Climate change effects on stream and river temperatures across the northwest u.s. from 1980{2009 and implications for salmonid fishes, Climatic Change, 113 (2), 499{524, doi:10.1007/s10584-011- 0326-z.

Kelleher C, Wagener T, Gooseff M, McGlynn B, McGuire K, Marshall L. 2012. Investigating controls on the thermal sensitivity of Pennsylvania streams. Hydrological Processes 26: 771–785. DOI:10.1002/hyp.8186

Lisi, P. J., D. E. Schindler, T. J. Cline, M. D. Scheuerell, and P. B. Walsh (2015), Watershed geomorphology and snowmelt control stream thermal sensitivity to air temperature Geophysical Research Letters, 42 (9), 3380{3388, doi:10.1002/2015GL064083.

Mohseni O, Stefan HG. 1999. Stream temperature/air temperature relationship: a physical interpretation. Journal of Hydrology 218:128–141. DOI:10.1016/S0022-1694(99)00034-7

Piccolroaz, S., E. Calamita, B. Majone, A. Gallice, A. Siviglia, and M. Toffolon (2016), Prediction of river water temperature: a comparison between a new family of hybrid models and statistical approaches, Hydrological Processes, 30 (21), 3901{3917, doi:10.1002/hyp.10913, hYP-16-0208.R1.

Schaefli B, Gupta HV. 2007. Do Nash values have value? Hydrological Processes 21: 2075–2080. DOI:10.1002/hyp.6825

Sohrabi, M. M., R. Benjankar, D. Tonina, S. J.Wenger, and D. J. Isaak (2017), Estimation of daily stream water temperatures with a bayesian regression approach, Hydrological Processes, 31 (9), 1719{1733, doi:10.1002/hyp.11139, hYP-15-0782.R2.

Stefan HG, Preud’homme EB. 1993. Stream temperature estimation from air temperature. Journal of the American Water Resources Association 29: 27–45. DOI:10.1111/j.1752-1688.1993.tb01502.x

Toffolon M, Piccolroaz S. 2015. A hybrid model for river water temperature as a function of air temperature and discharge. Environmental Research Letters 10: 114011. DOI:10.1088/1748-9326/10/11/114011

van Vliet, M. T., W. H. Franssen, J. R. Yearsley, F. Ludwig, I. Haddeland, D. P. Lettenmaier, and P. Kabat (2013), Global river discharge and water temperature under climate change, Global Environmental Change, 23 (2), 450 { 464, doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2012.11.002.

Webb, B. W., and F. Nobilis (2007), Long-term changes in river temperature and the influence of climatic and hydrological fact


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: MODELLING DAILY WATER TEMPERATURE FROM AIR TEMPERATURE FOR THE MISSOURI RIVER
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 2

Output:
Basic reporting: Language and text was in good shape, and I thought the background information was adequate. I think the figures are ok, but styles differ throughout (figure 2 looks like a excel screenshot) and it isn't clear why only certain models are included in the evaluation figures 4-6. We only see timeseries for two of the three ML models and none of the traditional models. A number of citations were dated but referred to as "recent work" (see more below). The examples for ecosystem value of river temperature data was limited and I think the authors shouldn't have their first example be a coral reef since this paper is about river temperatures. I don't see the source of the data cited. USGS data should be cited as "U.S. Geological Survey, 2018, National Water Information System—Web interface, accessed {date}, at http://dx.doi.org/10.5066/F7P55KJN."
Experimental design: The research design is adequately described and we have enough details to reproduce it. I do not think the authors went far enough to make this compelling. Their study area was a rare situation were they have good historical USGS temperature data and did not evaluate two things that would make these results more useful to the discipline: 1) impact of missing/sparce training data (the authors have a lot of training data, as opposed to evaluating the various models when 50% are removed, or more). 2) the ability to use one station's temperature data as input into another station model. Temperature stations could be leveraged in the modeling approach since temperature is the most widely measured aquatic measurement. What is the impact of including up/downstream measurements in various model formulations. I think the authors either need to show their results (the ranking of models) are appropriate elsewhere in the very different climate/flow regime, or add more depth to their study (such as the two suggestions above).
Validity of the findings: The findings seem valid but it is challenging to understand how transferable the results are. It isn't clear why the authors only use three sites and if the results could be applied elsewhere. We also could benefit from seeing/discussing limitations of the various approaches, such as seasonal biases or prediction failures. It is also odd to have the test dataset for station 2 to use an incomplete year. This makes it so we can't evaluate later season predictions. Please change than and use a full season for test. It isn't clear why figures 4-6 only represent two ML models, and do not (in one case, figure 5) show the model w/ the best performance (ANN in the case of station 2).
Additional comments: line 67: don't use a coral reef fish temperature example in a paragraph about river temperature. Use a river temperature example (there are many)
lines 62-72: also should mention the relationship between gasses and temperature solubility, which impacts ecosystem health. Also, temperature-dependent metabolism.
line 73: why is it a complex issue "to accurately predict water temperature"? tell us why or provide a citation. These things are all measureable, doesn't that make it easier? Isn't the conclusion of the paper that this is a relatively simple issue?
line 84: also air temperature is widely measured and more available than full energy budget components.
line 87: the Caissie and Benyahya papers are over ten years old.
line 89: "mass balances of flow fluxes in a water body" note these water fluxes also contribute to the energy/heat budget
line 92: "tremendously employed" what does that mean?
line 157: revise: "In some cases, ANN models provided better results, while in other some other regression models."
line 319: more info needed for the dataset. What was the remaining data? What time periods are available? Why were only three sites used?
line 337: is RMSE "daily" or instantaneous?
figure 5: test data don't include the whole season for station 2
table 1: should include date ranges


Instruction: You are one of the reviewers, your task is to write a review for the article. You will be given the title of the article, the number of the round in which the article is located, and your order among the reviewers.

Input:
Title: MODELLING DAILY WATER TEMPERATURE FROM AIR TEMPERATURE FOR THE MISSOURI RIVER
Review round: 1
Reviewer: 3

Output:
Basic reporting: NO COMMENTS
Experimental design: NO COMMENTS
Validity of the findings: NO COMMENTS
Additional comments: The paper is presented well, and also acceptable for publication.The following suggestion is as follows,
1.Include more recent papers inliterature review
2.how to find optimal no. off  hiddden neuron in the proopsed model
33. More explqnation is  required in the comparative analysis of ANN. GPR .BA DT models