January 25, 2017

Dear Dr. Zhang,

Thanks for providing responses to reviewers of your article submitted to Biogeosciences, who gave numerous suggestions for improvements. I invite you to submit a revised version incorporating issues raised by them and your responses, paying special attention to the following:

1) Comment of Reviewer 1 regarding “… framing the current state of the research and preparing the readers for the in-depth models that follow”. This suggestion will support your argument given to Reviewer 2´s comment regarding criticism on potential duplication of conclusions as in Zhang et al. (2016). It is important to stress this point in the new version in the most careful way to emphasize the novel aspects of your contribution.

2) Better description of methods and related references are needed as pointed out by Reviewer 1 and D Cole (interactive comment). I am confident that this aspect could be solved in the revised version that should include description of the stratigraphic column.

Sincerely yours


Silvio Pantoja
Associate Editor