Dear Dr. Jia,

in a next step of the review process, can you please upload a new version of the manuscript, where all reviewer comments have been treated as explained in your author responses.
As a title of your manuscript, I would suggest "Antagonistic effects of drought and sand burial enable survival of biocrust moss Bryum argenteum in an arid sandy desert"

Kind regards,

Bettina Weber

Dear authors,

meanwhile I checked your manuscript again and saw that you responded accurately upon the reviewer comments. However, figures 2-5 could be improved considerably if you use 3-D-plots to show the response of the mosses upon 2 different parameters. Doing this, the results can be interpreted more easily and plots will be reduced to half. Thus, please change these figures accordingly and submit your manuscript again.

Thank you very much and kind regards,

Bettina Weber

Dear Dr. Jia,

thank you very much for preparing the 3-D plots.
Minor technical issues still caught my eye.

1. In Fig. 1, it is not clear which letter belongs to which sub-figure; please rearrange the letters to make that clearer. In the legend please explain the letters in the right order; otherwise it is confusing.
2. In Fig. 2 b, please make sure that you don't have 0.5 intervals on the x-axis.
3. In Fig. 2-5 the explanation of the x-axis is not clear; as an example, here is a possible legend for figure 2; please adapt the other legends accordingly:
"Changes of the chlorophyll a content of the biocrust moss Bryum argenteum Hedw. following exposure to natural precipitation (control; 1), half of the natural precipitation amount (2), one fourth of the natural precipitation amount (4), combined with 0 (control), 0.5, 1, 2, 4, and 10 mm depth of sand burial in spring (a) and autumn (b). Symbols represent means +- SE. ..."

Kind regards,

Bettina Weber

Dear authors,

I think now your manuscript is ready for publication. Can you just provide an update of the legend of Figure 1. I would suggest to formulate it in the following way: "Figure 1: Location and main landscapes of the Shaputou region at the southeastern edge of the Tengger Desert. As a pioneer species ...(a); this was achieved by controlling burial stress through ...(b); 60 years ago, the area was characterized by shifting sand dunes (c)."

Kind regards,

Bettina Weber