Three Reviewers recommend rejection of the paper in its present form
Two think it should be reconsidered after major revisions. I concur with this recommendation.

The paper at present is predominantly a rather long Method paper suggesting some novel ways to improve a 'biosphere' model and its application. As noted by Ref. 3, as such it belongs in GMD, but as the authors aim for BG, any revisions should be directed towards this end, with the novelty better highlighted, and also in the model outputs.

The paper was clearly of interest to the expert reviewers, two of whom invested a great deal of effort in a constructive review with many valid and good points. It seems from the authors response they agree with much of it and the reviews will be of great help in the revisions, which I think can lead to a significantly improved paper suitable to BG.

The authors are therefore invited to re-submit a revised paper.

The authors benefited from very detail and constructive reviews and have revised the paper accordingly, as is now also confirmed by an additional review. I find the paper appropriate for publication in BG.