Dear Dr Meng
I regret to inform you that I do not find your manuscript ‘Mangrove development an 1 d its response to Asian monsoon in Yingluo Bay (SW China) over the last 2000 years’ suitable for publication in Biogeosciences. I feel that there is insufficient detail in the writing, and insufficient rigour in the discussion and statistical support of your findings. I include some more detailed comments below which may help you to revise the manuscript for submission to other journals.
Best regards,
Clare Woulds
Hypothesis: These are a bit short on detail of what is already known about monsoon development, and there are no hypotheses about how monsoon development might have affected mangroves. Why would we expect an effect?
Methods: Missing some detail, such as instrumentation, standards and calibration techniques for some methods. Crucially, they don’t specify how CMOM was identified (isotopically?).
Results: I do not have confidence in the age model, as the sedimentation rate was very variable. What types of species made up the non-mangrove fraction of the pollen counts?
Discussion:
Figure 5. There is no key to different shapes of data points. The mangrove and terrestrial organic matter end member values are not plotted, or are difficult to see. It is not clear what the different circled and shaded areas represent (different sample types, or allocation of sediment samples to different organic matter sources, in which case how was that done?).
The equation used to quantify the contribution of mangrove OM should be given.
Your use of CMOM as a proxy for mangrove development relies on a correlation with mangrove pollen. The reporting of the statistical support for that correlation is insufficiently detailed (what test was used, and what was the p value?). The correlation is not especially close, therefore I feel there is a requirement for discussion of the source of the scatter, and further justification for the use of the proxy.
No statistical support is given for correspondence between your CMOM record and the oxygen isotope record, and I do not agree that such correspondence exists. Further, the degradation event does not appear to be particularly marked to me, compared to other fluctuations in your record.
The discussion of links between mangrove development and the Asian monsoon is insufficiently mechanistic.

Dear Dr Higashi

Thank you for your responses to the interactive discussion and reviewer comments. I would welcome a revised version of your manuscript, as detailed in your responses.

Regards,

Clare Woulds

Dear Dr Higashi

Thank you for your response to reviewer comments and your revised manuscript. I am now happy to recommend publication in Biogeosciences.

Best regards,

Clare Woulds