Dear Dr. Xu et al.

Thank your for submitting your paper to Biogeosciences and for providing feedback on the comments received. I have read the discussions and believe that a revised will be suitable for publication in Biogeosciences.Therefore I invite you to submit a manuscript revised along the lines of your rebuttal. Salinity has no units, but sometimes you might use psu if really needed. I leave it upto you.
The revised version will be quality checked by me and not be evaluated again.

With best regards, Jack Middelburg associate editor

Dear Dr. Xu:

I have read your revised manuscript, the reviews and your rebuttal and I am happy to inform you that your paper is now accepted for publication pending minor technical corrections. While reading I identified the following grammar/language corrections and a few scientific points.

L. 17: biogeochemical cycling and paleoenvironmental reconstructions….
L. 28: marine waters. The …
L. 35: delete reviewed by
L. 46: delete an
L. 55: Thaumarchaeotal iGDGTs (Hopmans..
L. 76: used tandem
L. 79: indices
L. 81: brGDGTs are only
L. 100: systems, is coherent…
L. 103: material to the sea. On the continental …more important than atmospheric input because…
L. 112: study on GDGTs..
L. 117: study supplies…
L. 118: understanding the marine …
L. 174: study is composed
L. 186: from Svalbard
L. 192: Indonesia, Vietnam, Italy
L. 186-193: first individual countries and then the globally distributed soils for reasons of logic.
L. 206: Such a difference…. Surprising because …
L. 207: than the other
L. 223: were degraded
L. 230: change the brGDGTs’ composition when they are transport to the sea
L. 231-233: this is a weak non-convincing argument.
L.235: primarily of land origin
L. 238: comprises the least..
L. 248: it to datsets for Svalbard…
L. 253: predominantly from marine…
L. 277: dataset to the global scale
L. 284: may develop and produce GDGTs…
L. 287: IIIa/IIa shows highest
L. 294: that the relative
L. 298: which are …
L. 300: respond to
L. 301: way as the brGDGTs producing soil bacteria
L. 304: in the ocean…. location where……
L. 311: However, to the best of our knowledge there is …
L. 312: throughout the water column
L. 329: higher pH and lower water temperature
L. 330: disentangle the relative
L. 338: all through: replace endmember with end-member for readability
L. 348: may provide an..
L. 390-395: this conclusion is not consistent with main text: pH vs. pH & T. Please correct.

I am looking forward seeing your paper published in Biogeosciences.

With best regards,

Jack Middelburg, Associate Editor