Dear authors,

I apologize for being silent in the past few weeks, which was related to my vacation. I have read the reviews and your answeres to the reviewers. In general both reviewers are very positive and supportive of your study and my impression is that you carefully answered the concerns raised by the reviewers. I would now like to invite you to submit the revised version of you manuscript.

Best regards, Edzo Veldkamp

Dear authors,

I have now read your revised manuscript and it confirmed my earlier impression that you we very carefull in addressing the concerns raised by the reviewers. I have a few points left, which I would like you to address:

-As far as I have seen you never described the statistical methods that you used to test whether the changes in soil carbon density, bulk density and stocks were significant. This also includes the study done in 2017 when you did multiple samplings. Please add a section where your statistical methods are described.

-You present the results of the soil carbon samplings with error bars showing standard deviations. I suggest to use either 95% confidence intervals or standard errors in the graphs (Fig. 3 and Fig C1) since this better illustrates whether differences are significant or not.

-You use several times the term 'voluntary regrowth'. I would personally use the term 'spontaneous regrowth'. If you think that 'voluntary regrowth' is a better term, you can leave it as it is.

After you have included these minor changes, the manuscript can be accepted for publication.

Best regards,

Edzo Veldkamp

Dear Dr. Emmel and colleagues,

I have read the final version of your manuscript and have decided that it is now ready for publication. I thank you for submitting this very interesting study to Biogeosciences. I think the combination of long-term flux measurements with independently measured changes in in soil carbon stocks is quite unique and hopefully shows a way forward for many other Fluxnet sites. I expect that this study will attract attention beyond the scientific community since it provides solid information on a subject that is also politically relevant.

Best regards,

Edzo Veldkamp