Dear Dr. Rassmann and colleagues:

Thank you for submitting this nice paper to Biogeosciences. Alkalinity generation in sediments is an important topic and there are few studies that present S burial data and alkalinity release together. Your paper therefore advances our understanding.
Your paper has received detailed feedback which no doubt will improve the final version of your paper. Based on your response to the comments of the referees I believe that a revised version will eventually be suitable for publication in Biogeosciences. I therefore invite you to submit a revised version which likely will be evaluated again by (a subset of) the referees.

With best regards, Jack Middelburg, Associate Editor

Dear Dr. Rassmann and Rabouille:

Thank you for submitting your revised version to Biogeosciences and your patience. As we communicated privately, one of the previous referees was not available and the other one accepted to evaluate your paper again in July 15 and to date has not yet delivered despite multiple reminders.
This is an unfortunate situation. Last week I have contacted another referee, novel to your manuscript, that delivered promptly. She/he provided a detailed, constructive review. The bottom line is that you appear to have adequately dealt with most issues identified before, but that there are still some issues that require attention. Most of these are easily incorporated/resolved and I therefore invite you to revise your manuscript again and submit a new version. This second revision will likely be acceptable for publication after inspection by me.

Once again, sorry that it took so much time to obtain the reviews. I am looking forward seeing your revised version.

Best regards, Jack Middelburg, Associate Editor

Dear Christoph:

Thank you for submitting your revised version. I am happy to inform you that your paper is now accepted for publication pending a few technical corrections (below). Alkalinity generation within sediments is an often modelled, poorly documented topic and I am happy that you took the effort to advance the field.

With best regards, Jack Middelburg, Associate Editor

Check your reference list: it is incomplete.
l. 209: A sample volume of 1 ml was immediately...
l. 286: Pain et al. is not in reference list
l. 288: The delta(subscript i) values represent..... concentrations for component i and ....Berner, 1980), where Di is the sediment diffusion coefficient for component i.
l. 498: add space before TA
Luecker et al not Lueker et al. (p. 35).