Dear authors,

The reviewer report(s) for your manuscript are now complete. As the authors can see that two reviewers expressed their serious concerns on the quality of this manuscript, including scientific significance, scientific quality and presentation quality. Due to the interest of soil salinity issue in arid region in western China, I'd like to give the authors another chance to revise. Please make thorough improvements based on the reviewers' comments before HESS can consider your work further. As the editor, from my reading, I did not see significant changes in Figure 4b. If so, the authors should point out clearly what the novelty of this study is, and probably modify the title and content accordingly. For the Conceptual diagram in Figure 5, are there any observed or measured data to support this concept? How can this diagram reflect the title "Soil salinity patterns reveal changes in the water cycle of inland river basins in arid zones"?
Please note that if the reviewer(s) are not satisfied with the changes to your manuscript, it may still be rejected. We look forward to hearing from you soon.

Yours sincerely,
Hongkai Gao

Dear authors,

After inviting over 10 reviewers in this round (over 20 in last round), we finally have sufficient number of comments to make decision.
From your track change manuscript, I see some changes in the updated version. But the paper still does not satisfy the high-quality requirement of a HESS publication.

1. I did not think the authors take paper publication as a serious academic activity. All figures need good quality, and proper font size to be recognized. Also the references should fit HESS’s format.

2. The serious problem of current paper is the lack of in-situ validation. The authors claim that “the severity of salinization has been increasing”, however, I did not see the validation of the remote sensing results. Without validation, it does not warrant a scientific paper.

3. From Figure 1 and 3, we cannot clearly see the salinity changes. I suggest the authors zoom in the satellite images, and compare for example two images before and after salinity, and highlight the salinitilized area. This can further strengthen your conclusion on the increasing of salinity in this region.

4. I suggest the authors separate apart and map out different mechanisms to explain salinity changes. For example, I am curious to see where the irrigation plays a dominant role in salinity, and where reservoir inundation area is a key factor. Using two conceptual diagrams to demonstrate these two mechanisms is likely a good idea.

I’m curious to know: is vegetation a good indicator for salinity? Can you do some analysis to test it? Does salinity have significant impacts on vegetation’s root zone (https://hess.copernicus.org/articles/28/4477/2024/)?

I cannot follow some statements:
Line 40-41: water bodies also impact soil quality, mainly through irrigation and precipitation. How water bodies can impact soil quality through precipitation?
There are many such confusing statements. Might be a good idea to invite an English native speaker, to carefully improve the writing all through this MS.

My gut initial decision was rejection due to the still poor quality after giving a chance to revision. However, due to the importance of salinity issue in this region, I still don’t want to kill this paper. I give the authors one more and LAST chance to revise it. Hope to receive your good quality paper soon. If you need more time to do it, please let me know. I can extend the deadline.

Best regards,
Hongkai Gao

Dear authors,

While both reviewers are satisfied with the revisions overall, some minor revisions are still needed before acceptance.
I look forward to your updated manuscript.

Best,
Hongkai Gao

Dear authors,

Thank you for your revision. I am happy to accept your manuscript for publication in HESS. Congratulations!

Best,
Hongkai Gao