Thank you for your conscientious responses to the reviewers. I suggest you adopt the clarifications you indicated. Though some of the methods clarifications may seem too detailed, I too was left wanting some more information after reading the Methods section. I also suggest including a sentence or two in the last paragraph of the introduction addressing both reviewers' comments about the "backseat" nature of the modeling. The authors responded to this in part by suggesting a change in the abstract, but I think some phrasing at the end of the introduction that explicitly tell the reader about the utility of this model exploration would be valuable. Some of that text could easily be taken from the response (already written) to Rev #2's comment "How can we evaluate the robustness of this new model?" That, plus the responses already suggested by the authors, will produce a stronger manuscript. I will review again when these changes are submitted.

Thank you for your thorough responses. I have made some technical comments - wording changes and sentence/phrase insertions - that will improve clarity. Please adopt these for final publication.

Dear authors, it is a pleasure for me to let you know that your manuscript is now accepted and only need some more technical corrections made by the Topical Editor.

Thanks for submit your interesting research results to SOIL.

Kind regards

Jorge