Dear authors,

First of all, it would be helpful if the authors would follow the authors guidelines of HESS and provide a detailed individual discussion to the three reviewer comments and not upload a pdf including a response and the revised paper. This is not the correct way for HESS. The discussions will first be considered and then the authors may invited to upload a revised version, but it can also happen that the discussion paper will be rejected.

I think the paper will generally make a valuable contribution to HESS, but additional work and changes are necessary before publication in HESS can be considered. The three reviewer provided detailed and very useful comments to improve the content and presentation of the paper and the authors should consider them very carefully. The authos should in particular focus on the introduction, improve the organization of the paper, and a proper and separate discussion is necessary to allow publication in HESS. This is in particular important as the reader is a bit lost at the end of the results with the different model combinations and parameter and it is unclear what should be considered and done in the next study. I think the combination of a result and discussion section is not appropriate for this paper and the two sections should be separated and the discussion needs to better consider other studies and approaches..
The authors are encouraged to submit a revised paper including detailed answers and responses to all reviewer comments and appropriate changes in the manuscript. The revised paper may then be reconsidered after the major revisions and further review by the editor and reviewers will certainly be necessary.

Best regards
Markus Weiler

Dear authors,

First of all, it would be helpful if the authors would follow the authors guidelines of HESS and provide a detailed individual discussion to the three reviewer comments and not upload a pdf including a response and the revised paper. This is not the correct way for HESS. The discussions will first be considered and then the authors may invited to upload a revised version, but it can also happen that the discussion paper will be rejected.

I think the paper will generally make a valuable contribution to HESS, but additional work and changes are necessary before publication in HESS can be considered. The three reviewer provided detailed and very useful comments to improve the content and presentation of the paper and the authors should consider them very carefully. The authos should in particular focus on the introduction, improve the organization of the paper, and a proper and separate discussion is necessary to allow publication in HESS. This is in particular important as the reader is a bit lost at the end of the results with the different model combinations and parameter and it is unclear what should be considered and done in the next study. I think the combination of a result and discussion section is not appropriate for this paper and the two sections should be separated and the discussion needs to better consider other studies and approaches..
The authors are encouraged to submit a revised paper including detailed answers and responses to all reviewer comments and appropriate changes in the manuscript. The revised paper may then be reconsidered after the major revisions and further review by the editor and reviewers will certainly be necessary.

Best regards
Markus Weiler

I think the paper will generally make a valuable contribution to HESS, but additional work and changes are necessary before publication in HESS can be considered. The three reviewer provided detailed and very useful comments to improve the content and presentation of the paper and the authors should consider them very carefully. The authos should in particular focus on the introduction, improve the organization of the paper, and a proper and separate discussion is necessary to allow publication in HESS. This is in particular important as the reader is a bit lost at the end of the results with the different model combinations and parameter and it is unclear what should be considered and done in the next study. I think the combination of a result and discussion section is not appropriate for this paper and the two sections should be separated and the discussion needs to better consider other studies and approaches..
The authors are encouraged to submit a revised paper including detailed answers and responses to all reviewer comments and appropriate changes in the manuscript. The revised paper may then be reconsidered after the major revisions and further review by the editor and reviewers will certainly be necessary.

Dear authors,

the paper improved significantly and you really made an effort to take on the suggested changes from the reviews. That was very much appreciated by the reviewers and myself. I think the paper is closer being published in HESS, but there are still many relevant comments and suggestions by the reviewers that should be considered by the authors before I can make a decision. Please provide a revised version with all changes marked and a detailed response letter to the comments of the reviewers.

Best regards
Markus Weiler

Dear authors,

thanks a lot for the detailed response and the modification in the paper. I think the paper looks now very good and is in general ready for publication in HESS. When studying the revised version, I found some technical corrections and changes that should be included into the final manuscript:
Table 5 - please remove the left column with the content "Gludsted Plantation models (Fig. 3)". This is not relevant for the table.
Table 6 - please move the unit of the soil moisture the the header row of the table and also provide a header description for the two left columns
In general, most figures could be simplified by removing the symbols for all modelled data. Usually, observations, as they are not continuous, are illustrated as symbols and simulations are illustrated as lines. This would also help your figures as they are very busy with all the symbols for the simulated neutron intensities (fig 2-5, 8, 9).
Please change the extend of the y axis in Figure 7 - all information is situated between 0.8 and 0.85 - so why showing such a wide range? The legend could me move in between the individual graphs.

Best regards
Markus Weiler

Thanks so much for the improved version. I am happy to see this paper now published in HESS.
best regards
Markus