Line 243: “(pH, temperature, precipitation)” should not be placed after the word elevation.
During the discussion, the reasons behind the experimental results should be analyzed, not only from the correlation between the sample data but also cannot be explained by relying too much on the VIP score curve. In addition, partial correlation analysis (e.g., Cheng et al., 2019) could be helpful and bring more insights given the fact that soil spectra are simultaneously influenced by several soil properties (e.g., SOM and Iron oxide). This may help to analyze the underlying mechanism.