I have reviewed the revised manuscript alongside a second round of reviews from Al Neely (also reviewed the initial submission) and an anonymous reviewer #3. Based on these reviews and my own reading, it does not seem that the comments from the initial reviews were sufficiently addressed. Reviewer #3 also raised some useful points about the clarity of writing. I suggest that the authors revise their manuscript and resubmit it for additional consideration. In the revision, please do not consolidate the reviewer comments. Please address each individual comment separately so that we can more easily keep track of specific comments and responses.

Here I also provide a summary of the most important points that I think the authors need to address in a revision.

In revising your manuscript, please carefully consider the following:
1. Dr. Neely has asked for some important clarifications and information about the experimental setup and conditions. Please address these concerns and provide the requested information either in the main manuscript or the supplement, as possible.

2. All three reviewers (including the anonymous reviewer from the initial submission) have raised concerns about the applicability of these results to natural systems. I appreciate that the revised manuscript includes new subsections on application to natural systems and also other plucking studies, but those sections read more like a literature review than a discussion that integrates or synthesizes the new findings with the literature. Please follow the reviewer guidelines to revise these sections and consider how and if you can relate these findings to natural systems throughout the manuscript to convince the reader of the relevance.

3. Reviewer #3 has provided additional suggestions on how to streamline the manuscript to make it more concise and to better frame the story for the reader. I recommend following the suggestions for the broad restructuring (e.g., cutting some intro/background, revising what is included to make it more relevant) and ensuring each paragraph is readable on its own. However, I will leave it to the authors to determine whether individual phrases should be revised or cut for brevity, as I think this is a matter of personal writing style and is not up to the reviewer.

I have received two reviewer reports from Dr. Neely and an anonymous reviewer. Both have reviewed previous versions of the manuscript and find it significantly improved, but both also have remaining doubts and concerns. From reading the reports myself, it seems the concerns mainly lie in the clarity of the writing and overall presentation of this work. Please review both reviewer reports very carefully and address each individual comment as you edit your manuscript. Dr. Neely also recommends including a subsection on experimental limitations, which I agree would benefit the manuscript. The authors should make a concerted effort to refine their writing for clarity and to ensure they are presenting sufficient information for readers and reviewers to thoroughly understand their work.

I have read the most recent reviews, author responses, and manuscript revisions. I want to thank the authors and reviewers for their dedication to improving this manuscript. I find the latest version to be significantly improved over earlier iterations, and the authors have done a nice job addressing reviewer concerns. I think the addition of Figure 8 is especially helpful as a summary of your findings. I am recommending the manuscript for publication, but ask for the following technical corrections:

Retitle section 4.1 to "Benefits and limitations of the study design" or something similar, as the current subheading suggests this section is only about the material, while you actually discuss the experimental setup as well.

Remove the sentence you just added detailing experimental limitations in the abstract (L33-35 in tracked changes version). I understand this was recommended by a reviewer, but I do not think it is appropriate or needed here and it detracts from the importance of your experiments.

Remove "in our experiments" from the section 4.3 subheading, as this is not needed

Please give a close and thorough read to check for grammar throughout. There are many instances of incorrect grammar, some of which have been a source of confusion for reviewers. I am listing some examples from page 3 (line #s refer to tracked changes version), but please check throughout the entire manuscript.
L100: "Macroabrasion is a recent terminology" replace "terminology" with "term," as "terminology" is uncountable, or rephrase.
L116: "also defined as a similar two-step process" not "2 steps"
L119: remove comma after "discontinuities"
L126-127: I'm not entirely sure how to fix this one actually, depending on your intent, possibly "Intuition derived from field-based morphological constraints has been used to inform the nature and relative dominance of various processes." This sentence as written suggests that intuition informs the relative dominance, which I suspect is not correct. Perhaps just "Field-based morphological constraints have been used to inform..." Revise as appropriate.

Dear Marion Fournereau and author team,

I am happy to convey that your manuscript entitled ‘New experiments to probe the role of fractures in bedrock on river erosion rate and processes’ has now been accepted for publication subject to technical corrections as indicated by associate editor Anastasia Piliouras. Thank you for working with Anastasia and her reviewers. I feel that the review process has helped to significantly improve the clarity of your manuscript.

Thank you for engaging with EGU’s non for-profit open science outlets and considering ESurf.

Best wishes,

Andreas Lang