Dr. Fuchs - you have responded to all of the referee comments in a satisfactory manor and have made appropriate changes to the manuscript. As a result I recommend that this manuscript is Published with minor technical corrections. With your changes to the manuscript, it provides an important assessment of soil organic carbon in a high latitude, alpine environment with permafrost ranging from continuous to isolated. Given the small number of SOC studies in this type of environment, this paper makes an important contribution. Although it is likely not surprising that the SOC is low in this environment, I commend the authors for producing a detailed paper on such an environment as this is required in order to make reasonable global estimates.

I would recommend one final copy edit of the manuscript. In addition, I would recommend minor changes to the colour scheme used in Figure 1. For example, on the copy I have, the Patch Boulder Moss is indistinguishable from the Birch Forest.