A parsimonious transport model of emerging contaminants  at the river network scale

Diamantini, Elena; Mallucci, Stefano; Bellin, Alberto

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-23-573-2019

Articles | Volume 23, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-23-573-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-23-573-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 23, issue 1

Research article

|

31 Jan 2019

Research article |

| 31 Jan 2019

A parsimonious transport model of emerging contaminants at the river network scale

Elena Diamantini, Stefano Mallucci, and Alberto Bellin

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Final revised paper (published on 31 Jan 2019)
Preprint (discussion started on 22 Jun 2018)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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RC1: 'Referee Report on: A parsimonious transport model of emerging contaminants at the river network scale by Elena Diamantini and Alberto Bellin', Anonymous Referee #1, 17 Jul 2018
- AC2: 'Reply to Referee #1', Elena Diamantini, 15 Sep 2018
RC2: 'review report', Anonymous Referee #2, 29 Jul 2018
- AC1: 'Reply to Referee #2', Elena Diamantini, 12 Sep 2018
AC1: 'Reply to Referee #2', Elena Diamantini, 12 Sep 2018

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Publish subject to revisions (further review by editor and referees) (08 Oct 2018) by Insa Neuweiler

AR by Elena Diamantini on behalf of the Authors (25 Oct 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (05 Nov 2018) by Insa Neuweiler

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (04 Dec 2018)

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (04 Dec 2018)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

I acknowledge the efforts of the authors to modify their approach and make it more flexible to also include the effects of lakes and reservoirs. This was a major flaw of the preceding approach and improves the general applicability of the model to other regions where lakes or reservoirs are present in the river network. Thus most of my concerns have been addressed in the revised manuscript. Two points remain, why I opt for moderate revisions.

a.) The assumption of complete mixing and a constant mean residence time maybe problematic in reservoirs that are used for hydropower generation. Here I would like to see an additional sentence in the manuscript that admits this constraint.

b.) I understand the point that outside the Noce river missing data prevents model application in a daily time step. However, this does not prevent a model check. The authors present simulated monthly mean concentrations (Figure 6) and hence the monthly regime of pharmaceutical concentrations. This regime can very well be checked by spot samples taken during the winter and summer season the authors already published in their preceding paper (Mandaric et al 2017). The measured concentrations can e.g. be included into figure 6, when model simulations are performed for the catchments of sampling locations 7A-D of (Mandaric et al. 2017). This would prove that the monthly regime is adequately represented by the model. And if not, deviations could be discussed.

Moreover I strongly recommend a thorough language check of the entire manuscript. I give one sentence (pp25-26) as an example:
“This additional information cannot be used for a formal validation because representative of the sampling day, while simulations are conducted at the monthly scale because along the main stem of the Adige river census data are available only at this scale for the touristic fluxes and at the annual scale for the resident population.”

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (21 Dec 2018) by Insa Neuweiler

AR by Elena Diamantini on behalf of the Authors (31 Dec 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (13 Jan 2019) by Insa Neuweiler

Short summary

The description of pharmaceutical fate and transport introduced into a watershed is a challenging topic, especially because of the possible adverse effects on human health. In addition, an accurate estimation of solute sources and routes is still missing. This study uses a new promising modeling approach to predict pharmaceutical concentrations in rivers. Results show an interesting relationship between solute concentrations in waters and touristic fluxes.