Are dissolved organic carbon concentrations in riparian groundwater linked to hydrological pathways in the boreal forest?

Ploum, Stefan W.; Laudon, Hjalmar; Peralta-Tapia, Andrés; Kuglerová, Lenka

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-24-1709-2020

Articles | Volume 24, issue 4

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-24-1709-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

Linking landscape organisation and hydrological functioning:...

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-24-1709-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 24, issue 4

Research article

|

09 Apr 2020

Research article |

| 09 Apr 2020

Are dissolved organic carbon concentrations in riparian groundwater linked to hydrological pathways in the boreal forest?

Stefan W. Ploum, Hjalmar Laudon, Andrés Peralta-Tapia, and Lenka Kuglerová

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Final revised paper (published on 09 Apr 2020)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 25 Jul 2019)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Referee comment on Ploum et al.', Anonymous Referee #1, 16 Aug 2019
- AC1: 'Response to referee #1', Stefan Ploum, 16 Oct 2019
RC2: 'Referee comments', Anonymous Referee #2, 07 Sep 2019
- AC2: 'Response to referee #2', Stefan Ploum, 16 Oct 2019
SC1: 'Short comment', Kevin Bishop, 19 Sep 2019
- AC3: 'Response to Kevin Bishop', Stefan Ploum, 16 Oct 2019

Peer-review completion

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

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (further review by editor and referees) (17 Oct 2019) by Loes van Schaik

AR by Stefan Ploum on behalf of the Authors (27 Nov 2019) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (06 Jan 2020) by Loes van Schaik

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (17 Jan 2020)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

General comment
The authors did a good job revising their manuscript. Mostly all of the points raised have been adequately addressed. However, I still am not convinced by the discussion chapter. The authors confirm their hypothesis but miss the chance to discuss why DRIPs and non-DRIPs are different in space and time. There is a short discussion on the spring season specifically but non on the seasonality (factor TIME) in general nor on the factor POS (position relative to the stream). Not discussing the potential processes behind observation weakens the paper. I thus strongly encourage the authors to use the discussion for that and not for the implications of their observations (which, to my opinion rather belongs into the concluding sections).

Specific comments
Abstract
L11: Would „can change groundwater chemistry“ be more precise here?
L25: “so-called” can be omitted
L26: do you refer to homogeneity in groundwater quality / chemistry here? You may add this to be clearer.
Introduction
P2 L16-17: “changes the chemical fuction of the RZ” – add “in time” here?
P3 L3: “However” does not seem to fit here.
P3 L15: Yes, Kirchner 2003 assumes a mixed groundwater reservoir but does not specifically addresses/ studies groundwater quality but rather surface water age and chemistry. Does not seem to fit here.
P3 L38: Consider starting a new section here.
P3 L38-44: Consider to broaden the objectives. You aim at proving a hypothesis. You could add that you also discuss implications in terms of…
Fig. 1: Groundwater quality differences are a hypothesis so far. Can you make this clear in captions or in the figure itself? Is the “headwater lake” a common feature for boreal headwaters or specific for the studied catchment here?
Methods
P5L20: Add standard deviation or range to the mean depth.
P6 L3: Add standard deviation or CV (that makes variability best comparable between DRIPs and non-DRIPs) here as well.
P6 L11: Add the basic hydrological / hydroclimatic conditions – e.g. later on you talk about spring flood.
Results
Figure 3: Write in captions what “p” is indicating.
Discussion
P9 L16-19: The described ice effect will create dilution in surface water but not in groundwater as touched on here, right? This is the only discussion of the results that I found in the entire discussion section.
P10 L1-15: I am not sure if this section on the size of contributing area is well placed here.
P10 L 35 groundwater that is “incorporated in the stream” has an unclear meaning
P11 L1 -21: This section is on implications and not a discussion on the meaning of the results and should rather be moved to the conclusions.

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (21 Jan 2020) by Loes van Schaik

AR by Stefan Ploum on behalf of the Authors (31 Jan 2020)

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (03 Mar 2020) by Loes van Schaik

AR by Stefan Ploum on behalf of the Authors (11 Mar 2020) Author's response Manuscript

Short summary

Near-stream areas, or riparian zones, are important for the health of streams and rivers. If these areas are disturbed by forestry or other anthropogenic activity, the water quality and all life in streams may be at risk. We examined which riparian areas are particularly sensitive. We found that only a few wet areas bring most of the rainwater from the landscape to the stream, and they have a unique water quality. In order to maintain healthy streams and rivers, these areas should be protected.