Using similarity of soil texture and hydroclimate to enhance soil moisture estimation

Coopersmith, E. J.; Minsker, B. S.; Sivapalan, M.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-18-3095-2014

Articles | Volume 18, issue 8

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-18-3095-2014

© Author(s) 2014. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-18-3095-2014

© Author(s) 2014. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 18, issue 8

Research article

|

20 Aug 2014

Research article |

| 20 Aug 2014

Using similarity of soil texture and hydroclimate to enhance soil moisture estimation

E. J. Coopersmith, B. S. Minsker, and M. Sivapalan

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Final revised paper (published on 20 Aug 2014)
Preprint (discussion started on 25 Feb 2014)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC C658: 'Review of hess-2014-21: Using hydro-climatic and edaphic similarity to enhance soil moisture prediction by E.J. Coopersmith, B.S. Minsker, and M. Sivapalan', Christa Peters-Lidard, 26 Mar 2014
- AC C880: 'Response to Reviewer #1', Evan Coopersmith, 09 Apr 2014
RC C743: 'Coopersmith et al concerns', Anonymous Referee #2, 01 Apr 2014
- AC C900: 'Response to Reviewer #2', Evan Coopersmith, 11 Apr 2014
RC C822: 'Review of „ Using hydro-climatic and edaphic similarity to enhance soil moisture prediction “ by E. J. Coopersmith, B. S. Minsker, and M. Sivapalan', Heye Bogena, 07 Apr 2014
- AC C1135: 'Response to Reviewer #3', Evan Coopersmith, 25 Apr 2014
RC C897: 'Review of Coopersmith et al. "Using hydro-climatic and edaphic similarity to enhance soil moisture prediction"', Anonymous Referee #4, 11 Apr 2014
- AC C1037: 'Response to reviewer #4', Evan Coopersmith, 21 Apr 2014

Peer-review completion

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

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (14 May 2014) by Nunzio Romano

AR by Evan Coopersmith on behalf of the Authors (20 May 2014) Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (01 Jun 2014) by Nunzio Romano

RR by Heye Bogena (10 Jun 2014)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Rereview of „ Using hydro-climatic and edaphic similarity to enhance soil moisture prediction “ by E. J. Coopersmith, B. S. Minsker, and M. Sivapalan

The authors have extensively reworked their manuscript and considered most of my comments. I have listed some minor remaining issues which should be considered. Therefore I can recommend the publication of this work after minor revision.

General comment:
One of my former comments was related to the negative effects of the machine learning code, which was responded by the authors as follows: “Any corrective algorithm will, over thousands of validation points, push the estimate away from the observed value in some cases.”
This, however, somewhat extenuates the situation. For instance it leaves out the fact that especially during dry periods the model systematically overestimates soil moisture (see Figure 5). Although the performance analysis demonstrates the overall increase in model performance, the authors should be more critically with the application of MLC. The authors have to be objective and not to sell MLC like a panacea (I am sorry for being so persistent).

Specific comments:
While screening the MS I found several typos (see below), and sure that I have overlooked many more. I have also indicated some additional specific comments:

L83-85: Please delete “ionic chemistry, CO2 concentrations, solute transport data”. This information is not meant to attempt to improve predictions of water fluxes in HYDRUS.

L93: Change into “Pan et al. (2003) and Pan (2012)”

L116: Change into “used”

L176: Citation year is missing

L386: Change “to” into “do”

L534: The benefit of this work for SMAP Cal/Val activities is still too vague. Clearly, the results of this study are not “measurements” but model outputs and therefore represent the real soil moisture to a lesser degree than in-situ measurements. Unless the benefit of this study for SMAP Cal/Val cannot be clearly demonstrated, this chapter must to be omitted.

Figures

Figure 3-6: Axis labels are much too small.

Figure 7-9: x-axis labels should be always at the bottom

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RR by Anonymous Referee #5 (25 Jun 2014)

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (Editor review) (29 Jun 2014) by Nunzio Romano

AR by Evan Coopersmith on behalf of the Authors (07 Jul 2014) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (12 Jul 2014) by Nunzio Romano

AR by Evan Coopersmith on behalf of the Authors (14 Jul 2014)