Quantification of the contribution of the Beauce groundwater aquifer to the discharge of the Loire River using thermal infrared satellite imaging

Lalot, E.; Curie, F.; Wawrzyniak, V.; Baratelli, F.; Schomburgk, S.; Flipo, N.; Piegay, H.; Moatar, F.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-19-4479-2015

Articles | Volume 19, issue 11

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-19-4479-2015

© Author(s) 2015. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-19-4479-2015

© Author(s) 2015. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 19, issue 11

Research article

|

09 Nov 2015

Research article |

| 09 Nov 2015

Quantification of the contribution of the Beauce groundwater aquifer to the discharge of the Loire River using thermal infrared satellite imaging

E. Lalot, F. Curie, V. Wawrzyniak, F. Baratelli, S. Schomburgk, N. Flipo, H. Piegay, and F. Moatar

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Final revised paper (published on 09 Nov 2015)
Preprint (discussion started on 16 Feb 2015)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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RC C670: 'Comments on “Quantification of the Beauce’s Groundwater Contribution to the Loire River Discharge Using Satellite Infrared Imagery”', Anonymous Referee #1, 24 Mar 2015
RC C872: 'Comments on "Quantification of the Beauce’s groundwater contribution to the Loire River discharge using satellite infrared imagery"', Anonymous Referee #2, 03 Apr 2015
AC C1449: 'Author comments', eric lalot, 12 May 2015

Peer-review completion

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

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (24 May 2015) by Michael Gooseff

AR by eric lalot on behalf of the Authors (24 Jun 2015) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (24 Jun 2015) by Michael Gooseff

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (11 Jul 2015)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

General comments

This is an interesting paper and I think that it sets a nice precedent for using Landsat imagery to explore water temperature in rivers over long distances. The authors have addressed my main concerns. However, there are still many areas needing improvement, mainly for clarity so that the reader does not have to work so hard to understand the text, figures, and tables. It is clear that the authors have worked hard to improve the English, but additional help from a scientific editor is needed.

Specific comments

Title: May not need to have "Groundwater". Just look at another published paper to see how it should be written and capitalized. I suggest that you remove "Groundwater".

Line 20: Capitalization of "River".

Lines 25 and 28: Writing style is too conversational (see "drop of around" and "in line"); this is fine in speak but is not precise enough for scientific writing.

Line 50: May want to cite http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hyp.10506/abstract
"Rethinking the longitudinal stream temperature paradigm: region-wide comparison of thermal infrared imagery reveals unexpected complexity of river temperatures".

Line 51: Note that 3 pixels across the stream width is the absolute minimum. Realistically, it should be greater than 5 pixels. I think that Torgersen et al. (2001) recommended 10 pixels in width based on their quantitative analysis. It would be appropriate here and/or in the discussion to stress that 3 pixels in width is the absolute minimum and other papers have recommended a greater number of pixels across the stream width.

Line 93: Again, 3 pixels across the stream in most cases is not sufficient. Thus, to call it a "threshold" is not appropriate. The "threshold" should be "> 3 pixels" in order to have any confidence in the temperature measurements. Furthermore, this study was not designed to rigorously test the "3 pixel" recommendation. In order to do that, you would need more locations in the stream where you measured kinetic water temperature. Thus, it is important to not make strong statements about 3 pixels being sufficient.

Line 136: It is unusual to start a heading with "From". This heading is confusing.

Line 170: I don't understand the use of "exploited" here.

Line 179: The punctuation of this heading is confusing. In fact, the heading itself is difficult to understand.

Line 220: The two parts of this heading are redundant.

Line 259: Again, this kind of punctuation for a heading is confusing.

Line 319: Need to refer to a figure or figures. Do not break the paragraph after this sentence.

Line 341: Again, this is an awkward way to write and punctuate a heading.

Line 397: Check spelling.

Line 406: Specify the seasons during which it will be positive or negative.

Line 411: Need to clarify this comment. Help the reader by stating whether the in situ temperature was higher or lower than the TIR temperature and why.

Line 434: This paragraph is too long. Divide it into two paragraphs for clarity.

Line 523: There is no need to capitalize this words in this manner. Be consistent throughout the manuscript.

Table 2: The last column needs a heading.

Table 3: The columns are not labeled correctly. Please look at examples of tables in scientific journals. Also, I wouldn't use the Greek symbol. If you label the columns correctly, you wouldn't need to use the symbol, which is awkward.

Figure 2: It would be helpful in the caption to state that the in situ measurements were at two different sites along the same river. Why do you have the numbers 1-7 at the top of this figure? It is clear that these are different dates. Also, the date formats are confusing in the caption and the figure. Please be consistent.

Figure 3: The way this caption is written, it is not clear what time of year the data were collected. The whole caption is redundant and very poorly worded. Please look at other scientific papers for examples of how captions should be worded for clarity. Also, I still find it quite awkward to have such long axis labels. This is not customary in scientific papers. I defer to the editor on this issue of style.

All figures: None of your figure axes have ticks. Please add ticks as appropriate for graphs in scientific journals.

Figure 4: I think that your x-axis label should be "River kilometer (km)" not in plural form. The same goes for all of your figures with river kilometer on the x-axis.

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RR by Anonymous Referee #3 (27 Jul 2015)

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (Editor review) (28 Jul 2015) by Michael Gooseff

AR by eric lalot on behalf of the Authors (14 Aug 2015) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (08 Sep 2015) by Michael Gooseff

AR by eric lalot on behalf of the Authors (16 Sep 2015)

Short summary

This work shows that satellite thermal infrared images (LANDSAT) can be used to locate and quantify groundwater discharge into a large river (Loire River, France - 100 to 300 m wide). Groundwater discharge rate is found to be highly variable with time and space and maximum during flow recession periods and in winter. The main identified groundwater discharge area into the Loire River corresponds to a known discharge area of the Beauce aquifer.