Developing a representative snow-monitoring network in a forested mountain watershed

Gleason, Kelly E.; Nolin, Anne W.; Roth, Travis R.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-21-1137-2017

Articles | Volume 21, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-21-1137-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-21-1137-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 21, issue 2

Research article

|

23 Feb 2017

Research article |

| 23 Feb 2017

Developing a representative snow-monitoring network in a forested mountain watershed

Kelly E. Gleason, Anne W. Nolin, and Travis R. Roth

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Final revised paper (published on 23 Feb 2017)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 05 Jul 2016)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC1: 'doi:10.5194/hess-2016-317 Developing a representative snow monitoring network in a forested mountain watershed. Kelly E. Gleason, Anne W. Nolin, and Travis R. Roth', Anonymous Referee #1, 07 Aug 2016
- AC1: 'Responses to Reviewer 1 Comments', Kelly Gleason, 05 Nov 2016
RC2: 'Review Gleason et al. Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. Discuss., doi:10.5194/hess-2016-31 Developing a representative snow monitoring network in a forested mountain watershed', Anonymous Referee #2, 15 Sep 2016
- AC2: 'Responses to Reviewer 2 Comments', Kelly Gleason, 05 Nov 2016
RC3: 'Review of Gleason et al.', Anonymous Referee #3, 27 Sep 2016
- AC3: 'Responses to Reviewer 3 Comments', Kelly Gleason, 05 Nov 2016

Peer-review completion

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

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (further review by Editor and Referees) (07 Nov 2016) by Hannah Cloke

AR by Kelly Gleason on behalf of the Authors (14 Nov 2016) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (15 Nov 2016) by Hannah Cloke

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (21 Dec 2016)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

doi:10.5194/hess-2016-317

Developing a representative snow monitoring network in a forested mountain watershed

Kelly E. Gleason, Anne W. Nolin, and Travis R. Roth

I would like to thank the authors for making substantive revisions to their original manuscript. It is a much more focused paper as a result, which was very necessary after my original appraisal. In particular, omitting the SNOTEL climate change analysis is a sensible refinement, as well as focusing on peak SWE rather than a rule of thumb, but somewhat arbitrary, 1 April SWE value. Additionally using three years of data, rather than just 2009 is a significant improvement. To summarize, I am happy with all the responses made to my original review. However, there are two comments that came out of the response letter which I would like to see included. They are minor, but I think will help future readers of this paper:

1. Could brief information be given on the precipitation partitioning used by Sproles et al. (2013)? While I understand the authors desire for brevity in this section, so they can just get on with using these data, brief knowledge of the changes made to precipitation would provide critical added value to those who only read this paper.

2. Two comments made in the response letter were very helpful to my understanding of the scope of this paper: “We don’t expect the BRT model to predict actual SWE volume on the landscape, but to predict the spatial distribution of similar SWE characteristics across the landscape, and we believe we have achieved this goal in this revised manuscript.” and “We did not expect to advance scientific knowledge, but to provide an objective technique for distributing point based monitoring locations which represent the spatial variability across the watershed.” Neither statement made its way as explicitly into the paper as it was made in the response letter. To focus the reader on the scope of this work, I would like to see the main thrust of both of these statements added to the final paragraph of the introduction. That way the limitations to the goals of this study (not predicting SWE volume, but instead spatial characteristics of SWE; the novelty is through application of a method rather than any revolutionary methodological developments) would be clear.

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RR by Anonymous Referee #3 (22 Dec 2016)

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (further review by Editor) (06 Jan 2017) by Hannah Cloke

AR by Kelly Gleason on behalf of the Authors (16 Jan 2017) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (19 Jan 2017) by Hannah Cloke

Short summary

We present a coupled modeling approach used to objectively identify representative snow-monitoring locations in a forested watershed in the western Oregon Cascades mountain range. The resultant Forest Elevational Snow Transect (ForEST) represents combinations of forested and open land cover types at low, mid-, and high elevations.