Can spatial statistical river temperature models be transferred between catchments?

Jackson, Faye L.; Fryer, Robert J.; Hannah, David M.; Malcolm, Iain A.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-21-4727-2017

Articles | Volume 21, issue 9

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-21-4727-2017

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-21-4727-2017

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

Articles | Volume 21, issue 9

Research article

|

21 Sep 2017

Research article |

| 21 Sep 2017

Can spatial statistical river temperature models be transferred between catchments?

Faye L. Jackson, Robert J. Fryer, David M. Hannah, and Iain A. Malcolm

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Final revised paper (published on 21 Sep 2017)
Preprint (discussion started on 14 Feb 2017)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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RC1: 'Water temperature model transferability', Anonymous Referee #1, 06 Mar 2017
RC2: 'Review of manuscript by Jackson et al.', Anonymous Referee #2, 06 Mar 2017
AC1: 'Response to referees comments', Faye Jackson, 10 Mar 2017
RC3: 'Can river temperature models be transferred between catchments? by F. L. Jackson et al.', Anonymous Referee #3, 15 Mar 2017
RC4: 'Review - comments on Jackson et al', Anonymous Referee #4, 10 Apr 2017

Peer-review completion

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

ED: Publish subject to revisions (further review by Editor and Referees) (18 Apr 2017) by Markus Hrachowitz

AR by Faye Jackson on behalf of the Authors (09 Jun 2017) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish subject to revisions (further review by Editor and Referees) (14 Jun 2017) by Markus Hrachowitz

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (13 Jul 2017) by Markus Hrachowitz

RR by Anonymous Referee #4 (07 Aug 2017)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Review of “Can river temperature models be transferred between catchments?” by Faye L. Jackson et al.
Anonymous Referee #4

I’ve read the revision by Jackson and colleagues and think it’s improved over the previous draft. Overall, I’m left with the impression that the models transferred surprisingly well (with the exception of Bladnoch) despite many things changing to make the transfer process less consistent than it would have to be. For example, each model had a different set of covariates, use of a RNS varied, and functional relationships estimated from GAMs would be somewhat idiosyncratic to individual catchments. If these factors had been held constant and linear models used instead of GAMs, transferability would probably increase further.

One point of concern I do have is the conclusion drawn regarding the poor transferability of the air temperature relationship. Examination of the data plot for Bladnoch in Figure 3d suggests the two temperature observations with the largest catchment area (& lowest elevation, warmest air temperature?) were so cold that they resulted in the GAM relationship being strongly nonlinear. Figure 2 also describes the negative relationship between air temp and stream temp of -0.22 in this catchment (difficult to see in the scatterplot). Because this is also a small dataset of n = 19, the estimated relationships are easily affected by individual observations, so it’s important to know what’s going on at those two sites. Perhaps there were local inputs of coldwater springs, or a deep reservoir, or other factor creating a local temperature anomaly? Regardless, the authors should be careful about drawing general conclusions about this portion of the analysis as two observations may be driving it.

Another point that warrants mention is that the way air temperature is used to explain variation in this model, it’s representing a spatially static landscape pattern rather than something that’s temporally dynamic (based on the description in Table 1). That distinction is important because different processes are involved and several of the studies and models cited by the authors are not using air temperature to represent a spatial pattern, but temporal dynamics instead.

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RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (07 Aug 2017)

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (further review by Editor) (15 Aug 2017) by Markus Hrachowitz

AR by Faye Jackson on behalf of the Authors (18 Aug 2017) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (21 Aug 2017) by Markus Hrachowitz

AR by Faye Jackson on behalf of the Authors (21 Aug 2017)

Short summary

River temperature (T_w) is important to fish populations, but one cannot monitor everywhere. Thus, models are used to predict T_w, sometimes in rivers with no data. To date, the accuracy of these predictions has not been determined. We found that models including landscape predictors (e.g. altitude, tree cover) could describe spatial patterns in T_w in other rivers better than those including air temperature. Such findings are critical for developing T_w models that have management application.