Seasonal shifts in export of DOC and nutrients from burned and unburned peatland-rich catchments, Northwest Territories,  Canada

Burd, Katheryn; Tank, Suzanne E.; Dion, Nicole; Quinton, William L.; Spence, Christopher; Tanentzap, Andrew J.; Olefeldt, David

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-4455-2018

Articles | Volume 22, issue 8

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-4455-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

Understanding and predicting Earth system and hydrological...

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-4455-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 22, issue 8

Research article

|

22 Aug 2018

Research article |

| 22 Aug 2018

Seasonal shifts in export of DOC and nutrients from burned and unburned peatland-rich catchments, Northwest Territories, Canada

Katheryn Burd, Suzanne E. Tank, Nicole Dion, William L. Quinton, Christopher Spence, Andrew J. Tanentzap, and David Olefeldt

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Final revised paper (published on 22 Aug 2018)
Preprint (discussion started on 15 May 2018)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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RC1: 'review', Anonymous Referee #1, 13 Jun 2018
- AC1: 'Response to Referee', David Olefeldt, 12 Jul 2018
RC2: 'RC 2', Anonymous Referee #2, 20 Jun 2018
- AC2: 'Response to Referee', David Olefeldt, 12 Jul 2018

Peer-review completion

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

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (further review by editor) (17 Jul 2018) by Sean Carey

AR by David Olefeldt on behalf of the Authors (18 Jul 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (31 Jul 2018) by Sean Carey

Dear Authors,

I would like to thank you for this important contribution to the special issue on understanding and predicting Earth system and hydrological change in cold regions. This paper presents important new insight and information regarding the biogeochemistry of two peatland-dominated systems in Canada's Northwest Territories. The blending of high-frequency absorbance data with flow, solute and 14C data is particularly novel and improves upon our conceptual models in this region. In addition, the limited influence of fire on DOC was also an important observation.

In my final review of the manuscript, I have one issue that I believe the authors should reflect on to either temper their statements and/or delete from the manuscript as I do not believe it is of large importance and compared with the other work is overly speculative. Using a relatively weak Q-DOC relationship, historical DOC yield is calculated (1005-2015). On page 14, a value of 2.2+/-0.9 g C m-2 is given and in the discussion (page 21, line 24) this ranges from 0.6-5. While I believe that these are for different periods of the year, my concern is that there is a real possibility (and literature support) to suggest that Q-DOC relationships are not steady and shift with wetness, seasonal delivery of precipitation, etc. The year of the study was comparatively dry in the late season compared to the long-term data which often shows a very wet late summer/fall which would could have large implications on this relationship. The last two sentences in the paragraph beginning on page 21 line 18, particularly the last one regarding the sensitivity of these watersheds compared to other boreal ones, I believe are too strongly stated based on the data here. I would ask the authors to consider my concerns in a final manuscript.

Sean Carey
McMaster University

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AR by David Olefeldt on behalf of the Authors (03 Aug 2018) Author's response Manuscript

Short summary

In this study we investigated whether climate change and wildfires are likely to alter water quality of streams in western boreal Canada, a region that contains large permafrost-affected peatlands. We monitored stream discharge and water quality from early snowmelt to fall in two streams, one of which drained a recently burned landscape. Wildfire increased the stream delivery of phosphorous and possibly increased the release of old natural organic matter previously stored in permafrost soils.