Dominant effect of increasing forest biomass on evapotranspiration: interpretations of movement in Budyko space

Jaramillo, Fernando; Cory, Neil; Arheimer, Berit; Laudon, Hjalmar; van der Velde, Ype; Hasper, Thomas B.; Teutschbein, Claudia; Uddling, Johan

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-567-2018

Articles | Volume 22, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-567-2018

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-567-2018

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

Articles | Volume 22, issue 1

Research article

|

23 Jan 2018

Research article |

| 23 Jan 2018

Dominant effect of increasing forest biomass on evapotranspiration: interpretations of movement in Budyko space

Fernando Jaramillo, Neil Cory, Berit Arheimer, Hjalmar Laudon, Ype van der Velde, Thomas B. Hasper, Claudia Teutschbein, and Johan Uddling

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Final revised paper (published on 23 Jan 2018)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 22 Jun 2017)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC1: 'HESS-2017-347', Anonymous Referee #1, 17 Jul 2017
- AC1: 'Response to reviewer 1', Fernando Jaramillo, 08 Aug 2017
RC2: 'Review for Jaramillo et al. HESS-2017-347', Anonymous Referee #2, 18 Jul 2017
- AC2: 'Response to reviewer 2', Fernando Jaramillo, 09 Aug 2017
RC3: 'Several methodological concerns and a request for more detailed analyses', Anonymous Referee #3, 18 Jul 2017
- AC3: 'Response to reviewer 3', Fernando Jaramillo, 09 Aug 2017
RC4: 'Review', Anonymous Referee #4, 19 Jul 2017
- AC4: 'Response to reviewer 4', Fernando Jaramillo, 09 Aug 2017
AC5: 'Final Response', Fernando Jaramillo, 18 Aug 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) (30 Aug 2017) by Sally Thompson

AR by Fernando Jaramillo on behalf of the Authors (09 Oct 2017) Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (17 Oct 2017) by Sally Thompson

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (15 Nov 2017)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The authors gave a thorough revision in response to the previous reviewer comments. I have a few additional comments on the revised version:

With regard to R1, Q3, I still think there is a minor contradiction between the introduction (P2 L29-38) and the discussion (Section 4.2).

1. In the introduction, the authors present the stomatal water-saving response as a motivating hypothesis for their work and write “…it is indeed possible that there exists a water saving response…” in their reply. Then, in section 4.2, the authors use the same references to support their conclusion of a negligible water-saving response.

2. After reading the authors’ references, my interpretation of the paragraph on P2 L29-38 is that no water-saving response is to be expected in this region for these species. The studies referenced by the authors in the introduction used a 90-100% increase in CO2 concentration as compared to only a 27% actual increase over the period of the present study. The largest response of these studies was found by Rey and Jarvis (1998) – a 21% decrease in stomatal conductance for Silver Birch with a 100% increase of CO2 concentration. Silver Birch on average make up less than 5% of the standing volume in the studied catchments. Therefore, a first guess would suggest a negligible decrease in stomatal conductance in the studied catchments.

3. My suggestion would be to revise the abstract, introduction, and section 4.2 to be clear that the water-saving response is an unlikely outcome for conifer-dominated forests that have experienced a CO2 increase from 315 to 400 ppm. This would help the authors emphasize the more compelling motivation for their work, which is long-term water balance changes in catchments that have been managed for forestry, as well as their positive results.

Secondly, the end of the paragraph in section 4.3 is difficult to follow:

1. The authors reference a study (Zhang et al. 2015) and then state that its results do not apply to Swedish forests – I’d recommend deleting the reference or restating in a way that emphasizes its relevance to your study. It may not be needed given that Laudon et al. (2004, 2007) supports your point by itself.

2. On line 7, the authors state that the snow fraction may explain a small variance of (E/P)_r, but there is no reference to data that supports this statement.

3. How is spring snow related to the growing season length?

Lastly, Figure 7 needs y-axis labels. Also, it would help to reference panel 7c in the text where it is discussed (Page 7, Line 8).

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RR by Anonymous Referee #3 (17 Nov 2017)

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (17 Nov 2017) by Sally Thompson

AR by Fernando Jaramillo on behalf of the Authors (21 Nov 2017) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (05 Dec 2017) by Sally Thompson

AR by Fernando Jaramillo on behalf of the Authors (07 Dec 2017)

Short summary

Which is the dominant effect on evapotranspiration in northern forests, an increase by recent forests expansion or a decrease by the water use response due to increasing CO₂ concentrations? We determined the dominant effect during the period 1961–2012 in 65 Swedish basins. We used the Budyko framework to study the hydroclimatic movements in Budyko space. Our findings suggest that forest expansion is the dominant driver of long-term and large-scale evapotranspiration changes.