Hydrogeochemical controls on brook trout spawning habitats in a coastal stream

Briggs, Martin A.; Harvey, Judson W.; Hurley, Stephen T.; Rosenberry, Donald O.; McCobb, Timothy; Werkema, Dale; Lane Jr., John W.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-6383-2018

Articles | Volume 22, issue 12

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-6383-2018

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-6383-2018

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

Articles | Volume 22, issue 12

Research article

|

10 Dec 2018

Research article |

| 10 Dec 2018

Hydrogeochemical controls on brook trout spawning habitats in a coastal stream

Martin A. Briggs, Judson W. Harvey, Stephen T. Hurley, Donald O. Rosenberry, Timothy McCobb, Dale Werkema, and John W. Lane Jr.

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Final revised paper (published on 10 Dec 2018)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 18 Jan 2018)
Supplement to the preprint

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Review of Briggs et al. "Working backwards from streambed thermal anomalies..."', Anonymous Referee #1, 17 Feb 2018
- AC1: 'Initial Author Response to Reviewer #1', Martin Briggs, 05 Mar 2018
RC2: 'Review of Briggs et al. Working backwards from streambed thermal anomalies: hydrogeologic controls on preferential brook trout spawning habitat in a coastal stream', Anonymous Referee #2, 19 Feb 2018
- AC2: 'Initial Author Response to Reviewer #2', Martin Briggs, 05 Mar 2018
RC3: 'Review of Manuscript "Working Backwards from Streambed Thermal Anomalies"', Anonymous Referee #3, 13 Mar 2018
- AC3: 'Initial author response to Review #3', Martin Briggs, 15 Mar 2018

Peer-review completion

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

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (further review by editor and referees) (31 Mar 2018) by Alberto Guadagnini

AR by Martin Briggs on behalf of the Authors (11 May 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (04 Jun 2018) by Alberto Guadagnini

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (14 Jul 2018)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

General comments

The authors have addressed my major concerns. This is an excellent, comprehensive study, and the authors should be commended on assembling all the components into a manuscript that will be appreciated by a wide, interdisciplinary audience. I have no further recommendations for major changes. However, I have identified many stylistic issues and minor problems that need to be rectified in the text and especially in the figures. These recommendations and suggestions are listed in the specific comments below.

Specific comments

Line 68: I recommend not capitalizing “Unmanned Aircraft Systems”. Check for other examples throughout the manuscript.

Line 80: Check spelling of “Mathews”.

Line 81: No need to capitalize “Northeastern”.

Line 83: Use “cold-water” as a modifier of “habitat”.

Line 120: Citations should be in chronological order.

Line 152: “PIT” needs to be defined at first mention.

Line 226: The acronym “PIT” without the definition can be used here because it will have been described earlier in the manuscript.

Line 307: Check “pore water were also collected” for subject and verb agreement.

Line 321: Specify the wavelength for the thermal IR camera.

Line 326: Define “SpC” at first mention.

Line 331: No hyphen is needed in “locally-recharged” (https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/6-common-hypercorrections-and-how-to-avoid-them/hyphenating-ly-adverbs). Check entire document for other examples of this kind of incorrect hyphen use (e.g., “ecologically-based”, etc.).

Line 356: The second sentence in paragraph is a typographical error. I suggest that the first sentence be moved to the beginning of the following section titled “Observations regarding repeat spawning locations”.

Line 379: Check “data was”. It should be “data were”.

Results: The authors are consistent in reporting their results in the present tense, but this is awkward to me because the conditions and observations are in the past.

Line 477: “Global Positioning System” does not need to be capitalized.

Line 598: “over 10 yr+” could be written as “> 10 yr”.

Table captions: It is awkward to begin these captions with a number. Also, I found these captions (and those of the figures) to be written in a nonstandard manner that makes it difficult to quickly determine the contents of the table that follows. Other manuscripts by Briggs et al. don’t have this problem, so the lead author can certainly make the necessary changes.

Figure 1: Number in scale bar is too small. No need to write "Legend". Can you use arrows to point to the locations of your sites instead of using purple circles, which obscure the temperature dots? The way the captions is written, it is too difficult to quickly determine what the sites labeled with "GW" mean. Honestly, the caption does an inadequate job of describing what this figure depicts. For example, the first sentence of the caption is a statement of the methods. See other papers written by Briggs et al. for better examples of how captions should be written. These temperature data were from DTS, correct? This needs to be stated in the caption.

Figure 2: Need "MA" on inset map. The numbers in the scale bars are too small. Just draw a simple black bar in a white box to indicate 200 m. This will need to be done in each panel because the scales are different. No need to write "Legend"; make the text larger in the contents. It's still too hard to read. Can you define the purple dots and orange circles in the legend? The transect A-A prime is not mentioned in the caption. Remove it if it is unimportant. It would be helpful to have rectangles on Figure 2a to show the extents of the insets (Figures 2b and 2c). The color scheme is problematic because there is no natural progression of colors. This may seem like a minor point, but it does help the reader when interpreting the range from high to low. Finally, the writing of the caption is awkward and not standard with "Panel c)" written in a grammatically incorrect style. Please other papers by Briggs et al. for correct examples of how captions are written.

Figure 3: See other comments about how captions should be written. Other papers by Briggs et al. have excellent examples of nicely written captions.

Figure 4: This caption is written better, but it will help to use () around the panel letters. Note that a single parenthesis should be used where there is no text to the left (i.e., in a numerical list):

1)
2)
3)

or

a)
b)
c)

Figure 5: Please write captions in a standard manner as is appropriate for a scientific journal. The first line of the caption is not a methodological statement; it should be a concise statement describing the contents of the figure. Also, it would be very helpful to provide a more explicit description of the distance on the x-axis, even if it is approximate. See other comments about how parentheses should be used if they are enclosing parenthetical information.

Figure 6: See comments for other figures on how captions should be written.

Figure 7: This caption is better than the others, but the panel labels need be enclosed in parentheses in the caption.

Figure 8: The caption is poorly written. For example, to begin a caption with "Based on..." not appropriate. There is no reason to provide citations in this caption. Perhaps the authors mistakenly used a rough draft for all of these captions because Briggs et al. in their other papers do a fine job of writing captions. Also, what is the brown arrow in the green area? Can you remove this brown arrow? This figure also needs an arrow showing the direction of stream flow. It's a difficult figure to understand because it's a 2-D graph with a 3-D figure inserted within it. A flow direction arrow over the stream would help.

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RR by Anonymous Referee #3 (31 Jul 2018)

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (07 Aug 2018) by Alberto Guadagnini

AR by Martin Briggs on behalf of the Authors (16 Aug 2018)

ED: Publish as is (24 Aug 2018) by Alberto Guadagnini

AR by Martin Briggs on behalf of the Authors (27 Aug 2018)

Post-review adjustments

AA: Author's adjustment | EA: Editor approval

AA by Martin Briggs on behalf of the Authors (27 Nov 2018) Author's adjustment Manuscript

EA: Adjustments approved (01 Dec 2018) by Alberto Guadagnini

Short summary

Brook trout are known to seek out groundwater-discharge zones for spawning. However, in a groundwater-dominated system, we observed trout using a few locations for repeatedly laying eggs. To improve the management of this cold-water species, we wanted to know why these specific groundwater-discharge zones were desirable. Through a combination of geophysical and chemical measurements, we found that locations where the stream intersects the sandy valley wall create oxygen-rich seepage zones.