Hydrological characterization of cave drip waters in a porous limestone: Golgotha Cave, Western Australia

Mahmud, Kashif; Mariethoz, Gregoire; Baker, Andy; Treble, Pauline C.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-977-2018

Articles | Volume 22, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-977-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-977-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 22, issue 2

Research article

|

06 Feb 2018

Research article |

| 06 Feb 2018

Hydrological characterization of cave drip waters in a porous limestone: Golgotha Cave, Western Australia

Kashif Mahmud, Gregoire Mariethoz, Andy Baker, and Pauline C. Treble

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Final revised paper (published on 06 Feb 2018)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 06 Jun 2017)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Referee comment', Anonymous Referee #1, 06 Jul 2017
RC2: 'Review of Mahmud et al., 2017', Anonymous Referee #2, 10 Jul 2017
AC1: 'Reply to reviewers comments', Kashif Mahmud, 29 Aug 2017

Peer-review completion

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

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (further review by Editor and Referees) (08 Sep 2017) by Alberto Guadagnini

AR by Kashif Mahmud on behalf of the Authors (29 Oct 2017) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (05 Nov 2017) by Alberto Guadagnini

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (21 Nov 2017)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

21/11/2017

Review of revision for
Hydrological characterization of cave drip waters in a porous
limestone: Golgotha Cave, Western Australia, by Mahmud et al.

Recommendation – further (minor?) revisions
I must admit, I havn’t gone over the revision as thoroughly as in the first round. Generally the authors followed the main theme of changes that were required and elaborated on the new methods and results (to lesser extent) rather than the old work. Nevertheless, I still have some troubling issues that must be corrected before it could published in HESS.
1) I counted 26 references in the text to the single paper Mahmud et al., 2016. So as publishing the same figures was dealt with, the continuous citing of the same work again and again gives the feeling not much is added in this work. This number of citation of the previous study should be reduced significantly (by about 2/3), talk less about previous results.
2) There is a discrepancy in the coefficient of variation values between Figure 2 , Figure 4.
I don’t think you have coefficient of variation of 10^4-10^5 like it looks in figure 2. In Figure 4 the highest is 100 (probably in % should be noted on axis title).
3) The drip data shown in histogram does not show any trend, and the 4 classes are generally distinct by discharge and the temporal statistics play a secondary role. The auto-correlation figure which was in the original manuscript opens the eye of the reader to some temporal statistics. The authors decided to move it to supplemental material, I think it should be in the main text of the manuscript as it is more informative than the MDS and clustering analysis.
4) The authors give a wrong reference to Kurtzman et al., 2009. The following is the correct one:
Daniel Kurtzman, Joseph A. El Azzi, F. Jerry Lucia, Jerome Bellian, Christopher Zahm, Xavier Janson; Improving fractured carbonate-reservoir characterization with remote sensing of beds, fractures, and vugs. Geosphere ; 5 (2): 126–139. doi: https://doi.org/10.1130/GES00205.1

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RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (08 Dec 2017)

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (09 Dec 2017) by Alberto Guadagnini

AR by Kashif Mahmud on behalf of the Authors (19 Dec 2017) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (28 Dec 2017) by Alberto Guadagnini

AR by Kashif Mahmud on behalf of the Authors (02 Jan 2018)

Short summary

This study explores the relationship between drip water and rainfall in a SW Australian karst, where both intra- and interannual hydrological variations are strongly controlled by seasonal variations in recharge. The hydrological behavior of cave drips is examined at daily resolution with respect to mean discharge and the flow variation. We demonstrate that the analysis of the time series produced by cave drip loggers generates useful hydrogeological information that can be applied generally.