Thank you for your responses to the reviewers' comments and suggestions. Many of the responses indicated that the advice would be incorporated as revisions into the manuscript, so I now invite you to submit the revised version.

Dear authors,
Thank you for your efforts to respond to and address the reviewer comments. The paper has been improved as a result and is nearly ready for final publication. I have a few minor comments that can be addressed fairly easily.
P13, L13: the word "hydrological" is written twice.
P17, L10: Why is Fig. 2 referred to here? Should this be Fig. 9?
P16-17 and Fig. 9: It would be helpful to explain why the adjusted precipitation data (https://www.canada.ca/en/environment-climate-change/services/climate-change/science-research-data/climate-trends-variability/adjusted-homogenized-canadian-data/precipitation.html) for Ft. Simpson were not used. These data do show an increasing trend in total annual precipitation. How can we be sure that the observed increase in basin discharge is not at least partly due to an increase in precipitation?
Fig. 8: What is pre-1996 R.R. and what is the shaded area on the graph meant to represent? This is described in Haynes et al. (2018), but should be explained here as well for clarity.
P20, L3: Are the units correct? (km km^-1 – if this is total length divided by basin area, should it be km km^-2?)
Section 8: My only other comment is that while it is helpful to have added Section 8 on “ongoing and future studies”, this section mostly reads as though it is a continuation of the process descriptions on hydrological functioning and future system trajectory, mainly belonging in sections 3, 4, and 5. There is a need here, as the reviewers were calling for, to include a summary of gaps, outstanding research questions and needs, and primary requirements for future work. For instance, presently there is only this single sentence: “The rates and patterns of this regeneration, the environmental processes and feedbacks affecting it, and its hydrological implications are areas requiring further study.”