Spatial and temporal variation in river corridor exchange across a 5th-order mountain stream network

Ward, Adam S.; Wondzell, Steven M.; Schmadel, Noah M.; Herzog, Skuyler; Zarnetske, Jay P.; Baranov, Viktor; Blaen, Phillip J.; Brekenfeld, Nicolai; Chu, Rosalie; Derelle, Romain; Drummond, Jennifer; Fleckenstein, Jan H.; Garayburu-Caruso, Vanessa; Graham, Emily; Hannah, David; Harman, Ciaran J.; Hixson, Jase; Knapp, Julia L. A.; Krause, Stefan; Kurz, Marie J.; Lewandowski, Jörg; Li, Angang; Martí, Eugènia; Miller, Melinda; Milner, Alexander M.; Neil, Kerry; Orsini, Luisa; Packman, Aaron I.; Plont, Stephen; Renteria, Lupita; Roche, Kevin; Royer, Todd; Segura, Catalina; Stegen, James; Toyoda, Jason; Hager, Jacqueline; Wisnoski, Nathan I.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-23-5199-2019

Articles | Volume 23, issue 12

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-23-5199-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

Linking landscape organisation and hydrological functioning:...

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-23-5199-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 23, issue 12

Research article

|

20 Dec 2019

Research article |

| 20 Dec 2019

Spatial and temporal variation in river corridor exchange across a 5th-order mountain stream network

Adam S. Ward, Steven M. Wondzell, Noah M. Schmadel, Skuyler Herzog, Jay P. Zarnetske, Viktor Baranov, Phillip J. Blaen, Nicolai Brekenfeld, Rosalie Chu, Romain Derelle, Jennifer Drummond, Jan H. Fleckenstein, Vanessa Garayburu-Caruso, Emily Graham, David Hannah, Ciaran J. Harman, Jase Hixson, Julia L. A. Knapp, Stefan Krause, Marie J. Kurz, Jörg Lewandowski, Angang Li, Eugènia Martí, Melinda Miller, Alexander M. Milner, Kerry Neil, Luisa Orsini, Aaron I. Packman, Stephen Plont, Lupita Renteria, Kevin Roche, Todd Royer, Catalina Segura, James Stegen, Jason Toyoda, Jacqueline Hager, and Nathan I. Wisnoski

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Final revised paper (published on 20 Dec 2019)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 23 Apr 2019)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC1: 'review of hess-2019-108', Matt Cohen, 03 Jun 2019
- AC1: 'Authors response to reviews', Adam Ward, 21 Aug 2019
RC2: 'Reviewer Comment', Anonymous Referee #2, 18 Jun 2019
- AC1: 'Authors response to reviews', Adam Ward, 21 Aug 2019

Peer-review completion

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

ED: Publish subject to revisions (further review by editor and referees) (26 Aug 2019) by Loes van Schaik

AR by Adam Ward on behalf of the Authors (26 Aug 2019) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (28 Aug 2019) by Loes van Schaik

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (10 Oct 2019)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Ward et al., have compiled a uniquely thorough dataset and compiled a number of analyses to better explain the effect of river corridor exchange across a range of scales up to the river network scale and specifically to test Wondzell’s conceptual model. The work shows systematic changes in a variety of metrics moving downstream through the watershed. Interestingly, the study found an increase in K in the downstream direction, which defied initial expectations. The work also verified that discharge is an inappropriate scaling metric for prediction of river corridor exchange because it is dependent on a variety of forcing mechanisms operating across a range of scales. This paper will be a significant contribution to the field once it is in print.

The authors have made revisions to the manuscript based on comments from a fellow reviewer and myself. I am generally happy with their responses and how the edits addressed the comments, but have a few remaining concerns--most of which are minor. I think they would all help improve the paper and broaden its accessibility for those who are not engaged in this immediate field.

My largest remaining concern is the justification for the large number of authors included on this paper. Most top-tier journals (e.g. Science and Nature, as well as many others) have begun to require a thorough justification for the inclusion of each author that includes some description of how each author contributed. However this goal is met, I think it worthwhile to have something more descriptive than the current three-line ‘author contribution’ section, which only mentions two of the 37 authors. Generally, my understanding of authorship is that each author has contributed significantly to at least two of the four tiers of authorship – funding, writing, conception, work. I believe the authors that they have all met this requirement, but I think it is generally worthwhile to explicitly describe the ways in which each contributed, especially when so many authors are included and when the alphabetical listing confuses the amount of contribution that each made. I previously suggested the model of Clement (2014) to show how justification could be demonstrated, but additional models exist. If length is a concern, justification could be included in the supplement.

Minor comments:
Page:line
8:40 I appreciate how the authors presented their justification for basing field-estimation of mixing lengths based on experience, rather than an empirical estimate. I think it would be helpful to report the mixing lengths that were actually used for each of the streams, perhaps only as a scatter plot showing q vs mixing length. This is a helpful metric to show to readers less-familiar with this field.
10-11:section 2.2. This section is very helpful for putting the authors goals and the limitations of this approach in perspective.
12:1 Table is cut-off and I could not evaluate fully, but I think this is a worthwhile addition in response to one of the reviewer comments. This summary of “key metrics” and approaches helps with clarity of purpose. The included subset of abbreviations are helpful for the reader to decipher the large number of terms included in this paper. That said, I still find it difficult to wade through the large number of terms included in the equations of this paper and think a single table of variable definitions would be very useful--similar to that included in engineering-focused journals. Someone more familiar with the field will find this less-difficult than I did, most likely, however, the task of sorting through so many equations across so many pages of text to identify the meaning of each term and equation is a barrier for entry for those less familiar with this topic.
14:20 I think it might be easier to follow notation if the normalized breakthrough curve (concentration) notation were also capitalized (‘c’ --> ’C’) as the other concentration notations are.
20:20 I wonder why the references to panels in figure 3 are out-of-order.
23:20/Figure 4 It would be helpful to include r2 values on the plots, especially since they’re referenced here.
27:Figure 5 I still disagree that adding lines of best fit on this plot is useful or appropriate. I think they imply trends that I do not see in the data—especially in panel A. I think the authors should at least include an r2 value to emphasize the poor fit.
28:28, a reference back to figure 3 would be helpful here
27:7 & 30:Fig. 6. I think it would be helpful to walk the reader through panels b-f of figure 6. I’m not sure the points that are being made in the figure besides that there’s some goodness of fit.

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ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (15 Oct 2019) by Loes van Schaik

AR by Adam Ward on behalf of the Authors (21 Oct 2019) Author's response Manuscript

Short summary

The movement of water and solutes between streams and their shallow, connected subsurface is important to many ecosystem functions. These exchanges are widely expected to vary with stream flow across space and time, but these assumptions are seldom tested across basin scales. We completed more than 60 experiments across a 5th-order river basin to document these changes, finding patterns in space but not time. We conclude space-for-time and time-for-space substitutions are not good assumptions.