Recession analysis revisited: impacts of climate on parameter estimation

Jachens, Elizabeth R.; Rupp, David E.; Roques, Clément; Selker, John S.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-24-1159-2020

Articles | Volume 24, issue 3

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-24-1159-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-24-1159-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 24, issue 3

Research article

|

11 Mar 2020

Research article |

| 11 Mar 2020

Recession analysis revisited: impacts of climate on parameter estimation

Elizabeth R. Jachens, David E. Rupp, Clément Roques, and John S. Selker

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Final revised paper (published on 11 Mar 2020)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 04 Jun 2019)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Review I', Michael Stoelzle, 28 Jun 2019
- AC1: 'Author Response to Reviewer 1', Elizabeth R. Jachens, 05 Sep 2019
RC2: 'REVIEW of the paper, “Recession analysis 42 years later -work yet to be done” (Jachens et al.)', Anonymous Referee #2, 12 Jul 2019
- AC2: 'Author Response to Reviewer 2', Elizabeth R. Jachens, 05 Sep 2019

Peer-review completion

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

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (further review by editor and referees) (17 Sep 2019) by Daniel Viviroli

AR by Elizabeth R. Jachens on behalf of the Authors (15 Oct 2019) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (28 Oct 2019) by Daniel Viviroli

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (07 Jan 2020)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

SECOND REVIEW of the paper now titled, "Recession analysis revisited: impacts of climate on parameter estimation" (Jachens et al.)

Submitted for possible publication in HESS.

-------------Overview
I appreciate the new analyses and additional explanations the authors have included in this revised manuscript. Many of my previous issues with the manuscript still stand, especially regarding the physicality of Cases 2 and 3. However, I won’t revisit them here.

I have one general comment regarding Cases 2 and 3. The authors appeal to Dooge [1973] and subsequent work on the IUH. Maybe I need to refamiliarize myself with that theory, but I don’t think an IUH exists for a nonlinear reservoir; so, this doesn’t seem like an appropriate justification for the approach.

--------Comments
Page 11, Line 20: I would say that the first example is maybe less “patently unrealistic” than the second in that there are definite physical analogues that might be compared to hillslopes, and perhaps constructed in the lab.

Page 11, Line 20: The authors have described a spectrum with two end-members: one is a single bucket with nonlinear drainage properties, the other is a watershed where the number of buckets equals the number of recharge events. I don't know how these represent two extreme members along some continuous axis of model complexity. As a simple example, where would a watershed modeled as two, parallel linear reservoirs fit on this spectrum?

Page 11, Line 21: This is a bit of a strawman comparison; of course the latter produces results more like what is observed because the latter of your two end-members is the only one that can produce variability in recession parameters. Perhaps a more “fair” competition would be to compare the author’s Case3 to a parallel reservoirs model, which would allow variation in recession parameters.

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (21 Jan 2020) by Daniel Viviroli

AR by Elizabeth R. Jachens on behalf of the Authors (01 Feb 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (03 Feb 2020) by Daniel Viviroli

AR by Elizabeth R. Jachens on behalf of the Authors (03 Feb 2020) Manuscript

Short summary

Recession analysis uses the receding streamflow following precipitation events to estimate watershed-average properties. Two methods for recession analysis use recession events individually or all events collectively. Using synthetic case studies, this paper shows that analyzing recessions collectively produces flawed interpretations. Moving forward, recession analysis using individual recessions should be used to describe the average and variability of watershed behavior.