On the shape of forward transit time distributions in low-order catchments

Heidbüchel, Ingo; Yang, Jie; Musolff, Andreas; Troch, Peter; Ferré, Ty; Fleckenstein, Jan H.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-24-2895-2020

Articles | Volume 24, issue 6

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-24-2895-2020

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-24-2895-2020

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

Articles | Volume 24, issue 6

Research article

|

03 Jun 2020

Research article |

| 03 Jun 2020

On the shape of forward transit time distributions in low-order catchments

Ingo Heidbüchel, Jie Yang, Andreas Musolff, Peter Troch, Ty Ferré, and Jan H. Fleckenstein

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Final revised paper (published on 03 Jun 2020)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 11 Sep 2019)
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: 'Comments on “On the shape of forward transit time distributions in low-order catchments” by Heidbüchel et al.', Anonymous Referee #1, 02 Oct 2019
- AC1: 'Response to Interactive comment by Anonymous Referee #1', Ingo Heidbüchel, 16 Dec 2019
RC2: 'Review', Anonymous Referee #2, 10 Oct 2019
- AC2: 'Response to Interactive comment by Anonymous Referee #2', Ingo Heidbüchel, 16 Dec 2019
RC3: 'Review of “On the shape of forward transit time distributions in low-order catchments” by Heidbuchel et al.', Anonymous Referee #3, 19 Nov 2019
- AC3: 'Response to Interactive comment by Anonymous Referee #3', Ingo Heidbüchel, 16 Dec 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) (27 Dec 2019) by Nunzio Romano

AR by Ingo Heidbüchel on behalf of the Authors (07 Feb 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (16 Feb 2020) by Nunzio Romano

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (09 Mar 2020)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The Authors have done a commendable job in their revision. I believe that the manuscript has considerably improved and that it is almost ready to be published.

There is just an important issue that is left and that requires to be handled, i.e. the dispersivity employed in the simulations. The value for alphaL is not small, and its justification based on the dataset by Gelhar et al 1992, as well as analyses based on it, is not appropriate. First, Gelhar himself warned against uses of his data to infer macrodispersivity, which unfortunately was done several times in the past. Then, in a recent work (Zech et al, Is unique scaling of aquifer macrodispersivity supported by field data? Water Resources Research, 2015) the whole dataset of Gelhar et al (including data from Schulze-Makuch) was reconsidered and it turned out that most of the data could not be employed for the analysis of macrodispersion, resulting in a lack of trend. Hence, the formula employed by the Authors, although still used and (unfortunately) even recommended by some national agencies, is definitely not correct and cannot be used.

Frankly speaking I don’t think it is appropriate at this stage to run again the simulations with a more realistic value of dispersion, and I would never suggest it. May I suggest instead a simpler way out, i.e. a brief justification saying that the value for “local” dispersivity is not expected to have a significant impact on the TTD, as demonstrated by Fiori and Russo (2008, cited). The reason is that local dispersion is usually negligible compared to the dispersion determined by the spatial distribution of rainfall (coined as “source zone dispersion” in Fiori et al, 2009, cited). This should solve such small issue and let this nice contribution proceed further toward publication.

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RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (11 Mar 2020)

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (17 Mar 2020) by Nunzio Romano

AR by Ingo Heidbüchel on behalf of the Authors (27 Mar 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (02 Apr 2020) by Nunzio Romano

AR by Ingo Heidbüchel on behalf of the Authors (08 Apr 2020) Manuscript

Post-review adjustments

AA: Author's adjustment | EA: Editor approval

AA by Ingo Heidbüchel on behalf of the Authors (20 May 2020) Author's adjustment Manuscript

EA: Adjustments approved (20 May 2020) by Nunzio Romano

Short summary

With the help of a 3-D computer model we examined how long the water of different rain events stays inside small catchments before it is discharged and how the nature of this discharge is controlled by different catchment and climate properties. We found that one can only predict the discharge dynamics when taking into account a combination of catchment and climate properties (i.e., there was not one single most important predictor). Our results can help to manage water pollution events.