Flexible vector-based spatial configurations in land models

Gharari, Shervan; Clark, Martyn P.; Mizukami, Naoki; Knoben, Wouter J. M.; Wong, Jefferson S.; Pietroniro, Alain

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-24-5953-2020

Articles | Volume 24, issue 12

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-24-5953-2020

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-24-5953-2020

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

Articles | Volume 24, issue 12

Research article

|

16 Dec 2020

Research article |

| 16 Dec 2020

Flexible vector-based spatial configurations in land models

Shervan Gharari, Martyn P. Clark, Naoki Mizukami, Wouter J. M. Knoben, Jefferson S. Wong, and Alain Pietroniro

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Final revised paper (published on 16 Dec 2020)
Preprint (discussion started on 25 Mar 2020)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Review', Anonymous Referee #1, 29 Apr 2020
- AC1: 'Answer to the comments by anonymous reviewer#1', Shervan Gharari, 04 May 2020
RC2: 'Review of "Flexible vector-based spatial configurations in land models"', Anonymous Referee #2, 09 May 2020
- AC2: 'Answer to the comments by anonymous reviewer#2', Shervan Gharari, 12 May 2020

Peer-review completion

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

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (further review by editor and referees) (19 Jun 2020) by Niko Wanders

AR by Shervan Gharari on behalf of the Authors (22 Jul 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (07 Aug 2020) by Niko Wanders

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (16 Sep 2020)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Gharari et al did a good job in incorporating the feedback from the reviewers. The clarity and organisation of the paper has improved substantially. Especially Section 2, which now clearly explains the concept, and Figure 1 which demonstrates the concept, is a large improvement. Two main questions remain after reading the manuscript;

1) How does a vector-based spatial configuration compare to the 'classical' grid-based approach? This is not quantified, so probably the authors want to focus only on this difference at the conceptual level.

2) The authors disagreed with my comment in the previous round that todays challenges related to calibration are not widely addressed, stating that it was not the aim of the paper to address current day challenges. Well, that is up to the authors to decide and not a content-based discussion where I as a reviewer should have a strong opinion about, but it leaves a bit of an unsatisfying feeling with the reader to find out only in line 502 that actually GRUs were calibrated, and that the challenges in defining GRUs remain with this vector-based approach.

Minor suggestions;

Introduction does not really converge towards vector-based spatial configuration. Again, not content based so not my role as a reviewer, but my impression as a reader.

Mention already in the methods that GRUs are calibrated and not every individual computational unit.

Figure 1; perhaps indicate with numbers the 28 computational units? Or maybe a few, to further clarify the concept? Although it was clear for me already.

Units of snow roughness in Table 1; shouldn't it be cm?

in general; it is not clarified or defended why these parameters were selected for calibration. It aren't necessarily the parameters that are identified as most sensitive in many other studies.

Figure 3a: Why not just show a boxplot per parameter? There seems to be no reason to connect the lines of the different parameters.

Figure 4: It would greatly help the reader if a summary of the four cases is added to the figure headers. Now, the reader has to search back in the text.

Same for Figure 6; to help the reader, it could be indicated in the different blocks which information was adapted (snow for instance shows a clear effect of elevation, this would further stress/clarify that).

There are now double dots after every section header, I think this is not in line with the journal format.

Language/grammar check, check for instance lines 33, 57, 150, 221, 343, 351, 492 (inconsistent symbols).

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (01 Oct 2020) by Niko Wanders

AR by Shervan Gharari on behalf of the Authors (08 Oct 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (28 Oct 2020) by Niko Wanders

AR by Shervan Gharari on behalf of the Authors (01 Nov 2020) Manuscript

Post-review adjustments

AA: Author's adjustment | EA: Editor approval

AA by Shervan Gharari on behalf of the Authors (11 Dec 2020) Author's adjustment Manuscript

EA: Adjustments approved (14 Dec 2020) by Niko Wanders

Short summary

This work explores the trade-off between the accuracy of the representation of geospatial data, such as land cover, soil type, and elevation zones, in a land (surface) model and its performance in the context of modeling. We used a vector-based setup instead of the commonly used grid-based setup to identify this trade-off. We also assessed the often neglected parameter uncertainty and its impact on the land model simulations.