Dear authors, Thanks for your thoughtful responses to the comments raised by reviewers. Both reviewers noted the merits of the article, but both had several suggestions for improving the manuscript.

I encourage the authors to implement the changes they discuss in the response to the reviewers, and to upload a revised manuscript.

In addition, one of the reviewers asks for more lakes for testing; while I am sensitive to the reviewer response that the sample size used in this study exceeds many used in other studies, I still think this is worth mentioning. I'd encourage the authors to discuss the challenges of sample size in a few sentences within the discussion section.

I look forward to seeing a revised manuscript.

Dear authors,
Thank you for providing your revised manuscript and your thorough response to reviews.

I have two minor revisions I would like to suggest:
-I'd like to encourage you to broaden your last paragraph, either by revising it or by adding a few more lines. It seems like the issue of small sample size is a general problem faced in all of this type of work. Beyond just pointing to this as a limitation of this study, I'd encourage you to add a few words to describe the greater problem faced by studies such as yours in terms of sample size. This is somewhat alluded to in the first few lines of that paragraph, but I'd encourage you to really make this point more generally in this paragraph.
-On line 652, you state that 12 lakes represents the "largest sample size", but did not contextualize what was meant by this. Could you include additional references here and give a little more context in terms of what you are comparing to?

I'd also encourage one last thorough read for small grammatical errors.

I look forward to reviewing your updated manuscript.

Christa

Dear authors,
Thank you for submitting your revised manuscript. All of my feedback as well as the feedback from reviewers has been addressed. The manuscript is now ready to proceed through the final stages of the publication process.