The role of dew and radiation fog inputs in the local water cycling of a temperate grassland during dry spells in central Europe

Li, Yafei; Aemisegger, Franziska; Riedl, Andreas; Buchmann, Nina; Eugster, Werner

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-25-2617-2021

Articles | Volume 25, issue 5

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-25-2617-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-25-2617-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 25, issue 5

Research article

|

19 May 2021

Research article |

| 19 May 2021

The role of dew and radiation fog inputs in the local water cycling of a temperate grassland during dry spells in central Europe

Yafei Li, Franziska Aemisegger, Andreas Riedl, Nina Buchmann, and Werner Eugster

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Final revised paper (published on 19 May 2021)
Preprint (discussion started on 13 Oct 2020)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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RC1: 'Yafei et al.', Anonymous Referee #1, 29 Nov 2020
- AC1: 'Author comment on RC1', Yafei Li, 22 Dec 2020
RC2: 'Review Yafei et al', Anonymous Referee #2, 15 Dec 2020
- AC2: 'Author comment on RC2', Yafei Li, 22 Dec 2020
AC3: 'Author comment', Yafei Li, 22 Dec 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) (23 Dec 2020) by Adriaan J. (Ryan) Teuling

AR by Yafei Li on behalf of the Authors (02 Feb 2021) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (02 Feb 2021) by Adriaan J. (Ryan) Teuling

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (04 Feb 2021)

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (08 Mar 2021)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The authors considered and clarified within their revised manuscript most of my concerns. Please find from below some last comments or open question. Thanks again for this nice study and analysis on non-rainfall water based on isotopic data, which was a very interesting read.

Specific comments:

L96: Not all surfaces are cover by vegetation so I recommend to generalized it and state [..] dew formation: 1) the downward pathway through the condensation of water vapor on the plant and/or soil surface.[….] or write Monteith (1957) identified two input pathways for dew formation on surface covered by vegetation.

L215-2017: To my understanding it appears that the main rain deficit occurred before event 1 (-44%). After this rain was rather similar to the long-term mean year-to-precipitation as the deficit in % did not further increase nor decrease substantially. However, this also means that the rain after event 1 was not sufficiently to refill the depleted soil water storage during the other periods, which explains why the observed soil water content remained low until event 3.

L232-237: thanks for the clarification. However, for event 2 bi-hourly values were taken for NRW droplets and leaf samples. Are these leaf samples correspond to that of the NRW droplets? In addition, dew or fog accumulates over time on the plant surface, so it would be good to make clear if you actually measured the NRW droplets on same leaves of the corresponding plant or on different leaves of the same plant species in the area?
Why this might be important: NRW droplets evolve over time, so if you measure on the same plant in the night you actually can measure NRW for a specific time period, or if you measure it on different leaves than you basically sample the accumulated NRW signature since the start of the NRW formation. Please clarify this here.

L239-241: please also describe more in detail how bi-hourly soil samples were taken

L382: please add abbreviation RH behind relative humidity

L354: please change to: which was computed from the simulated wet vegetation surface temperature T0W, and the observed soil….

L585: I guess different root water uptake might be also a factor here (different depths and amount of water).

L621-623: This might in addition also relate to spatial variability of shallow soil moisture and its stable isotope values

L625: Indeed that would be helpful! But I think it might be also related to the way how to measure NRW on leaves. Taking the moisture from the leaves by cotton balls will first disturb the further formation or condensation of dew or fog on the leaf (in case sampling occurs at the same leaf during the night), or in case that NRW was sampled at nearby leaves that water taken from the leaf contains water and isotopic signature that is representative for the entire period since start of formation of NRW.

L640-644: Please make two sentence out of it and omit as already mentioned in the first round to place too much information into brackets.

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (08 Mar 2021) by Adriaan J. (Ryan) Teuling

AR by Yafei Li on behalf of the Authors (23 Mar 2021) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (27 Mar 2021) by Adriaan J. (Ryan) Teuling

AR by Yafei Li on behalf of the Authors (06 Apr 2021) Manuscript

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Short summary

During dry spells, dew and fog potentially play an increasingly important role in temperate grasslands. Research on the combined mechanisms of dew and fog inputs to ecosystems and distillation of water vapor from soil to plant surfaces is rare. Our results using stable water isotopes highlight the importance of dew and fog inputs to temperate grasslands during dry spells and reveal the complexity of the local water cycling in such conditions, including different pathways of dew and fog inputs.