Quantifying floodwater impacts on a lake water budget via volume-dependent transient stable isotope mass balance

Masse-Dufresne, Janie; Barbecot, Florent; Baudron, Paul; Gibson, John

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-25-3731-2021

Articles | Volume 25, issue 6

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-25-3731-2021

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-25-3731-2021

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

Articles | Volume 25, issue 6

Research article

|

01 Jul 2021

Research article |

| 01 Jul 2021

Quantifying floodwater impacts on a lake water budget via volume-dependent transient stable isotope mass balance

Janie Masse-Dufresne, Florent Barbecot, Paul Baudron, and John Gibson

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Final revised paper (published on 01 Jul 2021)
Preprint (discussion started on 16 Apr 2020)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

SC1: 'Review comments of Quantifying Flood-water impacts on a lake water budget....', Michael Rosen, 22 May 2020
- AC1: 'Response to hess-2020-101-SC1', Janie Masse-Dufresne, 21 Jul 2020
RC1: 'Review on "Quantifying flood-water impacts on a lake water budget via volume-dependent transient stable isotope mass balance"', Bruno Hamelin, 31 May 2020
- AC2: 'Response to hess-2020-101-RC1', Janie Masse-Dufresne, 22 Jul 2020
RC2: 'REVIEW OF HESS-2020-101', Anonymous Referee #2, 24 Jun 2020
- AC3: 'Response to hess-2020-101-RC2', Janie Masse-Dufresne, 22 Jul 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) (06 Aug 2020) by Genevieve Ali

AR by Janie Masse-Dufresne on behalf of the Authors (16 Sep 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (08 Oct 2020) by Genevieve Ali

RR by Chani Welch (02 Jan 2021)

RR by Matthew D. Jones (19 Jan 2021)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

I enjoyed reading the manuscript by Masse-Dufresne and colleagues.

The paper outlines some interesting and potentially important reasons for understanding ground- and surface-water contributions to lake systems, and makes a case for the use of stable isotopes in modelling these systems.

I particularly liked the cross sections and three dimensional schematics of the lake isotope system, and the linking through of the importance of water quantity, and where it comes from, to issues of water quality.

I think the paper is suitable for publication after a few minor revisions, largely to help further clarify the modelling approach taken such that others can reproduce this approach for similar systems.

In general it would be interesting to know how this model was run i.e. in what software or using what code. Including a link to the code, or an example of the working through the equations which would help reviewers and readers understand more fully the steps taken.

My more specific points relate to the isotope hydrology work:

Equation 3 – please define delta-0.

Line 259 – I think Fig. 3 is meant here?

Section 4.2 – where are St-Bruno station and Ottawa in relation to the lake. Could you add these to Figure 1, or state distance and direction to/from lake for each site.

Figure 4 and its discussion – the flood waters are from Lake DM (as noted in Fig. 5) so is the Flood-water LEL the Lake DM LEL? Is it the lake waters in Lake DM that are more directly affected by snow melt, or would you class the flood waters as separate? Is there any stable isotope data from Lake DM?

Figure 6 – may be worth changing the legend label for ‘delta-L (observed)’ – to make it clear that this is an average (mean?) of the blue dots – this is what I interpreted it as anyway.

As well as showing the range of water isotope data with depth in table 2 and Fig. 6 it would be interested to plot the profiles in an appendix.

If useful another example of isotope mass balance modelling to understand water balance in artificial lakes (gravel-pits in this case) can be found in:

Jones, M.D. et al., 2016. Comparisons of observed and modelled lake δ18O variability. Quaternary Science Reviews 131, Part B, 329-340.

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ED: Publish subject to revisions (further review by editor and referees) (19 Jan 2021) by Genevieve Ali

AR by Janie Masse-Dufresne on behalf of the Authors (01 Mar 2021) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (04 Mar 2021) by Genevieve Ali

RR by Chani Welch (13 May 2021)

RR by Anonymous Referee #4 (16 May 2021)

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (17 May 2021) by Genevieve Ali

AR by Janie Masse-Dufresne on behalf of the Authors (27 May 2021) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (04 Jun 2021) by Genevieve Ali

AR by Janie Masse-Dufresne on behalf of the Authors (04 Jun 2021) Manuscript

Short summary

A volume-dependent transient isotopic mass balance model was developed for an artificial lake in Canada, in a context where direct measurements of surface water fluxes are difficult. It revealed that floodwater inputs affected the dynamics of the lake in spring but also significantly influenced the long-term water balance due to temporary subsurface storage of floodwater. Such models are paramount for understanding the vulnerability of lakes to changes in groundwater quantity and quality.