Multiple soil nutrient competition between plants, microbes, and mineral  surfaces: model development, parameterization, and example applications in  several tropical forests

Zhu, Q.; Riley, W. J.; Tang, J.; Koven, C. D.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-13-341-2016

Articles | Volume 13, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-13-341-2016

© Author(s) 2016. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-13-341-2016

© Author(s) 2016. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 13, issue 1

Research article

|

18 Jan 2016

Research article |

| 18 Jan 2016

Multiple soil nutrient competition between plants, microbes, and mineral surfaces: model development, parameterization, and example applications in several tropical forests

Q. Zhu, W. J. Riley, J. Tang, and C. D. Koven

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Final revised paper (published on 18 Jan 2016)
Preprint (discussion started on 05 Mar 2015)
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

RC C2850: 'Interesting study but not fully comprehensible', Thomas Wutzler, 15 Jun 2015
- AC C4295: 'response to Thomas Wutzler', Qing Zhu, 14 Aug 2015
RC C2854: 'Innovative model, clarifications about calibration needed', Anonymous Referee #4, 15 Jun 2015
- AC C4301: 'response to anonymous referee 4', Qing Zhu, 14 Aug 2015
RC C2985: 'Large potentials, but study misses a lot', Anonymous Referee #1, 22 Jun 2015
- AC C4306: 'response to anonymous referee 1', Qing Zhu, 14 Aug 2015

Peer-review completion

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

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (31 Aug 2015) by Anja Rammig

AR by Qing Zhu on behalf of the Authors (01 Sep 2015) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (07 Sep 2015) by Anja Rammig

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (16 Sep 2015)

RR by Anonymous Referee #4 (19 Sep 2015)

RR by Thomas Wutzler (01 Oct 2015)

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (05 Oct 2015) by Anja Rammig

AR by Qing Zhu on behalf of the Authors (14 Nov 2015) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (18 Nov 2015) by Anja Rammig

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (26 Nov 2015) by Anja Rammig

RR by Anonymous Referee #4 (27 Nov 2015)

RR by Anonymous Referee #3 (02 Dec 2015)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The authors have tried to address the concerns about the non-perfect model calibration. Although I am not satisfied with their response, I recommend following the suggestion of reviewer 2 to clearly acknowledge the imperfections of the calibration and go on with conclusions that can be drawn despite of these calibration imperfections.

Thanks for implementing the comments regarding prediction uncertainty, and using quantiles instead of fitting Gaussians for inferring uncertainty reduction.

Fig.4: The sampling yields one multivariate distribution. The fact that a several of the marginals of this multivariate distribution do not differ (inferred by the Gelman criterion) does not help, that the chains sample different regions and failed to converge to the same limiting distribution. I agree with reviewer 2 that data paucity should not be the reason for this. A good sampler would sample the prior. Instead of using the Gelman criterion for the marginal, also the multivariate Gelman criterion can be used (Brooks, SP. and Gelman, A. (1998) General methods for monitoring convergence of iterative simulations. Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics, 7, 434-455). It is implemented with R function gelman.diag of the coda package.

Fig 2, parameter at edges: I do not agree with the replies on this issue. Model discrepancy becomes apparent for the phosphorous processes, probably because those processes are constrained by relatively few observations. If the results with such a high parameter are reasonable, the prior density maybe of wrong magnitude. You could try a wider prior, but the parameter might still be at the edge. This edge effect should be at least stated. Better add a little discussion.

Soil heterogeneity: I understand that the model focuses on ecosystem scale. Still, I am interested in your expectations or hypotheses what would change if you could account for soil heterogeneity.

K^plant_NO3: the statement “may result from random effects of MCMC sampling, but not inferred by the calibration data” Suggests not trusting the sampling too much. But then also take caution in drawing conclusions on importance of parameters.

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ED: Reconsider after major revisions (04 Dec 2015) by Anja Rammig

AR by Qing Zhu on behalf of the Authors (10 Dec 2015) Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (11 Dec 2015) by Anja Rammig

RR by Anonymous Referee #4 (15 Dec 2015)

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (Editor review) (16 Dec 2015) by Anja Rammig

AR by Qing Zhu on behalf of the Authors (18 Dec 2015) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (21 Dec 2015) by Anja Rammig

AR by Qing Zhu on behalf of the Authors (27 Dec 2015)

Short summary

Here we develop, calibrate, and test a nutrient competition model that accounts for multiple soil nutrients interacting with multiple biotic and abiotic consumers based on enzyme kinetics theory. Our model provides an ecologically consistent representation of nutrient competition appropriate for land biogeochemical models integrated in Earth system models.