Blooms of cyanobacteria in a temperate Australian lagoon system post and  prior to European settlement

Cook, Perran L. M.; Jennings, Miles; Holland, Daryl P.; Beardall, John; Briles, Christy; Zawadzki, Atun; Doan, Phuong; Mills, Keely; Gell, Peter

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-13-3677-2016

Articles | Volume 13, issue 12

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-13-3677-2016

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

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-13-3677-2016

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

Articles | Volume 13, issue 12

Research article

|

22 Jun 2016

Research article |

| 22 Jun 2016

Blooms of cyanobacteria in a temperate Australian lagoon system post and prior to European settlement

Perran L. M. Cook, Miles Jennings, Daryl P. Holland, John Beardall, Christy Briles, Atun Zawadzki, Phuong Doan, Keely Mills, and Peter Gell

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Final revised paper (published on 22 Jun 2016)
Preprint (discussion started on 25 Nov 2015)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC C8715: 'Paleoecology, sediment biogeochemistry', Anonymous Referee #1, 28 Dec 2015
- RC C8796: 'Comments for manuscript', Anonymous Referee #2, 04 Jan 2016
AC C9097: 'Response to Reviewers 1 and 2', Perran Cook, 15 Jan 2016

Peer-review completion

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

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (Editor review) (19 Mar 2016) by Silvio Pantoja

AR by Perran Cook on behalf of the Authors (01 May 2016) Author's response

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (Editor review) (19 May 2016) by Silvio Pantoja

May 19, 2016
Dear Dr. Cook,
Thanks for providing a revised version of your paper “Blooms of cyanobacteria in a temperate Australian lagoon system post and prior to European settlement”, as well as your thorough responses to reviewers.

Before definitive acceptance in Biogeosciences, there are a few aspects that need to be taken care of:
1. The article definitively needs a better map of the study site (Fig. 1). Most readers are not familiar with the area, and in any case, sampling sites need to be related to geography and places mentioned in text. Please use insets and arrows if necessary (and color if you like), and name places like rivers Latrobe, etc. This is important to readers.
2. Line 30, page 4. Please explain or rephrase “with a view to attaining a chronology to aid the identification of recent changes”. What do you mean with “with a view”?
3. Page 5, lines 29-30. Which analysis were conducted using “Samples were dried at 60°C for 30-50 hours and placed in 1.7 ml Eppendorf tubes along with Qiagen Tungsten Carbide Beads (3 mm)”?

And in page 5, line 31. “Samples were shaken…” Are those same samples in 1.7 ml Eppendorf tubes?

Please explain

4. Page 8, line 3. Charcoal concentration. To be accurate, concentration is mass or mol/volume, and these are # of particles/mL, Isn´t? Content or abundance is more appropriate

5. Please show matching between LKN1 and LKN2 somewhere in Fig. 2, or 3, or 4. That will also answer Reviewer 2 (“Then I see that you only used LKN2 for pigment analysis. How did you get pigment data for the earlier years? ”)

I am confident that you will not have troubles with these minor issues that will give more clarity to your article.

Sincerely yours

Silvio Pantoja
Associate Editor

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AR by Perran Cook on behalf of the Authors (26 May 2016) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (01 Jun 2016) by Silvio Pantoja

AR by Perran Cook on behalf of the Authors (02 Jun 2016)

Short summary

The Gippsland Lakes, Australia, have suffered from periodic blooms of cyanobacteria (blue green algae) since the mid 1980s. Prior to this, little is known about the history of cyanobacterial blooms in this system. We investigated the history of cyanobacterial blooms using a sediment core taken from the Gippsland Lakes which had each layer dated using lead isotopes. The results showed that surprising blooms of cyanobacteria were also prevalent prior to European settlement