Dear Bethany,
thank you for your response to the Reviewers' comments. Both reviewers concluded that this is an interesting manuscript that discusses new results on the impacts of thawing permafrost on bacterial abundance and production rates (associated with different size fractions) in subarctic peatland lakes. The work presented would be of considerable interest to the Biogeoscience community and relevant to the scope of the Biogeosciences Journal. At the same time, the reviewers had a number of recommendations on how to further improve the manuscript, including having a more clear and concise description of the objectives of this work and contributions to the field in the Introduction and Discussion sections. Please refer to the reviewers’ comments and your answers for the revisions. In addition, please provide more quantitative information for some of the comparisons discussed in the Results section. For example, on lines 288-289 you mention "The aCDOM(𝜆) spectra for the DOC from the upper two permafrost core samples were almost identical, but differed greatly from those for the bottom-core samples". Differed by how much? Similar throughout the manuscript. Also, please provide the errors in your measurements (e.g., error in estimates of DOC or S_275295, etc.).

Thank you for your submission and I look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.
Sincerely,
Maria Tzortziou
Associate Editor, Biogeosciences

Dear Dr. Deshpande,

thank you for submitting your revised manuscript and response to reviewers' comments. I have read your revised version and I am happy to inform you that your manuscript is now accepted for publication in Biogeosciences.

Best regards,
Maria Tzortziou
Associate Editor, Biogeosciences