Regional-scale lateral carbon transport and CO<sub>2</sub> evasion in temperate stream catchments

Magin, Katrin; Somlai-Haase, Celia; Schäfer, Ralf B.; Lorke, Andreas

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-14-5003-2017

Articles | Volume 14, issue 21

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-14-5003-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-14-5003-2017

© Author(s) 2017. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 14, issue 21

Research article

|

08 Nov 2017

Research article |

| 08 Nov 2017

Regional-scale lateral carbon transport and CO₂ evasion in temperate stream catchments

Katrin Magin, Celia Somlai-Haase, Ralf B. Schäfer, and Andreas Lorke

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Final revised paper (published on 08 Nov 2017)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 13 Feb 2017)

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Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Reviewer report to manuscript version 1', Anonymous Referee #1, 08 Mar 2017
- AC1: 'reply to refree comment 1', Katrin Magin, 28 Apr 2017
RC2: 'Comments on “Regional-scale lateral carbon transport and CO 2 evasion in temperate stream catchments” by Katrin Magin et al.', Anonymous Referee #2, 11 Mar 2017
- AC2: 'reply to refree comment 2', Katrin Magin, 28 Apr 2017
RC3: 'Equation 1', Anonymous Referee #1, 20 Mar 2017
- AC3: 'reply to refree comment 3', Katrin Magin, 28 Apr 2017
RC4: 'Review', Anonymous Referee #3, 21 Mar 2017
- AC4: 'reply to refree comment 4', Katrin Magin, 28 Apr 2017

Peer-review completion

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

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (Editor review) (14 May 2017) by Minhan Dai

AR by Katrin Magin on behalf of the Authors (28 May 2017) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (14 Jun 2017) by Minhan Dai

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (29 Jul 2017) by Minhan Dai

RR by Anonymous Referee #3 (26 Aug 2017)

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (28 Aug 2017)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The authors have addressed most of raised comments in the revised manuscript with comprehensive explanations in the replies. I would still like to raise several minor issues and hope they would be helpful for the further improvement of the manuscript.

1. The authors add a section to demonstrate the uncertainties of flux estimation which could be as high as 30%. Please quantitatively clarify if such high uncertainty would invalidate the model estimation since I don’t see the model sensitivity analysis in the manuscript.

2. In Table 3, the authors compile a large dataset of carbon export of World Rivers for the purpose of comparison with present study. For the Amazon River, Richey et al. (2002) estimated the CO2 evasion of 1.2 Mg C ha-1 yr-1, which was around 87% of total aquatic carbon export. This is different from the value cited in Table 3 (78 g C m-2 yr-1). Probably I am wrong here.

3. The authors define the aquatic carbon export/NPP ratio as the portion of terrestrial NPP exported by rivers (See P6 Line 192) and frequently make similar statements based on the definition in the sections of Abstract, Discussions and Conclusion. While the NPP and NEP are the main controlling factors regulating the aquatic carbon export, the export/NPP ratio doesn’t directly mean that the certain fraction of NPP is exported by rivers. Instead, it only indicates the aquatic carbon export flux represents certain amount of NPP.

4. While this study presents a representative investigation of temperate watersheds, which are a critical component of terrestrial ecosystems and carbon cycling. I would suggest the authors to address the implications of this study in a broad background of global carbon cycling and to clearly unravel their contributions to improve the understanding of the roles of temperate inland water bodies in the regional and global carbon cycles.

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (Editor review) (29 Aug 2017) by Minhan Dai

AR by Katrin Magin on behalf of the Authors (11 Sep 2017) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (26 Sep 2017) by Minhan Dai

AR by Katrin Magin on behalf of the Authors (28 Sep 2017)

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Short summary

We analyzed the relationship between terrestrial net primary production (NPP) and the rate at which carbon is exported from catchments in a temperate stream network. The carbon exported by streams and rivers corresponds to 2.7 % of the terrestrial NPP. CO₂ evasion and downstream transport contribute about equally to this flux. A review of existing studies suggests that the catchment-specific carbon export varies in a relatively narrow range across different study regions and spatial scales.

Regional-scale lateral carbon transport and CO2 evasion in temperate stream catchments

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Peer-review completion

Regional-scale lateral carbon transport and CO₂ evasion in temperate stream catchments