Decision bg-2017-533

Dear authors
With 3 detailed reports, the review of your paper has been very comprehensive. Although the referees all agree on the originality and pertinence of the presented work, some important comments have raised on the way your interpret your result and build your conclusions. I recommend you carefully address all these comments in a revised version of your MS. In particular, some discussion on the possible limitation of your approach (tea bag method and statistical analysis) and how this could modify the conclusion of the study appears very necessary.

I will be pleased to read a revised version of your MS.

With best regards
Gwenaël Abril
Biogeosciences associate editor

Decision on BG 2017-533


Dear authors, after reading your revised MS, I find it can be published in Biogeosciences after you consider the following technical point: In it present form, your MS is very short and the supplementary material relatively long. The MS that is supposed to be published contains only 3 figures. However, some figures in the supplementary material are cited a lot in the text: Fig S1 is cited 9 times and Fig S2 is cited 5 times. I wonder what are the motivations for this choice and if the paper would not benefit from the insertion some of this additional figures in the MS rather than in the supplementary material.
Could you please explain the motivation for this choice, unusual for Biogeosciences, and if relevant, provide a revised MS that include the most cited figures and tables in the main text.

With best regards
Gwenaël Abril, Biogeosciences associate editor