Deep-sea benthic communities and oxygen fluxes in the Arctic Fram Strait controlled by sea-ice cover and water depth

Hoffmann, Ralf; Braeckman, Ulrike; Hasemann, Christiane; Wenzhöfer, Frank

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-15-4849-2018

Articles | Volume 15, issue 16

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-15-4849-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-15-4849-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 15, issue 16

Research article

|

16 Aug 2018

Research article |

| 16 Aug 2018

Deep-sea benthic communities and oxygen fluxes in the Arctic Fram Strait controlled by sea-ice cover and water depth

Ralf Hoffmann, Ulrike Braeckman, Christiane Hasemann, and Frank Wenzhöfer

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Final revised paper (published on 16 Aug 2018)
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Preprint (discussion started on 03 Jan 2018)
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Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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RC1: 'Referee comment', Paul Renaud, 13 Feb 2018
- AC1: 'Reply to comments of reviewer Paul Renaud', Ralf Hoffmann, 16 Apr 2018
RC2: 'Review', Anonymous Referee #2, 10 Mar 2018
- AC2: 'Reply to comments of anonymous reviewer', Ralf Hoffmann, 16 Apr 2018

Peer-review completion

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

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (24 Apr 2018) by Tina Treude

AR by Ralf Hoffmann on behalf of the Authors (28 May 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (08 Jun 2018) by Tina Treude

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (12 Jul 2018)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The authors thoroughly revised the manuscript in light of the reviewer comments and these revisions improved the manuscript. The authors have taken care to carefully reference their introduction and discussion and have tied their findings more closely to the literature in the revised version. The amount of data presented is mind-boggling for the area of study, and the carefully prepared figures and tables nicely illustrate the data. The rich data set is not easy to summarize in a narrative and discussion, yielding the flow of the text a bit bumpy at times, though much improved over the earlier version.
Minor editing suggestions are primarily correcting grammar and syntax errors:
Introduction L5 Reword ‘which is in turn controlled by light ...’
L7 Reword ‘Only the annual new production, however, leaves...’
L8 ‘as it represents’ should perhaps rather read something like ‘and is reduced by pelagic remineralization that reduces benthic food supply’?
Methods 2.2. l15. Why short term examinations? Presumably the data were analyzed with enough time at hand. Rather ‘Three time periods were chosen for analysis of sea ice concentrations’?
Results 3.2 l19. The reader needs to hop back and forth between table 1 (to find the depths) and table 3 (and 2 for that matter) to understand the text. While adding yet another line into the table, adding in depths into the header underneath the stations names would make it easier to read the table. (And in Table 1, I doubt the depth values make sense to give in decimal meters, round to 1 m). Table 3: explain abbreviations in table caption (CPE, FDA etc.) – tables should be understood by themselves.
L26 ff. For all other properties, the lowest value is given first, then the highest, would be nice to be consistent here.
P12 l3 I am not sure why the data indicate that the food is received at the same time in the two ice regimes, please explain.
3.3. l25 Need adverb: ‘able to rework the sediment more strongly than’ or ‘to a larger degree than’
3.4 p13 l34 Spell out DOU first time used. P14 l8 TOU should be spelled out the first time mentioned, not after it has been mentioned several times.
3.5. l24. Replace ‘in turn’ with ‘consequently,’ l29 delete comma after correlated with
P15 l14 I’d say ‘essentially no difference between the HSC and LSC’ (R is very low, but not zero)
P15 l20 I’d say ‘could at least partly explain’ given the rather moderate R value
P16L31 Sentence starting with however is missing a verb – or tie to previous sentence.
P17l Use plural: ‘shows correlations which do not’
P17l18 Why ‘lower’, lower than what? Just ‘low’ I suggest. L21 singular ‘remineralization responds’
4.2. l8 Rather ‘The new production ... is estimated at 55 g ... ‘
L16 Typo ‘reaching’
P18 l30 ff Add to the caution that the flux rates also have some error associated with them.
Discussion 4.2: Would Renaud’s measurements of respiration and Link’s nutrient / oxygen fluxes from the Beaufort Sea provide some insights here?
4.3. l18 I perceive the Boetius study as presenting vertical flux of quite labile material. The four cited studies may be predicting contradicting trends, perhaps acknowledge here that people don’t necessarily agree on the net outcome of production, flux and the amount of labile matter reaching benthic communities in the future.
P19l23 Singular: nutrient supply increases. Period ‘.’ after primary production. P20 l13 If ‘its’ refers to observations it should read ‘their’
P19l13 ff I do not follow the logic. This paper is based on a time series. The last paragraph is essentially redundant with what was stated earlier and not really necessary.
All figure captions: Abbreviations should be explained.

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (18 Jul 2018) by Tina Treude

AR by Ralf Hoffmann on behalf of the Authors (30 Jul 2018) Manuscript

ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (03 Aug 2018) by Tina Treude

AR by Ralf Hoffmann on behalf of the Authors (08 Aug 2018) Manuscript

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Short summary

Our study links surface sea-ice cover and benthic oxygen fluxes in the Fram Strait via primary production, food supply, benthic community, and their functions. We show that sea-ice cover and water depth are the most important factors influencing the ecosystem. However, in water depths > 1500 m, the effect of sea ice fades out. Further, we discuss primary production and benthic remineralization patterns and developed a potential scenario for the benthic remineralization in a future Arctic Ocean.