Differential response of carbon cycling to long-term nutrient input and altered hydrological conditions in a continental Canadian peatland

Berger, Sina; Praetzel, Leandra S. E.; Goebel, Marie; Blodau, Christian; Knorr, Klaus-Holger

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-15-885-2018

Articles | Volume 15, issue 3

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-15-885-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-15-885-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 15, issue 3

Research article

|

12 Feb 2018

Research article |

| 12 Feb 2018

Differential response of carbon cycling to long-term nutrient input and altered hydrological conditions in a continental Canadian peatland

Sina Berger, Leandra S. E. Praetzel, Marie Goebel, Christian Blodau, and Klaus-Holger Knorr

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Final revised paper (published on 12 Feb 2018)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 29 May 2017)
Supplement to the preprint

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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RC1: 'Referee comment on MS bg-2016-238', Anonymous Referee #1, 03 Jul 2017
- AC1: 'Answer to reviewer 1', Sina Berger, 04 Sep 2017
RC2: 'review', Anonymous Referee #2, 04 Aug 2017
- AC2: 'Answer to reviewer 2', Sina Berger, 04 Sep 2017

Peer-review completion

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

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (05 Sep 2017) by Edzo Veldkamp

AR by Sina Berger on behalf of the Authors (14 Oct 2017) Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (25 Oct 2017) by Edzo Veldkamp

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (06 Nov 2017)

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (21 Nov 2017)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Reviewer report on the revised MS ‘bg_2017_191’ by Berger et al.

GENERAL

You have taken a good job in taking the comments of both reviewers into careful consideration and incorporating related changes to the manuscript. I feel that the conclusion drawn are now better supported by the data than in the previous version, and the title matches much better with the content.

Despite these clear improvements, I would like to still recommend major changes to the manuscript prior to its publications

MAJOR COMMENT

Currently, the massive length of the paper (more than 11000 marks and 19 pages!), and the wordy style make it difficult to approach and digest the main message. The work would greatly benefit from shortening and focusing it better to the most relevant content.

The paragraphs and sentences are often very long and loaded with details. I suggest following some simple guidelines to improve the readability: For example, the length of the paragraphs should not exceed 200-300 words and the length of sentences should not exceed three lines. Also, reading the text aloud would reveal unnecessarily complicated expressions. Here are some examples of complicated sentences that would need revision:
• page 1, lines 27-28
• page 3, lines 15-23
• page 4, lines 2-6
• page 12, line 5: A complicated sentence, how about ‘In general, site 3 had higher and site 4 lower CH4 fluxes than the other sites, with some exceptions’? Please revise similarly the sentences on lines 14-18. The expression ‘plotted below other sites’ fluxes’ is complicated and a simpler and more direct way to say the same thing would improve the readability a lot. Check also elsewhere in the MS.
• Page 13, line 30
• Page 14, 28-31
• Page 15, lines 16-19
• Page 15, lines 26-29
• Page 18, lines 13-17
• Page 18, lines 26-29
• Page 19, lines 5-6

In the discussion section, instead of elaborating all the results and comparing them with literature, you should focus in the results related to your hypotheses and main objectives. The abstract and concluding remarks nicely summarize the main conclusions that can be drawn from this rather complex dataset, and they can be used as guidelines for streamlining and shortening the content.

MINOR COMMENTS

page 2, line 5: accelerated carbon cycling does not require the article ‘an’
page 2, line 25: check spelling of ‘acetoclastic’
page 2, line 26: check spelling of methanogenesis
page 3, line 1: remove the article before ‘fast evasion’
page 3, line 13: check spelling of Mer Bleue
page 4, line 1: Replace coma with a full stop before ‘However’
page 4, lines 17-21: Classically, hypotheses should include some explanations and argumentation on why these kind of results are expected. ‘Hydrologically altered and nutrient enriched peripheral sites feature accelerated C cycling, because…’ Would you be able to add something like this to each of the hypotheses?
page 4, line 29: Add an article (the) before ‘peat depth’.
page 5, paragraph starting on line 8: The longer site names mentioned here (e.g., shrub dominated site 4) are not used afterwards but you are using the simple names site 1, site 2 etc. The use of site names should be systematic. I am not sure if longer site names are needed.
page 5, lines 27-29: Do you mean “C/P and N/P ratios of surface peat suggested P limitation typical of fens” and “compared to typical values for bogs”?
page 5, line 30: An article not needed for the word ‘quality’.
page 12, line 4: Should it be ‘minor fluxes’ instead of ‘minute fluxes’?
Section 3.3: The very many numbers listed in this section make is very difficult to read, and the message is very much lost into details. Please revise by removing unnecessary details and focusing to the overall patterns.
The sentence starting here is very long and complicated, please consider rewording and/splitting into two sentences.
Page 14, line 18: ‘at all sites’ instead ‘at any site’
Page 14, line 19: ‘in-situ’ is commonly written in italics. Please check also elsewhere.
Page 17, paragraph starting on line 7: This is a fully valid discussion but far too lengthy, and can be surely cut down significantly without losing useful information. Instead, the main idea would become clearer with less wordy expression.
Page 20, line 5: Instead of hyphens, dashes (longer) should be used. Please check also elsewhere.

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (08 Dec 2017) by Edzo Veldkamp

AR by Sina Berger on behalf of the Authors (17 Dec 2017) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (03 Jan 2018) by Edzo Veldkamp

AR by Sina Berger on behalf of the Authors (05 Jan 2018)

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