Spring net community production and its coupling with the CO<sub>2</sub> dynamics in the surface water of the northern Gulf of Mexico

Jiang, Zong-Pei; Cai, Wei-Jun; Lehrter, John; Chen, Baoshan; Ouyang, Zhangxian; Le, Chengfeng; Roberts, Brian J.; Hussain, Najid; Scaboo, Michael K.; Zhang, Junxiao; Xu, Yuanyuan

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-16-3507-2019

Articles | Volume 16, issue 18

Biogeosciences, 16, 3507–3525, 2019

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-16-3507-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Biogeosciences, 16, 3507–3525, 2019

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-16-3507-2019

© Author(s) 2019. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 16, issue 18

Research article 17 Sep 2019

Research article | 17 Sep 2019

Spring net community production and its coupling with the CO₂ dynamics in the surface water of the northern Gulf of Mexico

Zong-Pei Jiang et al.

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Final revised paper (published on 17 Sep 2019)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 25 Mar 2019)
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: 'Reviewer comments on: Spring net community production and its coupling with the CO2 dynamics in the surface water of the northern Gulf of Mexico', Isabel Seguro, 09 May 2019
- AC1: 'Response to reviewer #1', Zong-Pei Jiang, 04 Jun 2019
RC2: 'Review for manuscript bg-2019-88', Anonymous Referee #2, 13 May 2019
- AC2: 'Response to reviewer #2', Zong-Pei Jiang, 04 Jun 2019

Peer-review completion

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

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (05 Jun 2019) by Jack Middelburg

AR by Anna Wenzel on behalf of the Authors (16 Jul 2019) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (19 Jul 2019) by Jack Middelburg

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (25 Jul 2019)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Reviewer comments to revised manuscript bg-2019-88

I appreciate and thank the detailed consideration from the authors to my comments in order to improve the revised version of this manuscript. It is also interesting the addition of four new co-authors, and I appreciate the full consideration of contributors to this work if all co-authors have agreed. This however, should have been done in the discussion manuscript.

I see that the authors made a clearer description of the main aim of the study and clear up the results in the comparison between methods. It is a nice study with a good effort to compare results from traditional discrete sampling methods vs. highly resolved continuous O2/Ar data and decipher the information that the comparison between methods provide. Still, some of the conclusions are known knowledge regarding the various methods: O2/Ar provides a wider picture of the metabolism, while incubations are only a heterogeneous representation of plankton community in a flask. I find that the most relevant contribution of this work is the application of all methods at the same time in the same study area and those results fulfill in my opinion the recommendation to publish this work in Biogeosciences.

Based on the revised version, I recommend the manuscript for publication only subject to the minor technical corrections. Still some typos can be found throughout the text, and I list here only very few, hence I suggest the authors read carefully again their next version.

Minor comments:
Pag. 3, L17 – The word “making” should be replaced by “comparing”
Pag. 5, L8 – “The” underway pCO2 system ….
Pag. 5, Eq. 1 (and subsequent equations) – variables must be always in italics, also in the subsequent text (e.g. kCO2, K0)
Pag. 20, L14 – “approach”
Pag. 20, L17 – “has the advantage of…”

Supplement:
Fig. S2 - the panels do not have the corresponding letter that is referred to in the caption. Figs. S2-S4 - -1000 is better referred as “potential density”, rather than “density anomaly” which instead refers to the difference to a mean reference value.

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (15 Aug 2019) by Jack Middelburg

AR by Zong-Pei Jiang on behalf of the Authors (18 Aug 2019) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (22 Aug 2019) by Jack Middelburg

Short summary

The biological production and air–sea CO₂ exchange in the surface water of the northern Gulf of Mexico during springtime were mainly controlled by the changes in the availability of light and nutrients during the river–ocean mixing process, with strong CO₂ uptake occurring in the river plume regions. The slow air–sea CO₂ exchange rate and buffering effect of the CO₂ system may result in decoupling between biological production and CO₂ flux.

Spring net community production and its coupling with the CO2 dynamics in the surface water of the northern Gulf of Mexico

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Interactive discussion

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Spring net community production and its coupling with the CO₂ dynamics in the surface water of the northern Gulf of Mexico