Evaluating the response of δ13C in Haloxylon ammodendron, a dominant C4 species in Asian desert ecosystems, to water and nitrogen addition as well as the availability of its δ13C as an indicator of water use efficiency

Chen, Zixun; Liu, Xuejun; Cui, Xiaoqing; Han, Yaowen; Wang, Guoan; Li, Jiazhu

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-18-2859-2021

Articles | Volume 18, issue 9

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-18-2859-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-18-2859-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 18, issue 9

Research article

|

11 May 2021

Research article |

| 11 May 2021

Evaluating the response of δ¹³C in Haloxylon ammodendron, a dominant C₄ species in Asian desert ecosystems, to water and nitrogen addition as well as the availability of its δ¹³C as an indicator of water use efficiency

Zixun Chen, Xuejun Liu, Xiaoqing Cui, Yaowen Han, Guoan Wang, and Jiazhu Li

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Preprint (discussion started on 15 Oct 2020)
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Status: closed

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

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RC1: 'Evaluating the response of d13C in Haloxylon ammodendron, a dominant C4 species in Asian desert ecosystem, to water and nitrogen addition as well as the availability of its d13C as the indicator of water use -efficiency', Anonymous Referee #1, 04 Nov 2020
- AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Guoan Wang, 05 Jan 2021
RC2: 'Reviewer's comment', Anonymous Referee #2, 17 Dec 2020
- AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Guoan Wang, 05 Jan 2021

Peer-review completion

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

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (12 Jan 2021) by Aninda Mazumdar

AR by Guoan Wang on behalf of the Authors (15 Feb 2021) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (21 Feb 2021) by Aninda Mazumdar

RR by Anonymous Referee #3 (10 Mar 2021)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

In the manuscript, Chen et al. presented an analysis of the relationship between δ13C values of a C4 species in Asian desert ecosystem and artificial water and nitrogen addition. The authors designed the experiment to observe plants δ13C values for a few years and offered some basic data of plant δ13C variations under artificial conditions. I think the paper is suitable for publishing in Biogeosciences after some revisions.

1. The author should clarify how long the samples were collected after water and nitrogen addition, as this will affect the results of the measured photosynthetic rate, stomatal conductance and water use-efficiency. More information on this should be added.
2. Since the authors chosen H. ammodendron as their study object, the species, habits, characteristics of H. ammodendron should be elaborately described in the manuscript. I suggest the authors add this part of content.
3. What is the type of nitrogen used as the fertilizer to simulate the N adding experiment? And whether this type of nitrogen could be effectively used by H. ammodendron.
4. How did you measure the CO2 concentration in the assimilation branches? The assimilation branch is what the part of H. ammodendron. Could the authors show a picture of the assimilation branches of H. ammodendron in the supplemental materials?
5. Have the authors only measured the gas exchange in June? The gas exchange of plants has a large variation in the day and night as well as the different months. Could the data of June represent all the conditions?
6. Line 195-203: I do not clearly understand what index you measure at here?
7. Section 2.5, When did you sample the assimilation branches? How long have the assimilation branches been cut? And how long is the growth time of the length of the sample collected?
8. Could you add some introduction about the mechanism of how the ratios of ci/ca control the δ13C variations of plants?
9. The δ13Cair has large diurnal and seasonal variations. In section 2.6, I suggest the authors use the range of δ13Cair to replace the specific value.
10. In the Materials and methods, the authors did not clearly introduce how they measured the stomatal conductance (gs) and photosynthetic rate (A).
11. Line 306-308 and Line 311-313: the logic of these two sentences is a little chaotic.
12. Line 327-330: could the authors explain that why the traditional theory is useless at here?
13. Line 400-401, I did not see the correlation plot between Δ and ci/ca ratio.
14. Line 416-417: “Although this result was just opposite to a positive relationship between δ13C and WUE for C3 plants”. Adding references for this sentence.

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (18 Mar 2021) by Aninda Mazumdar

AR by Guoan Wang on behalf of the Authors (28 Mar 2021) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (05 Apr 2021) by Aninda Mazumdar

AR by Guoan Wang on behalf of the Authors (08 Apr 2021) Manuscript

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Short summary

δ¹³C in plants is a sensitive long-term indicator of physiological acclimatization. The present study suggests that precipitation change and increasing atmospheric N deposition have little impact on δ¹³C of H. ammodendron, a dominant plant in central Asian deserts, but affect its gas exchange. In addition, this study shows that δ¹³C of H. ammodendron could not indicate its water use efficiency (WUE), suggesting that whether δ¹³C of C₄ plants indicates WUE is species-specific.