Effect of changing vegetation and precipitation on denudation – Part 1: Predicted vegetation composition and cover over the last 21 thousand years along the Coastal Cordillera of Chile

Werner, Christian; Schmid, Manuel; Ehlers, Todd A.; Fuentes-Espoz, Juan Pablo; Steinkamp, Jörg; Forrest, Matthew; Liakka, Johan; Maldonado, Antonio; Hickler, Thomas

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-6-829-2018

Articles | Volume 6, issue 4

https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-6-829-2018

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

Special issue:

Earth surface shaping by biota (ESurf/BG/ESD/ESSD/SOIL inter-journal...

https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-6-829-2018

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

Articles | Volume 6, issue 4

Research article

|

08 Oct 2018

Research article |

| 08 Oct 2018

Effect of changing vegetation and precipitation on denudation – Part 1: Predicted vegetation composition and cover over the last 21 thousand years along the Coastal Cordillera of Chile

Christian Werner, Manuel Schmid, Todd A. Ehlers, Juan Pablo Fuentes-Espoz, Jörg Steinkamp, Matthew Forrest, Johan Liakka, Antonio Maldonado, and Thomas Hickler

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Final revised paper (published on 08 Oct 2018)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 21 Feb 2018)
Supplement to the preprint

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Review of esurf-2018-14 manuscript by Werner et al.', Anonymous Referee #1, 30 Mar 2018
- AC1: 'Response to Reviewer 1', Christian Werner, 30 Jun 2018
RC2: 'Review of manuscript by Werner et al. 2018', Anonymous Referee #2, 01 Apr 2018
- AC2: 'Response to Reviewer 2', Christian Werner, 30 Jun 2018
EC1: 'AE comment', Rebecca Hodge, 10 May 2018

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Christian Werner on behalf of the Authors (30 Jun 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (09 Jul 2018) by Rebecca Hodge

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (15 Jul 2018)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The manuscript by Werner et al. is improved after the revisions. I thank the authors for their detailed responses and discussions. Context is now made clearer, methods are explained in sufficient detail and limitations listed more openly to guide future research in this area. I found the new figures B1 and S4 particularly helpful. I believe the manuscript in this form constitutes a concrete contribution to the scientific literature. I have only minor comments (page and line numbers refer to the marked up version):

P6.L10:
From their responses I can see that authors put thought in the lapse rate decision. However, before delving into sophisticated methods, they could have fitted spatial regressions to calculate the lapse rates themselves as a function of topography and other conditions. Although this is also not ideal (statistical modeling might still miss more dynamic relationships), at least authors could have tested whether different lapse rates result in differences in their simulations (e.g. increase/decrease agreement between simulated and observed vegetation).

Also, in their response authors claim they “cannot account for all possible uncertainties related to variations of the lapse rate”, but they should. In general, simulations that are done with single sets of parameters/drivers/initial conditions are bound to such criticism. A different choice of lapse rate/parameters/drivers can (most of the time, will) change results. Therefore, models should be run in ensembles and results should be reported with associated uncertainty estimates. These are thoughts for future reference.

P6.L14: Maybe refer Appendix B here as it explains how the slope and aspect were utilized to adjust the incoming radiation received by the landform.

P6.L24: Do you mean Appendix B?

P8.L5: Do you mean Table C1?

P9.L18: Townshend et al 2017 is missing from the references.

P9.L21: The north-westernmost tip also shows a distinct discrepancy.

P9.L22: How do these values compare with the literature? i.e. does 11.9% MAE count as successful?

P9.L24 Typo “tends to underestimate” Also why does LPJ-GUESS tends to underestimate FPC of deciduous PFTs? Is this a paramerization issue or model structural error?

P13.L12: typo, *diverse

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (31 Jul 2018) by Rebecca Hodge

Thanks for your work in addressing the comments of the reviewers. Your paper has gone back to Reviewer 2, who is happy that you have improved the content and presentation of the paper. They have raised a number of minor comments that I would ask you to address.

I also have some comments that I would like you to consider; the major points are below, and the minor points are in the attached annotated file. As I see it, the main novelty of this paper is the implementation of the landforms into LPJ-GUESS. However, I think that this aspect of the paper could be more prominent still; although this version is an improvement on the previous one, the details of the landform method are still only presented in an appendix. Figure S4 is a really useful addition that shows the impact of the landform aspect of the model, but it is not in the main paper. Furthermore, there is not that much in the discussion considering the assumptions/decisions that have to be made in implemeting the landform method; for example, what is the justification for the different soil depths? Is that the optimum number of topographic classes? How do you decide on an appropriate elevation interval? How might these decisions affect your results? Instead the discussion focusses more on the overall model application. I think that it would help to emphasise the novelty of your work if you could move Fig S4, and maybe Appendix B, into the main paper, along with developing Section 5.1 of the discussion to address some of the decisions that have to be made in developing the landform model. There is already some overlap between Appendix B and the methods, so not all the appendix text would have to move into the methods. You could then move some other figures (e.g. 10 and 11) into the supplement, and slim down some other sections (e.g. Section 5, maybe 4.3 and 4.4). Please consider these suggestions and see what you think.

Supplement: text in Fig S4b is hard to read.

Best wishes,
Rebecca

Comments to the Author: PDF

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AR by Christian Werner on behalf of the Authors (24 Aug 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (11 Sep 2018) by Rebecca Hodge

ED: Publish as is (15 Sep 2018) by Niels Hovius (Editor)

AR by Christian Werner on behalf of the Authors (16 Sep 2018)

Short summary

Vegetation is crucial for modulating rates of denudation and landscape evolution, and is directly influenced by climate conditions and atmospheric CO₂ concentrations. Using transient climate data and a state-of-the-art dynamic vegetation model we simulate the vegetation composition and cover from the Last Glacial Maximum to present along the Coastal Cordillera of Chile. In part 2 we assess the landscape response to transient climate and vegetation cover using a landscape evolution model.