Dear Georg Trost et al.,

thanks again for submitting your manuscript to ESURF. Both reviewers during the discussion phase were very positive about your paper. The revised paper has now been reviewed by one reviewer who has a couple of minor suggestions of technical nature. I am thus pleased to accept the paper for publication with some technical corrections.

In addition to the comments by the reviewer, I have also some minor, technical comments which I detail below.

I am looking forward to the published version of this manuscript!

Best regards,
Wolfgang Schwanghart


Minor comments:

13f: Perhaps rephrase this sentence: To determine the current mobility of drainage divides at time scales of 10^3 to 10^6 years, and to predict their potential direction of migration, we analysed their geometry at catchment, headwater and hillslope scale.

15: Remove therefore

16: Briefly mention in the abstract the meaning of Gilbert metrics. Not every reader may be familiar with the term.

16: almost all = most?

18: at the expense of

19: Perhaps rephrase this sentence: Gilbert metrics across the Salzach-Enns and Salzach-Mur divides are consistent with inferred divide mobility. We attribute the absence of divide asymmetry at the Inn-Salzach divide to glacial landforms such as cirques and U-shaped valleys which suggest that Pleistocene climate modulations are able to locally obscure the large-scale signal of drainage network reorganization.

59: ... result in lateral divide shifts and eventually in river captures.

69: even after direct evidence... perhaps rephrase: albeit evidence from ... (I think knickpoints do not constitute "direct" evidence).

71: remove "it should be emphasized that"

120: remove "Later"

121: maybe replace "occur" with "appear"

145: Eq 1 should be E = ... not dH/dt which appears later in Eq. 2.

148: remove "while" and start a new sentence. "K is the erodibility ...". Note, however, that K encompasses more than erodibility. Hence better use the term erosional efficiency.

166-167: I am not sure what you mean by "obscures the relation between topography and erosion rate)."

229: This may be pedantic, but please avoid references in the results. Start with: "We found chi anaomalies ....". Mention in the discussion that these results are consistent with Robl et al and Winterberg and Willett. Make also sure to be consistent with the tenses in this section. I would rather recommend to use the present tense (We find ...).

238: Rephrase to: Patterns of across-divide gradients in chi are insensitive to stepwise increases of the base level from ...

244: remove "still"

308: "evidences for" ... either use "provide evidence for" or "evidences". However, I rarely see the verb in this context and I find "evidence" a bit strong in this context. How about just using "suggests".

311: Don't use the term "magnitude", but rather repeat "scale".

311: "increase or decrease" = "change"

363: Spatial heterogeneity of what?

364: parts? or roles?

369: remove "in detail"

374: change "are another candidate ..." to "contrasts in precipitation may cause sharp aymmetries ..."

378: sharp and gradual: better use different terms such as pronounced and subtle



440: Please remove/rewrite wordings such as "As discussed in the previous section"

440: 2x observed

445: remove "would"

523: Almost all -> The vast majority of drainage divides ...

540: Remove "It turned out that"

549: Remove "non-ideal,"

555: Replace "large across divide gradients" with "across-divide anomalies"

560: Consider using a bullet point for the last statement. As such, it stands somewhat alone.

Dear Authors,
Thank you for all your work with the corrections on this paper. I am very pleased to inform you that subject to techncial corrections (outlined in this message) the paper is ready for final publication in ESurf!
Thank you once more and best wishes,
Tom Coulthard