Pasture degradation modifies the water and carbon cycles of the Tibetan highlands

Babel, W.; Biermann, T.; Coners, H.; Falge, E.; Seeber, E.; Ingrisch, J.; Schleuß, P.-M.; Gerken, T.; Leonbacher, J.; Leipold, T.; Willinghöfer, S.; Schützenmeister, K.; Shibistova, O.; Becker, L.; Hafner, S.; Spielvogel, S.; Li, X.; Xu, X.; Sun, Y.; Zhang, L.; Yang, Y.; Ma, Y.; Wesche, K.; Graf, H.-F.; Leuschner, C.; Guggenberger, G.; Kuzyakov, Y.; Miehe, G.; Foken, T.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-11-6633-2014

Articles | Volume 11, issue 23

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-11-6633-2014

© Author(s) 2014. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-11-6633-2014

© Author(s) 2014. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 11, issue 23

Research article

|

02 Dec 2014

Research article |

| 02 Dec 2014

Pasture degradation modifies the water and carbon cycles of the Tibetan highlands

W. Babel, T. Biermann, H. Coners, E. Falge, E. Seeber, J. Ingrisch, P.-M. Schleuß, T. Gerken, J. Leonbacher, T. Leipold, S. Willinghöfer, K. Schützenmeister, O. Shibistova, L. Becker, S. Hafner, S. Spielvogel, X. Li, X. Xu, Y. Sun, L. Zhang, Y. Yang, Y. Ma, K. Wesche, H.-F. Graf, C. Leuschner, G. Guggenberger, Y. Kuzyakov, G. Miehe, and T. Foken

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Final revised paper (published on 02 Dec 2014)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 12 Jun 2014)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC C3440: 'reviewer comments', Anonymous Referee #1, 12 Jul 2014
- AC C4119: 'Reply to Reviewer #1', Thomas Foken, 06 Aug 2014
RC C3965: 'Reviewer Comments', Anonymous Referee #2, 31 Jul 2014
- AC C5136: 'Reply to reviewer #2', Thomas Foken, 15 Sep 2014

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Thomas Foken on behalf of the Authors (23 Sep 2014) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (25 Sep 2014) by Paul Stoy

RR by Anonymous Referee #3 (24 Oct 2014)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Babel et al. explore the role of pasture degradation on hydrometeorology on the Tibetan Plateau.

The manuscript makes a number of interesting points and is an excellent piece of scholarship, but still could be strengthened in a number of ways to maximize its impact.

I found the justification regarding permitting issues to be out of place in the Introduction, and would fit better in the Methods section despite previous referee comments. The reason for this is that the Introduction in my opinion is obfuscated by including both a scientific justification and justification for the measurements that were able to be made given the constraints of working in Tibet. I recommend editing the Introduction to highlight the importance of the scientific objectives, especially with respect to hydrometeorology which is somewhat lacking in the current version of the Introduction (for example the interesting modeling work in section 2.4 is barely alluded to in the Introduction), and discuss measurement challenges briefly in the Methods section.

Personally, I find much of the model description presented in the appendices to be of greater scientific relevance than much of the content of the Methods section in the main body of the text. This has the effect of making the analysis appear less robust to the reader than it actually is. It would make for a long Methods section, but this would also be fitting of the extensive experimental and modeling work that the authors undertook.

Regarding the analyses, I feel that the analysis makes excellent use of the data that is available and, importantly, points to a number of future questions with regards to the sustainability of Kobresia and its impacts on the hydrology and biogeochemistry on the Tibetan Plateau.

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (Editor review) (24 Oct 2014) by Paul Stoy

AR by Thomas Foken on behalf of the Authors (29 Oct 2014) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (30 Oct 2014) by Paul Stoy

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