Nutrient Flux under the Influence of Melt Water Runoff from Volcanic Territories and Ecosystem Response of Vilyuchinskaya and Avachinskaya Bays in Southeastern Kamchatka

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

General comments:

Although the investigation developed seems to provide interesting background data for the studied area, the manuscript doesn´t reflect a mature work on the data. Also the written style is not adequate and makes very difficult to follow the exposed information. Some aspect are reiterative and explained in excess, while other important aspect are not explained. For these reason I cannot recommend the publication of this article in Chemical Oceanography in its present form.

Abstract.

use the passive form better than "we..." bad use of "But" after a dot. Delete "the" CO2 pressure. Rewrite "including enriching"

Introduction

-Add a brief definition of what "the carbonate system" refers.

-Consecutive references cited in the same bracket should appear as [1-4] instead [1,2,3,4]

-lines 51-54 don´t show relation with the previous sentence.

line 54- bad use of "on the other hand"

lines 55-60 are not connected with previous information

-Lines 75-76 Bad use of Still and yet.

-Lines 80-82 this information should be in the "study area" better than in the "introduction"

Table 1- "multi-year period" should be explained

Figure captions should be shortened and clearer.

Lines 181. Define abbreviations the first time they are mentioned (DIP, DSi...)

Lines 189-193 Indicate the water column whole depth

Line 211 pH of what? waters, sediments?

Line 225-250 avoid inserting formulas in the text. It makes impossible a continuous reading. Moreover when data obtained from this formula is not shown in table (TZ, NICB)

3.Results. Information is clear in table 2. Avoid spending two pages exposing the same information in the text. Only highlight the important data.

Line 277 What does ultra-fresh mean?

Line 281-282 Sentences (in general) could be much more clearer. I.e. "cations in the analyzed fresh waters were dominated by calcium ions, equivalent rations being... " by "Ca2+ were the main cations in freshwaters  representing 69% in melted water and ..." Because you give ratios and statistics that cannot be contrasted.

Line 288- "Despite its low mineralization"... why "despite"? I cannot find the relation between the low mineralization and the tipe of water. The sentences is not clear.

Lines 291 "thus" why "thus.."? it should connect common information along two statements.

Lines 296-303 the use of ratios and statistics not showed again, as well as the reiteration of the expression SO4/TZ in the text makes difficult to understand the importance of the sentence.

3.1.2 Isotopic composition 

This paragraph does not provide information. On the contrary of the previous chapter, it is too brief, so it is no interesting to expose, since the reader can see it in the table. Wich is the "standard composition" to compare with?

Line 322. "somewhat lower" doe not provide any information to the text.

Line 328 "it is seen from results in table 2" is another example of the bad style of written. Only "table 2 shows" is clearer and concise enough not to bore readers. Moreover when you read the phrase and it is not finished (where are the verbs?)

Table 2. Foot of table includes all units of each parameter. It is very unclear to serach for units in the foot, when it could be placed under each parameter (or group of parameters) in the table.

Line 340 Add a space after the table. There are dashes without significance in lines 340 and 341. Line 341 could be shortened "in melted water from the waterfall" using only "waterfall" since you have previously explained this. Bad use of "while" when writting about pH.

Line 348 why do you compare porewater with seawater? and after you use "furthermore" to compare other set of parameters among the bays. The information you try to show is not understandable.

Figure 3. avoid explaining the figure in the footnote. Better include the paramenters salinity, temperature...in their axes. The numbers 2-11 on the top of the figure are not explained (only 1), which is the difference between the distance showed in the top and the bottom of the figure?. what is "as of July 04" in the footnote? 

Lines 371-378 the sentence does not provide interesting information and could be shorter and clearer.

Figure 5. RW and Waterfall points give no information in the figure.

Figure 7. When you try to study a set of data, and search for relations among them, you should better employ multiparametric analyses like factorial, principal components, multiple regression... better than 9 graphs showing the regression of one parameter versus the rest.

Lines 470-477 which is the purpose of comparing waterfall NO3 with rivers from CHina or Russia? This paragraph doesn´t discuss this concentration.

Discussion is also too long and digressive. I find it should be much clearer to help the reader understand your presentations and decide wheter or not to agree with them.

Table 4 is not well explained. I understand the are not real data obtained at different wind speed, because the speed should probably vary along a sampling day. If it not the case, you should detail how you obtain these dataset.

what is the meaning of v and a? are they Vilyucha and Avachinskaya points? where are they located? (in figure 1 I could see only some Vilyucha points, but no all of them)

Finally, discussion should be better simplified to get the objectives exposed at the introduction. I cannot se a clear discussion about the "behaviour of parameters of the carbonate system" and neither "the set of characteristics showing the intensity and direction of the OM production/destruction balance", because the headings in which you distribute the discussion gets the reader by other ways.

 

 

I regret to inform that the style of language is poor and makes very difficult a good reading and hence the understanding of the manuscript.

Statements are too reiterative and overly long, too much abbreviations are inserted in the text, and also equations.

Bad use of adverbs and links between sentences (Despite, Thus...are sometimes used without coherence to link sentences).

I also recommend the use of the passive tense instead of the term "we"...

Alternance between statement in past and present time was also repeated in the text. Please keep the same verbal form.

Last of all, try to simplify the sentences. Phrases in English tend to be shorter then in other languages 

Author Response

The authors have carefully considered the comments and tried our best to take into account every one of them. In attachment provide the point-by-point responses.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript Semkin et al. presents new data on nutrients flow and they relate it to volcanic activity in the Kamchatka Peninsula.

They present N and P data together with water characterizes of nearby rivers and two bays which have different oceanographic characteristic. They choose those bays because have no anthropogenic impact that can alter nutrients. They relate they results of nutrients flow with snow, volcanics ashes, wind, temperatures, oceanographic and geological features, resulting in a very interesting and complete work. There might be several other complicate features that can interplay such as bacteria populations, permafrost, methane, benthic organisms, metabolic and diagenetic processes, humic acids, and flocculation of clays etc. but I think they make a good job to simplify the story of nutrients related to river runoff. 

The English is good and it is fluid. I have found the paper interesting and easy to read. I retain that this is a nice piece of science that need to be published and will probably receive several citations. 

The abstract and conclusions fine. The methods are sound. The results are objective and simple to read. Discussions are satisfactory but I would add more comparations with other places that same studies have been produced. I am aware of interesting studies in Japan (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecss.2022.107930, https://doi.org/10.1002/lno.11785 ), Korea (https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse9050554, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0263925 ) and Brazil (https://doi.org/10.1029/2018JB016576, https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2019.00584 ).

My main comment is regarding the title. They simplify their finding as “Carbonate System” but to me it seems wrong because Ca is not the main parameter of their study and the environments where the research is conducted. Maybe “The Nutrient Flux under the Influence of the Meltwater Runoff from Volcanic Territories of Vilyuchinskaya and Avachinskaya Bays, South-Eastern Kamchatka” is better. 

Line 514: they speak about “drop” but it is not clear to what is compared this decrease. Please specify and make this sentence clearer.

Author Response

The authors have carefully considered the comments and tried our best to take into account every one of them. In attachment provide the point-by-point responses.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

In this manuscript, the authors investigated the carbonate and nutrient fluxes in the water and bottom sediments of Vilyuchinskaya and Avachinskaya Bays on the Kamchatka Peninsula. The study was conducted after the peak of spring-summer flooding caused by snow melting in volcanic areas. The surface desalt waters in both bays exhibited a general deficiency of CO2, while near-bottom waters in Avachinskaya Bay showed a significant oversaturation of CO2 due to microbial decomposition of organic matter. The sediments' porewater contained high concentrations of organic carbon, dissolved and organic nitrogen, phosphates, and CO2 partial pressure. It was also determined that the primary source of nutrients for the bays was tephra, which consists of volcanic suspended particles. The authors concluded that the highest nutrient fluxes and subsequent phytoplankton blooms are expected during periods of high volcanic activity and elevated summer air temperatures.

In my opinion, the manuscript is well written, and the presented data and their discussion is well organized. It has a sufficient novelty to publish in JMSE. However, before it can be accepted for publication, minor revision is necessary to overcome the following points:

1.      What is the distance of sampling from the shore line as it plays a role in tephra concentration at the ocean?

2.      What is the depth of sampling site at the sea?

3.      Why there is a difference in isotopic composition between the two sampling sites when their source is the same.

4.      Why there is a difference in isotopic concentration between pore water and river water at  Avacha River while it was similar at Vilyucha River as they have similar climatic conditions and similar source.

 

5.      Is there any impact of deuterium concentration emitted from volcanos on isotopic concentration of the investigated water?

Minor editing of English language required

Author Response

The authors have carefully considered the comments and tried our best to take into account every one of them. In attachment provide the point-by-point responses.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf