Characteristic Analysis and Uncertainty Assessment of the Joint Distribution of Runoff and Sediment: A Case Study of the Huangfuchuan River Basin, China
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper "Characteristic analysis and uncertainty assessment of the joint distribution of runoff and sediment: A Case Study of the Huangfuchuan River Basin, China" was peer-reviewed. The manuscript focuses on the interaction between runoff and sediment elements in a river basin in order to realize a scientific runoff and sediment management scheme. The authors used 6 widely applicable probability distributions and 3 Archimedes Copulas to fit the joint distribution to construct a joint probability distribution model of river runoff and sediment using hydrological data (1954-2015) from Huangfuchuan hydrologic station. The authors also gave a thorough uncertainty analysis for all techniques. The methodologies appear to be more acceptable/reliable, and the research's originality is undeniable. The artwork is well-crafted and readable. However, I would like to raise some serious minor concerns regarding methods and data quality.
1.The data length from the hydrological/meteorological station is not updated. It's 2023, and the authors were only restricted to utilize the record up to 2015. What is the explanation for this?
2. The precipitation information was provided in terms of the metrological station, however, there is no graphical representation of precipitation/rainfall. On the same note, the authors did not establish a relationship between precipitation and silt. However, during the monsoon season, the sediment concentration rises. Please elaborate on the datasets used in the study. Please give a graphical representation of rainfall at each of the selected sites, as well as a link to sediment concentration if appropriate.
3. The MK test methodology does not exist. Why wasn't the data pre-whitened before running the MK test? Innovative Trend Analysis is recommended for this purpose. Why wasn't this test performed?
5. The discussion section appears to be more of a results section, which makes little sense. Please establish a separate discussion section based on your take-home message for the readers in comparison to previously observed results, including key critical parameters for efficient model calibration.
6. In Figure 2, the units must be mentioned in braces, for example, precipitation (mm) and all over the manuscript where units are mentioned.
Author Response
We are grateful to reviewer #1 for his/her effort reviewing our paper and his/her positive feedback. Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper, as well as the important guiding significance to our researches. Revised portion are marked in red in the paper. Below is our point-by-point response to the reviewer’s comments.
Responds to the reviewer#1’s comments:
Comment 1: The data length from the hydrological/meteorological station is not updated. It's 2023, and the authors were only restricted to utilize the record up to 2015. What is the explanation for this?
Response: Thanks to the reviewer for the question. Scientific research data is the foundation of scientific research, but the limitations of obtaining data hinder the acquisition of high-quality data. We apologize for not updating the length of our research data due to the lack of updated open data sharing. We analyze the data we have from a research perspective, construct models, draw conclusions from them, and explore the information and patterns they contain.
Comment 2: The precipitation information was provided in terms of the metrological station, however, there is no graphical representation of precipitation/rainfall. On the same note, the authors did not establish a relationship between precipitation and silt. However, during the monsoon season, the sediment concentration rises. Please elaborate on the datasets used in the study. Please give a graphical representation of rainfall at each of the selected sites, as well as a link to sediment concentration if appropriate.
Response: Thank you for this valuable feedback. We have added the label of the rainfall station in Figure 1 Location map of the study area. The hydrological data used in this study were from the Yellow River Conservancy Commission of the Ministry of Water Resources and the Yellow River Basin Hydrological Yearbook, and the measured runoff and sediment data from 1954 to 2015 were selected from Huangfuchuan Hydrological Station, the outlet station of Huangfuchuan River Basin. We collected data from 12 rainfall stations in the Huangfuchuan River Basin, and used the interpolation method of selecting neighboring stations to interpolate the missing data. The Thiessen polygons module of Arcgis10.3 software was used to obtain basin surface precipitation data. In addition, we have added the calculation of correlation coefficients between precipitation and runoff (sediment). We have already added the above content to the revised manuscript.
Comment 3: The MK test methodology does not exist. Why wasn't the data pre-whitened before running the MK test? Innovative Trend Analysis is recommended for this purpose. Why wasn't this test performed?
Response: We feel great thanks for your professional review work on our article. First, an introduction to the M-K test method was added in section 2.3.1. In addition, according to your nice suggestion the content of the Mann-Kendall test with trend free pre whitening (TFPW-MK) was added. The calculation results are shown in Table 3.
Comment 5: The discussion section appears to be more of a results section, which makes little sense. Please establish a separate discussion section based on your take-home message for the readers in comparison to previously observed results, including key critical parameters for efficient model calibration.
Response: Thank you for this valuable feedback, we have added a separate discussion section in revised manuscript. The key parameters of the model are discussed in the uncertainty analysis section.
Comment 6: In Figure 2, the units must be mentioned in braces, for example, precipitation (mm) and all over the manuscript where units are mentioned.
Response: Thank you for the suggestion, we have added the units in braces in Figure 2 and Figure 3, and check the full manuscript for such problem.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper is presented well, however it needs to be looked into in the following aspect and corrected accordingly.
1. The figure 5 and 9 requires coordinate axis.
2. Conclusion part should be concise.
3. Figure11 is not clear.
4. All the references given in the text should be checked, and you can add some new references to support your article, such as “The long-term spatial and temporal variations of sediment loads and their causes of the Yellow River Basin”.
the quality of English Language is ok.
Author Response
We are grateful to reviewer #2 for his/her effort reviewing our paper and his/her positive feedback. Those comments are all valuable and very valuable and helpful for us to revise and improve our paper. We have studied these comments carefully and tried our best to revise and improve the manuscript. Revised portion are marked in blue in the paper. Below is our point-by-point response to the reviewer’s comments.
Responds to the reviewer’s comments:
Comment 1: The figure 5 and 9 requires coordinate axis.
Response: Thank you for your careful work，and thank you for discovering these issues. The coordinate axes of figures 5 and 9 cannot be displayed when inserting Word due to the high resolution of the jpg file. We uploaded vector images in EPS format during submission and have made modifications to the jpg images.
Comment 2: Conclusion part should be concise.
Response: Thank you for this valuable feedback. We have been concise the conclusion part in the revised manuscript.
Comment 3: Figure11 is not clear.
Response: Thanks to the reviewer for the question. We changed the resolution of Figure 11, increased the size of the figure, and re- submit the vector image in EPS format.
Comment 4: All the references given in the text should be checked, and you can add some new references to support your article, such as “The long-term spatial and temporal variations of sediment loads and their causes of the Yellow River Basin”.
Response: We sincerely appreciate the valuable comments. We have checked the references carefully and added “The long-term spatial and temporal variations of sediment loads and their causes of the Yellow River Basin” into the introduction section in the revised manuscript.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
