Why and when it is useful to publish and share inconclusive results and failures: reply to “Reporting negative results to stimulate experimental hydrology”*

We thank van Emmerik et al. for their discussion of our opinion paper. We do not fully agree that publication of negative results will be very effective in promoting experimental hydrology. Instead, we think that experimental hydrology is considered to be more risky than modelling studies because of difficulties in publishing inconclusive results and the potential for failure.     

Large wood clogging during floods in a gravel‐bed river: the Długopole bridge in the Czarny Dunajec River,Poland

During floods, large quantities of wood can be mobilized and transported downstream. At critical sections, such as bridges, the transported wood might be entrapped and a quick succession of backwater effects can occur as a result of the reduction of the cross‐sectional area. The aim of this work is to explore large wood‐related hazards during floods in the gravel‐bed river Czarny Dunajec (Polish Carpathians), where the river flows through the village of D?ugopole. This work is based on the numerical modelling of large wood transport together with flow dynamics in which inlet and boundary conditions were designed based on field observations. The exploratory approach developed in this study uses multiple scenarios (193) to analyse the factors controlling bridge clogging: wood size, wood supply, flow conditions, morphology and obstacles in the riverbed. Results highlighted the strong control of log length (stronger than that of log diameter) on potential blockage probability; however, according to our results the main factor controlling bridge clogging was the flood discharge. River morphology and wood supply play an important role as well. The river morphology may reduce bridge blockage, as it influences flow velocity and depth, and creates natural retention zones for wood. In addition, the impacts of bridge blockage were analysed in terms of afflux depth and length, and flooded area. Results showed that bridge blockage may result in a significant increase in water depth (up to 0.7 m) and flooded area (up to 33% more), therefore increasing flood risk in the village. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Tracing the temporal evolution of soil redistribution rates in an agricultural landscape using 239+240Pu and 10Be

Two principal groups of processes shape mass fluxes from and into a soil: vertical profile development and lateral soil redistribution. Periods having predominantly progressive soil forming processes (soil profile development) alternate with periods having predominantly regressive processes (erosion). As a result, short-term soil redistribution – years to decades – can differ substantially from long-term soil redistribution; i.e. centuries to millennia. However, the quantification of these processes is difficult and consequently their rates are poorly understood. To assess the competing roles of erosion and deposition we determined short- and long-term soil redistribution rates in a formerly glaciated area of the Uckermark, northeast Germany. We compared short-term erosion or accumulation rates using plutonium-239 and -240 (^239+240Pu) and long-term rates using both in situ and meteoric cosmogenic beryllium-10 (¹⁰Be). Three characteristic process domains have been analysed in detail: a flat landscape position having no erosion/deposition, an erosion-dominated mid-slope, and a deposition-dominated lower-slope site. We show that the short-term mass erosion and accumulation rates are about one order of magnitude higher than long-term redistribution rates. Both, in situ and meteoric ¹⁰Be provide comparable results. Depth functions, and therefore not only an average value of the topsoil, give the most meaningful rates. The long-term soil redistribution rates were in the range of −2.1 t ha^-1 yr^-1 (erosion) and +0.26 t ha^-1 yr^-1 (accumulation) whereas the short-term erosion rates indicated strong erosion of up to 25 t ha^-1 yr^-1 and accumulation of 7.6 t ha^-1 yr^-1. Our multi-isotope method identifies periods of erosion and deposition, confirming the ‘time-split approach’ of distinct different phases (progressive/regressive) in soil evolution. With such an approach, temporally-changing processes can be disentangled, which allows the identification of both the dimensions of and the increase in soil erosion due to human influence. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Climate and relief-induced controls on the temporal variability of denudation rates in a granitic upland

How soil erosion rates evolved over the last about 100 ka and how they relate to environmental and climate variability is largely unknown. This is due to a lack of suitable archives that help to trace this evolution. We determined in situ cosmogenic beryllium-10 (¹⁰Be) along vertical landforms (tors, boulders and scarps) on the Sila Massif to unravel their local exhumation patterns to develop a surface denudation model over millennia. Due to the physical resistance of tors, their rate of exhumation may be used to derive surface and, thus, soil denudation rates over time. We derived soil denudation rates that varied in the range 0–0.40 mm yr^-1. The investigated boulders, however, appear to have experienced repositioning processes about ~20–25 ka bp and were therefore a less reliable archive. The scarps of the Sila upland showed a rapid bedrock exposure within the last 8–15 ka. Overall, the denudation rates increased steadily after 75 ka bp but remained low until about 17 ka bp . The exhumation rates indicate a denudation pulse that occurred about 17–5 ka bp . Since then the rates have continuously decreased. We identify three key factors for these developments – climate, topography and vegetation. Between 75 and 17 ka bp , climate was colder and drier than today. The rapid changes towards warmer and humid conditions at the Pleistocene–Holocene transition apparently increased denudation rates. A denser vegetation cover with time counteracted denudation. Topography also determined the extent of denudation rates in the upland regime. On slopes, denudation rates were generally higher than on planar surfaces. By determining the exhumation rates of tors and scarps, soil erosion rates could be determined over long timescales and be related to topography and particularly to climate. This is key for understanding geomorphic dynamics under current environmental settings and future climate change. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The importance of aspect for modelling the hydrological response in a glacier catchment in Central Asia

Understanding how explicit consideration of topographic information influences hydrological model performance and upscaling in glacier dominated catchments remains underexplored. In this study, the Urumqi glacier no. 1 catchment in northwest China, with 52% of the area covered by glaciers, was selected as study site. A conceptual glacier‐hydrological model was developed and tested to systematically, simultaneously, and robustly reproduce the hydrograph, separate the discharge into contributions from glacier and nonglacier parts of the catchment, and establish estimates of the annual glacier mass balance, the annual equilibrium line altitude, and the daily catchment snow water equivalent. This was done by extending and adapting a recently proposed landscape‐based semidistributed conceptual hydrological model (FLEX‐Topo) to represent glacier and snowmelt processes. The adapted model, FLEX^G, allows to explicitly account for the influence of topography, that is, elevation and aspect, on the distribution of temperature and precipitation and thus on melt dynamics. It is shown that the model can not only reproduce long‐term runoff observations but also variations in glacier and snow cover. Furthermore, FLEX^G was successfully transferred and up‐scaled to a larger catchment exclusively by adjusting the areal proportions of elevation and aspect without the need for further calibration. This underlines the value of topographic information to meaningfully represent the dominant hydrological processes in the region and is further exacerbated by comparing the model to a model formulation that does not account for differences in aspect (FLEX^G,nA) and which, in spite of satisfactorily reproducing the observed hydrograph, does not capture the influence of spatial variability of snow and ice, which as a consequence reduces model transferability. This highlights the importance of accounting for topography and landscape heterogeneity in conceptual hydrological models in mountainous and snow‐, and glacier‐dominated regions.     

Quality of reprocessed GPS satellite orbits

High-precision Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite orbits are one of the core products of the International GNSS Service (IGS). Since the establishment of the IGS in 1994, the quality and consistency of the IGS orbits has steadily been improved by advances in the modeling of GPS observations. However, due to these model improvements and reference frame changes, the time series of operational orbits are inhomogeneous and inconsistent. This problem can only be overcome by a complete reprocessing starting with the raw observation data. The quality of reprocessed GPS satellite orbits for the time period 1994–2005 will be assessed in this paper. Orbit fits show that the internal consistency of the orbits could be improved by a factor of about two in the early years. Comparisons with the operational IGS orbits show clear discontinuities whenever the reference frame was changed by the IGS. The independent validation with Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR) residuals shows an improvement of up to 30% whereas a systematic bias of 5 cm still persists.     

Vodyanitskii mud volcano,Sorokin trough,Black Sea: Geological characterization and quantification of gas bubble streams

Vodyanitskii mud volcano is located at a depth of about 2070 m in the Sorokin Trough, Black sea. It is a 500-m wide and 20-m high cone surrounded by a depression, which is typical of many mud volcanoes in the Black Sea. 75 kHz sidescan sonar show different generations of mud flows that include mud breccia, authigenic carbonates, and gas hydrates that were sampled by gravity coring. The fluids that flow through or erupt with the mud are enriched in chloride (up to ∼650 mmol L⁻¹ at ∼150-cm sediment depth) suggesting a deep source, which is similar to the fluids of the close-by Dvurechenskii mud volcano. Direct observation with the remotely operated vehicle Quest revealed gas bubbles emanating at two distinct sites at the crest of the mud volcano, which confirms earlier observations of bubble-induced hydroacoustic anomalies in echosounder records. The sediments at the main bubble emission site show a thermal anomaly with temperatures at ∼60 cm sediment depth that were 0.9 °C warmer than the bottom water. Chemical and isotopic analyses of the emanated gas revealed that it consisted primarily of methane (99.8%) and was of microbial origin (δD-CH₄ = −170.8‰ (SMOW), δ¹³C-CH₄ = −61.0‰ (V-PDB), δ¹³C-C₂H₆ = −44.0‰ (V-PDB)). The gas flux was estimated using the video observations of the ROV. Assuming that the flux is constant with time, about 0.9 ± 0.5 × 10⁶ mol of methane is released every year. This value is of the same order-of-magnitude as reported fluxes of dissolved methane released with pore water at other mud volcanoes. This suggests that bubble emanation is a significant pathway transporting methane from the sediments into the water column.