Detection of Strobilurin Fungicides in Trout Streams within an Agricultural Watershed

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

- Line 79: pay attention to the spelling years before the present - YBP;

- Figure 1. Use a land cover map. this can improve the reader understand about the enviroment context of the watersheld;

- It was not clear to me how many samples were actually used in the analyses. the section of sampled collection and data analysis not clarify it.

- Table 2. Put how many sampled fungicides were detected in base flow and storm flow, not the only the overall.

- In all inferential statistical results tables use the found P values for not significantly differences.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

Please find below some comments on your article titled “Detection of Strobilurin Fungicides in Trout Streams within an Agricultural Watershed”, where you present the results of a project investigating patterns of 5 strobilurin fungicides in an agricultural watershed and their relationships with inferred fungicide application data.

I found this to be an interesting and well-written manuscript, with clear structure, sensible analyses and helpful discussion and presentation of results. I am happy that the article will be appropriate for and of interest to the readers of Hydrology.

I have a few small suggestions for changes:

-          In line 210, you mention using two-tailed t-tests. Can you confirm whether these were paired t-tests or whether the baseflow and stormflow datasets were treated as independent? It seems like there should be a pairing structure in the data, with baseflow/stormflow data for each location, for each fungicide.

-          In general, in section 3.6, I think it would be worth very briefly explaining why each test was chosen (e.g., for the t-test, there is the assumption that the two datasets (or the differences in the case of a paired t-test) are Normally distributed). I think it would be useful to verify that the assumptions were appropriately checked in each case.

-          In Table 1, I’d suggest avoiding using P for both p value and phosphorus – maybe just use “p value” in the column heading?

-          In Tables 3 and 5, I can’t understand why the p values are reported as less than or greater than values. Is it possible to just round the original values to say 2 decimal places rather than giving an upper or lower bound? (Of course, for p < 0.001, I agree that reporting the upper bound is sensible.)

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors, 

The scientific article is excellently prepared, a large amount of data has been analyzed. Research is relevant.

A few observations:

If the water samples are taken in the Whitewater River, what does it mean when the samples are taken in the same bay upstream and downstream. Is there a divide due to terrain?

Please indicate the standards against which Nitrate, Ammonia, Total Phosphorus, TSS and E. coli analyzes were performed

Has a non-standardized method been used for fungicide analysis? Because it is enough to indicate the certified standard and three parts of the methodology 3.3. - 3.5 would not be relevant.

3.6 The data analyzes section details the criteria applied to statistical data processing. Please indicate the statistical program(s) used for data processing.

  I propose results part 4.1. Fungicide applications within the watershed from line 227 to line 261 should be moved to the methodology part as a description of the object.

Results 4.2. and 4.3. statistical data of water quality indicators are presented in parts. There is a lack of a comparison of the water quality with the permissible limit values, as well as a document regulating the limit values.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf