Characterization of the Transpiration of a Vineyard under Different Irrigation Strategies Using Sap Flow Sensors

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors

I read carefully read your manuscript that was well described several advantages of using sap flow sensors. I accept your conclusion to publish in this journal. However, I had a few unclear points in this manuscript. Would you please check the following points in the revised manuscript? 

1. Please explain why there is less data for 2015 in Figure 2 D.

2. Please explain why some data are missing (such as 2012 and 2013) in Table 2.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

1. A typical abstract have three sections: introduction, methods, and results. So, try to add some result numbers (i.e., r², etc.) to support your findings. Also, adding a small introduction before the objectives may help.
2. It would be nice if you can add numbers for the sub-titles (4.1, 4.2, etc.).
3. I also suggest adding some numbers in the conclusion.
4. In line 47, replace those with “which are”.
5. What does this mean “Sap flow sensors offer a priori the possibility of evaluating this consumption”? Rewrite the sentence in lines 430-433.
6. In lines 433-434 rewrite the sentence “However, when evaluating the plant’s response to different factors, there is a need to consider accurate adjustment of these quantities.
7. In lines 251-254, rewrite “Despite this good fit, authors such as [70] state as a limitation of sap flow sensors for T measurement the need to establish calibration coefficient "α" for each year and sensor, a limitation that may have reduced the adjustment obtained in this work.”. For example, you may say, “Other authors [70] indicated the need to establish calibration coefficient (α) for….”.
8. In lines 458, “The ETcSF had a good correlation with ETcLys (Figure 5). “it would be nice if you add the r² value.
9. In line 463, change in the evaporation model proposed” to “in the proposed evaporation model”.
10. In lines 466, “obtaining for this year an R2 = 0.93 (data not shown)” to “which resulted in an r2 value of 0.93 (data not shown)”.
11. In lines 467-468, change “Moreover, in 2013, with low crop water consumption, after budbreak phase ETcSF was proportionally higher than ETcLys, coinciding with the wettest spring of the four years of study” to “After budbreak in 2013, a year characterized with low crop water consumption and high precipitation during spring, ETcSF was proportionally higher than ETcLys.”.
12. In lines 477-480, change “It should be noted that Kcb corresponds in this case to ETc measurements obtained in the lysimeter when it is assumed that the soil is more or less dry, which is not entirely true since with drip irrigation there is always a part of the soil that remains wet, in addition to not considering some possible evaporation even when the soil has low water content.” to “Kcb is usually calculated from lysimeter ETc measurements when top soil layer is dry (ETc≈ETcb, zero evaporation), a condition that is hard to reach with drip irrigation due to the high irrigation frequency.”.
13. In line 483, try to use the same decimal places “3 mm day-1 versus the 3.96 and 3.62 mm “, for example “3.0 mm day^-1 versus 4.0 and 3.6 mm day^-1”. Do the same thing for “0.3 and 2 mm day^-1 versus the 0.14 and 5.24 mm day^-1” and in the entire manuscript.
14. In lines 489-490, change “The evolution of the parameters that characterized water consumption in the weighing lysimeter vines followed a seasonal pattern similar to other studies” to “the evaluated water consumption parameters followed…..”.
15. In lines 491-493, change “Although lower than those shown by these authors, the values obtained in our work indicate maximum consumption during July and August (Kc = 0.78-0.85) (Table 3) and may be due to differences in vegetative growth.” to “The difference in values from other studies might be due to the increased vegetative growth and consequently the increased water consumption during July and August (Kc = 0.78-0.85) (Table 3).” Or rewrite the sentence.
16. In lines 493-496, change “Comparing the evolution of ETc with TSF (Figure 3 A-D), greater separation between evolutions was observed in the summer months (DOY 152-243), starting from the beginning of irrigation when the area of wet soil increased.” What do you mean by evolution? Rewrite the entire sentence to clarify it.
17. In lines 501, change “in the initial stages of crop 501 development. “ to “in the early stages of crop development period.” Or rewrite it.
18. In line 505, delete “representing in our work maximum values of between”.
19. In line 546, change “accentuated” to “increased” or “magnified”.
20. Rewrite 550-554 to clarify.
21. Lines 559-560, change “The daily evolutions of transpiration (Figure 4) show a daily trend in accordance with the daily evolution of SR for the irrigation treatment.” to “The daily change in transpiration agrees with the daily change in SR…..”.
22. In line 560-563, rewrite “In grapevine, transpiration is driven by the VPD, mainly under non-water-limiting conditions in the soil, presenting a good coupling with the atmosphere, which gives special prominence to stomatal conductance in the control of transpiration [86].”.
23. In line 573, change “coincides” to “agrees”.
24. In lines 578-579, change “our experimental conditions, when replenishing the water consumed by 578 plants with irrigation” with “Under irrigated conditions”.
25. In line 581, change “similar” to “similarity”.
26. In 589-590, rewrite to clarify “This coincides with the coupling of plant response 589 with the atmosphere indicated by [91]”.
27. In 594-595, rewrite to make it a clearer statement “where there is a coupling between stomatal conductance and the atmosphere”.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for providing your manuscript to the Water journal. Generally, the manuscript fits into the scope of the journal, and it respects Scientific Best Practice in terms of the structure and content.

From my point of view, the manuscript has a high scientific quality, even it focuses on a very particular topic that does not have a wide readership. From the reviewers scientific point of view, I have only a few comments: to better illustrate the methdology and to facilitate its understanding to the reader, I recomment to add a flow chart that illustrates the methology. Moreover, in the results section, a paragraph on the validation of the results should be added, and in the results or discussion section, a paragraph on the unsertainties of the measurements should be added.

Furthermore, I have some formal comments. One refers to layout: the term "picture" must be replaced with "figure", and the quality of some figures must be improved as some figures is blury (for instance figure 1).

Finally, I want to mention, that I enjoyed reading the manuscript.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf