Time-lapse monitoring of root water uptake using electrical resistivity tomography and mise-à-la-masse: a vineyard infiltration experiment

Mary, Benjamin; Peruzzo, Luca; Boaga, Jacopo; Cenni, Nicola; Schmutz, Myriam; Wu, Yuxin; Hubbard, Susan S.; Cassiani, Giorgio

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/soil-6-95-2020

Articles | Volume 6, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/soil-6-95-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/soil-6-95-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 6, issue 1

Original research article

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06 Mar 2020

Original research article | Highlight paper |

| 06 Mar 2020

Time-lapse monitoring of root water uptake using electrical resistivity tomography and mise-à-la-masse: a vineyard infiltration experiment

Benjamin Mary, Luca Peruzzo, Jacopo Boaga, Nicola Cenni, Myriam Schmutz, Yuxin Wu, Susan S. Hubbard, and Giorgio Cassiani

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Final revised paper (published on 06 Mar 2020)
Preprint (discussion started on 22 May 2019)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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RC1: 'Review of manuscript', Anonymous Referee #1, 07 Jun 2019
- AC2: 'Response to RC1', Benjamin Mary, 15 Oct 2019
- AC5: 'Marked revised manuscript', Benjamin Mary, 15 Oct 2019
RC2: 'Review on “Time-lapse monitoring of root water uptake using electrical resistivity tomography and mise-a-la-Masse: a vineyard infiltration experiment” by Mary et al.', Anonymous Referee #2, 11 Jun 2019
- AC3: 'Response to RC2', Benjamin Mary, 15 Oct 2019
- AC6: 'Marked revised manuscript', Benjamin Mary, 15 Oct 2019
RC3: 'Review comments', Anonymous Referee #3, 14 Jun 2019
- AC4: 'Response to RC3', Benjamin Mary, 15 Oct 2019
  - AC8: 'Marked revised manuscript', Benjamin Mary, 20 Oct 2019
EC1: 'Discussion remains open until 3 July but please consider the 3 reviews received.', Paul Hallett, 14 Jun 2019
- AC1: 'Response', Benjamin Mary, 14 Oct 2019
- AC7: 'Marked revised manuscript', Benjamin Mary, 15 Oct 2019

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (04 Nov 2019) by Paul Hallett

AR by Benjamin Mary on behalf of the Authors (14 Nov 2019) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (02 Dec 2019) by Paul Hallett

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (14 Dec 2019)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Review of the revised version of: “Time-lapse monitoring of root water uptake using electrical resistivity tomography and Mise-à-la-Masse: a vineyard infiltration experiment” by Benjamin Mary et al.

The main revisions in the revised version of the manuscript are: (1) addition of a 1D hydrological model of the infiltration; (2) an extended discussion on the limited availability of supporting information; (3) reformulation of the objectives; (4) extended discussion on time-lapse data. Overall, I think that the authors did a good job addressing the reviewers’ comments and improved the manuscript significantly. Attached are some comments, which after their consideration, I believe the manuscript can be accepted for publication.

1. L160 – please also give the electrode length
2. L187 – It is not clear enough how you process the results from the MALM to obtain a 1D root length density. Please explain how that was achieved.
3. Table 1– Instead of the number of data points used for the inversion, can you please give the percentage of data that passed the reciprocity error threshold?
4. L217-218 – Can you provide information about the % of data that did not pass the 2% error?
5. L261 and Fig 3. – In the text you refer to the wrong Fig. please correct. In Fig. 3 you have wrong references to the a and b panels.
6. Make sure to correct all the references to Fig. 3 (e.g., L261, L263, 264)
7. L275 – correct the ref. to the figure.
8. In Fig. 5, the graphs for the boreholes. It is not clear what each of the lines means, i.e., which fig. is related to a specific borehole.
9. Rephrase L340-341
10. L 356 – missing Ref to Figure
11. Section 3.5 – Plotting 1D profiles of the resistivity (say under the root zone) can help in the comparison between the observed and modeled dynamics.
12. L401 – missing "in" ( “results ___ a simple”)

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RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (14 Jan 2020)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Dear authors, dear editor,

the manuscript "Time-lapse monitoring of root water uptake using electrical
resistivity tomography and Mise-à-la-Masse: a vineyard infiltration experiment"
describes electrical tomographic measurements on two vine plats during an
infiltration experiment. Here, the MALM method is further investigated as a
means to infer the distribution of active root distributions, based on the
basic premise that electrical current, injected into the stem of plants,
follows the root elements down to their endings, thereby forming a relationship
between root (end) distribution and electrical measurement characteristics.

This is the first revision of the manuscript -- I also reviewed the initial
submission.

In general I think the authors substantially improved the manuscript and shaped
the discussion of the available data. I also think that the MALM method,
coupled to imaging, will see substantial activity in the upcoming years, which
will make this manuscript part of a substantial base of knowledge from which to
investigate further.

Yet, I think some (minor) aspect still could use some polishing, and in general
I found a small number of inconsistencies/mistakes. Therefore I suggest a minor
revision to provide enough time for polishing the presentation and go over the
text again.

Comments:

- line 96/97: in this regard the study of Rao et al, 2019 would be a nice
addition to the references, dealing with exactly this type of influence.

https://doi.org/10.2136/vzj2019.04.0037

- line 145/146: I'm not a soil scientist, but based on the soil description
(sand), the generally low precipitation in the month preceding the
experiment, and the high air temperature, I would expect the SWC to be below
field capacity, and more approaching the wilting point (my reasoning: the
reported 18 mm cumulative precipitation in the month before would be gone after
4 days at 5 mm/day, and even ignoring runoff and drainage, at this point SWC
would fall below field capacity).

- line 160: electrodeS -> electrode

- line 161: I'm not sure I understand the notation of "(3/cm)"

- line 168: support -> supported

- line 171: "remoteS" -> "remote"

- line 187: result -> resultS

- What are the Archie-Parameter used? What is the assumed porosity
distribution?

I understand that you provide some of the answers in the review-reply, but
would strongly suggest to include them also in section 2.4.

- eq (1), comma after equation

- eq (2): I would suggest to differentiate vectors by printing them bold (as
done in line 228 for C).
Similarly, it would be nice to also mark matrices differently (eq. 3). My
suggestion would be to write vectors and matrices in bold, with lower
characters assigned to vectors, and upper characters to matrices.

- eq 3: I believe that W_eps and W_s need to be moved into the norms (this
would be consistent with standard least-squares inversion theory). Also,
currently you try to apply a Matrix (W_eps/Ws) to a single value (the norms).

End equation 3 with a point (end of sentence)

- is there any normalization included for the F_2 inversion? I.e., does the
injected current always sum up to 1 Ampere (or any other normalization
constant?).

- section 2.5.2 in general: Reading just this section, I get the strong sense
that the F2 inversion is the one that should actually be analyzed, and F1 is
only used to determine a suitable reference/starting model (lines 254++). Yet,
later on the F1-result are still prominently analyzed (3.3/3.4), while the F2
inversion results are only shortly discussed lines 336-341. I suggest to
adjust the formulations accordingly.

- line 264: citation error in pdf

- Fig 3: increase size of colorbar

- line 261: figure references should be figs 3 and 4, I believe

- lines 267 - 272: These three sentences are inconsistent. The first one
discuss a low resistive layer (consistent with ERT figures), but the second
and third one actually argue for increased resistivities using RWU. :-)

- lines 203 vs 275: the conductivity of irrigation water is inconsistent between
both lines. Line 203 mentions a conductivity of 720 mu S/cm, which I believe
convert to 13.88 Ohm m, while line 275 gives 15 Ohm m.

- line 280: Figure reference misses the figure number (should be fig 4?)

- Fig 4b: To be honest, I find the values confusing. Why not show percentage
changes with respect to T0? But I suppose this is a matter of personal taste,
so please ignore.

- eq 4 (and sentence after): comma after equation. Also, I would suggest to add
a note that this is only valid for pole-pole measurements, to prevent any
confusions.

- Graphics quality in general should be checked (could be a matter of the
review pdf)

- lines 286-294: I suggest to only talk in terms of resistances - it is can be
quite confusing to first read eq 4, and then only see resistances in Fig 5
(this is a presentation thing, you correctly mention the normalization).

- caption of Fig 5/line 625: here equation 2 is mentioned, yet you show raw
data and I believe 5e depicts computations with eq. 4?

- Fig 5: relate colors of vertical plots to electrode boreholes (e.g., to
electrode numbers in Fig. 7)

- line 346: missing Figure reference number

- Fig. 8: what are the dots? Data points determined as outliers?

- line 367: showS -> show

- line 429: perhaps replace "next" by "near"?

- section 4.2 reads very pessimistic, and implies that traditional methods are
not reliable and cannot be used for validation of MALM.
I would argue that traditional root sampling methods, although labor intensive
and with known limitations regarding fine root detection, should be the first
line of validation, given that soil/root sciences have been working with this
data for decades. Only in the second line of argumentation should alternative
means be discussed.
Also, in the case of vine plant roots, which I believe are of the woody nature,
even a destructive sampling by trench method should provide a pretty good idea
of root distribution. Coupled with knowledge about water distribution by
traditional ERT, the intersection of both distribution should provide us with a
pretty good first estimate of where RWU can be expected (and such help to
validate MALM results).

- In general I propose to rework the figures for:
a) consistent styling/layout
b) proper figure sizes (I believe that final figures should be either 8.3
cm (single column) or 12 cm in width, and it seems to me that a lot of figures
will have really small/unreadable text after adjusting for these sizes.
b) fix overlapping lables (e.g., fig 5).

- line 694, caption of Fig C4: descriptions of left and right panel are swapped

Looking forward to seeing the published version

Best regards

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (17 Jan 2020) by Paul Hallett

AR by Benjamin Mary on behalf of the Authors (27 Jan 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (28 Jan 2020) by Paul Hallett

ED: Publish as is (03 Feb 2020) by John Quinton (Executive editor)

AR by Benjamin Mary on behalf of the Authors (03 Feb 2020)

Short summary

The use of non-invasive geophysical imaging of root system processes is of increasing interest to study soil–plant interactions. The experiment focused on the behaviour of grapevine plants during a controlled infiltration experiment. The combination of the mise-à-la-masse (MALM) method, a variation of the classical electrical tomography map (ERT), for which the current is transmitted directly into the stem, holds the promise of being able to image root distribution.