ADHI: the African Database of Hydrometric Indices (1950–2018)

Tramblay, Yves; Rouché, Nathalie; Paturel, Jean-Emmanuel; Mahé, Gil; Boyer, Jean-François; Amoussou, Ernest; Bodian, Ansoumana; Dacosta, Honoré; Dakhlaoui, Hamouda; Dezetter, Alain; Hughes, Denis; Hanich, Lahoucine; Peugeot, Christophe; Tshimanga, Raphael; Lachassagne, Patrick

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-13-1547-2021

Articles | Volume 13, issue 4

https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-13-1547-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-13-1547-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 13, issue 4

Data description paper

|

15 Apr 2021

Data description paper |

| 15 Apr 2021

ADHI: the African Database of Hydrometric Indices (1950–2018)

Yves Tramblay, Nathalie Rouché, Jean-Emmanuel Paturel, Gil Mahé, Jean-François Boyer, Ernest Amoussou, Ansoumana Bodian, Honoré Dacosta, Hamouda Dakhlaoui, Alain Dezetter, Denis Hughes, Lahoucine Hanich, Christophe Peugeot, Raphael Tshimanga, and Patrick Lachassagne

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Final revised paper (published on 15 Apr 2021)
Preprint (discussion started on 19 Nov 2020)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

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

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Review Tramblay et al. 2020 ESSD', Anonymous Referee #1, 04 Dec 2020
- AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Yves Tramblay, 13 Jan 2021
RC2: 'Review of The African Database of Hydrometric Indices (ADHI)', Hong Do, 17 Dec 2020
- AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Yves Tramblay, 13 Jan 2021

Peer-review completion

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

AR by Yves Tramblay on behalf of the Authors (22 Jan 2021) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (01 Feb 2021) by Lukas Gudmundsson

RR by Hong Do (14 Feb 2021)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The authors have extended the ADHI substantially in this revision, and I believe this data product (and any future updates) will be highly appreciated by the global community.

I don't see any major issues and am recommending this manuscript for publication in ESSD.

The paper still needs substantial editorial changes, which will perhaps be addressed during the production. However, I have some minor suggestions that the authors might consider in the paper's final form:
- Line 90: specify that the stations cover most “climatic regions”.
- Line 124: any reference/number describing the decline of the Africa river network?
- Line 141: these two sentences sound fragmented. Perhaps a transitioning sentence would help: "...time series of discharge data. To address these challenges, the focus has been shifted to publishing hydrological indices and signatures, which are useful to...
- Line 152: "a minimum of useful information" - the ADHI deserves more than this humble description.
- Line 170: please clarify whether the "10 full years" are consecutive.
- Lines 259-278: it is unclear what the outcome of the catchment quality control procedure was. For instance, how did the authors treat 37 stations with incorrect catchment areas reported in the metadata? Perhaps the authors would want to have some sort of a coding system to indicate catchment quality (if that has been implemented – please report in the manuscript). This information will be welcomed by prospective users.
- Line 323: the distinction between indices and signatures might not be clear to many users – some definitions would help here.
- Section 3: I feel that (i) “Available streamflow signatures and indices derived from daily discharge” might provide more information; (ii) sub-sections 3.1 and 3.2 could be merged into a single sub-heading “Streamflow Signature”; (iii) the 25 signatures calculated could be presented in a table form and grouped into different “purposes” if possible.
- Section 4: Perhaps this is an editorial decision but the current section reads quite strange (basically two long lists). I am not sure what would be the standard to present the attributes that have been published through ADHI, but reformating these two lists into two tables, each of the attributes could be assigned into a specific category, each table is associated with some description might help this section reads more attractive.

Once again, congratulate the authors on this impressive (and extendable) dataset. I’m looking forward to seeing its uses to improve our understanding of hydrological processes across the tropics.

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (16 Feb 2021) by Lukas Gudmundsson

AR by Yves Tramblay on behalf of the Authors (23 Feb 2021) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (09 Mar 2021) by Lukas Gudmundsson

AR by Yves Tramblay on behalf of the Authors (10 Mar 2021) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (16 Mar 2021) by Lukas Gudmundsson

AR by Yves Tramblay on behalf of the Authors (16 Mar 2021)

Short summary

This dataset provides a set of hydrometric indices for about 1500 stations across Africa with daily discharge data. These indices represent mean flow characteristics and extremes (low flows and floods), allowing us to study the long-term evolution of hydrology in Africa and support the modeling efforts that aim at reducing the vulnerability of African countries to hydro-climatic variability.