Water surface elevation during high-water years vs. low-water years

Question

Hello,

AEM3D is consistently under-predicting water surface elevation (HEIGHT) during the years when the lake elevation is decreasing towards 50% capacity but over-predicts it by the same amount when water elevation is trending towards 100% capacity ( maximum departure is plus/minus 0.6 m at 50% and 100% capacity). The departure from observed lake water surface elevation appears to be a function of water surface elevation. Weather sensors are located off shore about 2 miles from the lake and I am wondering if wind sheltering is causing this (the lake is surrounded by hills). Can this be due to incorrect hydro parameters?

Thank you so much.

Seyoum

Answer 1

Hi Seyoum,

Wind sheltering is one possibility.  Another couple of possibilities are the quality of your inflow and outflow data, and if the discretization of your bathymetry has led to discrepancies in the storage curve.

Chris

Comments

Chris,
Thank you so much. I am suspecting the bathymetry because I did not resolve boundary water cells set to 200 by 200 meter rectangular domain, which is not often the case in the actual lake due to shoreline features. Is there any way to account for such discrepancy with the preprocessor?

Thank again

Seyoum

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We don't have any explicit tools for doing this, it's usually a manual process of comparing storage curves of digitised bathymetry with know storage curves and then trying to adjust bathymetry where appropriate.