Blog: Climate Readiness – Using advanced lasers and sonar to determine if Lake Oroville has lost capacity
With California experiencing extreme swings between severe drought to torrential rain, the Department of Water Resources (DWR) wanted to see if the State Water Project’s largest reservoir, Lake Oroville, had shrunk (or lost storage capacity) due to weather swings and almost six decades of service. DWR utilized the latest terrain-mapping technology to determine if there have been any changes in the lake’s volume to optimize how the reservoir is operated and ensure accuracy in estimating California’s water supply availability. … Starting with an airplane-mounted LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) laser system, DWR took advantage of the lake’s historically low water levels in 2021 to first map portions of the basin that would typically be under water during normal years. Then a boat outfitted with multibeam-sonar bathymetry instruments spent weeks in 2022 sending sonar pulses into the depths of Lake Oroville to map its underwater surface terrain. What resulted were highly detailed 3D topographic terrain models of the bottom of the lake, which DWR engineers used to calculate a new storage capacity of 3,424,753 acre-feet, approximately 3 percent less than previously estimated.
Related water technology articles:
- Phys.org/Agricultural Research Service: Scientists develop map-based tool to address water scarcity in Southwest
- Contractor: 8th biennial emerging water technology symposium brings water discussion to the desert