Lake Powell Elevation vs. Storage Relationship

How Lake Powell elevation maps to reservoir storage and area.

Lake Powell elevation and storage are linked by the shape of the reservoir basin. A one-foot change in elevation does not always represent the same storage change because area expands and contracts with basin geometry.

The U.S. Geological Survey and Bureau of Reclamation completed an integrated topobathymetric survey of Lake Powell in 2017-2018 to refresh elevation-area-capacity relationships.¹ This survey produced an updated elevation-area-capacity model updated to reflect decades of sedimentation accumulation carried into the reservoir by the Colorado and San Juan River inflows².

Elevation - Storage - Area Chart

Showing 1,821 USGS curve points combining elevation, storage, and area into a basin profile.

Data updated: --

Elevation -- ft | Storage -- acre-feet | Area -- acres

Data source²

Footnotes

1
Root, J.C., and Jones, D.K., 2022, Elevation-area-capacity relationships of Lake Powell in 2018 and estimated loss of storage capacity since 1963: U.S. Geological Survey Scientific Investigations Report 2022-5017, 21 p., https://doi.org/10.3133/sir20225017. ↩︎
2
Jones, D.K., and Root, J.C., 2022, Elevation-area-capacity tables for Lake Powell, 2018: U.S. Geological Survey data release, https://doi.org/10.5066/P9O3IPG3. ↩︎