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 change in storage, because the reservoir’s surface 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 its elevation-area-capacity relationships from the original surveys.1U.S. Geological Survey Lake Powell topobathymetric study https://doi.org/10.3133/sir202250171 The resulting model reflects decades of sediment accumulation carried into the reservoir by inflows from the Colorado and San Juan Rivers.
Using the data from that study2U.S. Geological Survey Lake Powell elevation-area-capacity data release https://doi.org/10.5066/P9O3IPG32, the chart below shows how Lake Powell elevation maps to storage. At higher elevations, a one-foot change corresponds to a much larger change in storage than it does at lower elevations.
Elevation - Storage - Area Chart
Current elevation accurate as of: --
Showing 1,821 USGS curve points combining elevation, storage, and area into a basin profile.
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. ↩︎