Modeling water quality in an oil sands compensation lake

Abstract

Surface mining in the oil sands region of Alberta, Canada, often requires that mining operators drain lakes or divert streams to access the underlying ore. “Compensation lakes” can be constructed to create new fish habitat to offset the loss of fish habitat due to mining activity and to satisfy conditions under a project’s Fisheries Act Authorization. The design of these lakes requires prediction of future water temperature and dissolved oxygen levels to determine the suitability of the new habitat for fish. These predictions are made using a calibrated hydrodynamic and water quality model. Until recently, there were not any built compensation lakes in the region with enough measured water quality data that could be used to calibrate such a model. This paper uses measured data from Horizon Lake, a recently built compensation lake, to calibrate Generalized Environmental Modeling System of Surfacewaters (GEMSS), a three-dimensional hydrodynamic and water quality model, used to model the lake. Horizon Lake was built in 2008 by Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. and water quality in the lake has been monitored for the last seven years. The results of the model calibration to observed water temperature and dissolved oxygen provide rates and coefficients, notably sediment oxygen demand, that can be used to improve model applications to other planned compensation lakes.