Three-dimensional management model for Lake Mead, Nevada, Part 1: Model calibration and validation

Abstract

Lake Mead, the largest-volume man-made reservoir in the United States, faces a variety of challenges, including increasing demands for municipal water, 10 years of drought in the Colorado River system, lower water surface elevations, discharges of highly treated wastewater effluent, invasive mussels, and climate change. Lake Mead is an important source of water for 25 million people in the southwest U.S. and is also a National Recreation Area. Thus, it is imperative that the lake be adequately protected and managed to meet the often competing needs of the multiple users. A well-calibrated and validated three-dimensional hydrodynamic and water quality model of Lake Mead has been a key component of this management strategy, enabling hydrodynamics and water quality within the reservoir to be predicted and assessed for a wide range of anticipated conditions. The model was developed using the ELCOM and CAEDYM simulation codes, and has been calibrated and validated for the 2000–2008 period using measured field data for temperature, conductivity, perchlorate, bromide, chlorophyll a, nutrients (phosphorus and nitrogen), total organic carbon, pH, and dissolved oxygen. The model captured the hydrodynamics and water quality of this complex system well, and the standard errors of the model results for selected parameters were found to be larger than, but of the same order of magnitude, as the accuracy of the measured field data.