Effects of Lake Water Level Fluctuation Due to Drought and Extreme Winter Precipitation on Mixing and Water Quality of an Alpine Lake, Case Study: Lake Arrowhead, California

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-18-2020

Publication Title

Science of the Total Environment

Volume

714

First page number:

1

Last page number:

17

Abstract

Lake Arrowhead, an oligotrophic alpine lake in southern California, experienced a drought period from summer 2012 to winter 2018 followed by a season of intense storms in winter 2019 resulting in lake flooding. This study investigates the effects of seasonal variations combined with 3.5 m water level fluctuation from May 2018 to April 2019, on water quality and hydrodynamics of Lake Arrowhead. In-situ measured meteorological data and water quality profiles in five different bays were used to develop and calibrate a three-dimensional lake hydrodynamic model. The mean relative errors between simulated and measured temperature and salinity profiles were 6.1% and 4.2%, respectively. Root mean square errors between the measured and simulated water temperatures were slightly larger during the stratified period. However, no specific pattern was observed in error analysis of salinity simulations. Strong thermal stratification during summer and early-fall resulted in hypoxic hypolimnetic waters with dissolved oxygen (DO) concentrations of... (See article for full abstract).

Keywords

Lake hydrodynamic modeling; Lake water quality; Sediment resuspension; Hypoxia; Light extinction coefficient; Contaminants of emerging concern (CECs)

Disciplines

Environmental Engineering | Hydraulic Engineering

Language

English

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