West Virginia Lake Budget

Andrew Hay* and Leslie Hopkinson, Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV 26506

Field (Broad Category): Engineering (Agricultural & Environmental Sciences) 

Student’s Major: Civil Engineering 

This water budget was created with the intention of addressing future weather patterns and changing water needs. This project created a model for the reservoir Stonewall Jackson Lake in central WV. The intent was to visualize the impact of a drought or water stress on future water availability. The lake provides many large West Virginia towns such as Bridgeport, Weston, and Clarksburg with drinking water. The data used was pulled from the NOAA, USGS, and USACE for precipitation data, flow rate, and stream data respectively. This data was collected for four different years and was recorded per month. Water depth was the focus of our data and was collected by the following equation Precipitation + Inflow - Outflow - Evapotranspiration = Monthly Change in Depth (values recorded in metric SI units). At this time we still cannot predict water needs with enough accuracy to conclude the research. The current error is likely due to our inflow and further investigation to unmarked streams would be needed to reduce the error to a reasonable level. 

Funding: Unknown 

Program/mechanism supporting research/creative efforts: WVU's Research Apprenticeship Program (RAP) & accompanying HONR 297-level course