Canberra
31.1 Evaporation from off-channel water storages
Supporting Information
This line item refers to the evaporation that occurred on off–channel water storages within the Canberra region. These water storages are private storages and include farm dams. For more information on these storages see the Off-channel storages region note.
| Evaporation from off-channel private store | Volume (ML) |
| Bendora catchment | 13 |
| Canberra downstream | 5,267 |
| Corin catchment | 4 |
| Cotter catchment | 11 |
| Googong catchment | 1,201 |
| Total | 6,496 |
Quantification Approach
Data Source
Provided by
Method
The Priestly and Taylor method to estimate potential evaporation (as calculated by the WaterDyn model [Raupach 2008]) was used to estimate evaporation from the private water store. The STEDI model (Sinclair Knight Merz 2011) was used to determining the amount of water available for evaporation from individual private storages.
Using climate grid data for the Canberra region (including precipitation, temperature and solar radiation data), monthly, open water evaporation data produced by the Bureau of Meteorology were calculated, based on daily gridded climate data that are available on a 0.05 degree (approximately 5 km) national grid.
The Canberra region was divided up into five subregions for the purpose of estimating the water balance of the private store. The four of the subregions were the catchments of the major storages and the fifth was the remaining land.
The private store consisted of off–channel storages filled primarily by rainfall-runoff. These were determined from waterbody mapping provided by Geoscience Australia and were waterbodies that were greater than 50 m from built-up areas in the Canberra region.
The potential average evaporation depth across the Canberra subregions was determined as the weighted mean of potential evaporation occurring from the relevant grid points within the region boundary. Points were weighted upon the area they represented within the Canberra landscape to remove edge effects (where the area represented is not wholly within the reporting region) and the effect of changing area represented with changing latitude. The average potential evaporation was used as an input into the STEDI model. The STEDI model determines the water stored in each private reservoir at each time point and determines the volumetric potential evaporation by multiplying potential evaporation by reservoir surface area. STEDI assumes that actual evaporation will occur at the same rate as potential evaporation unless reservoir empties, at which time evaporation will cease.
Assumptions, Limitations, Caveats and Approximations
- The Priestly and Taylor potential evaporation estimates are subject to approximations associated with interpolating the observation point input data to a national grid as described in Jones et al. (2007).
- The estimated volume available in storage for evaporation is subject to the assumptions associated with the STEDI model and the parameters used.
- The spatial extent of waterbodies subject to the assumptions and methods associated with the data provided by Geoscience Australia.
Uncertainty Information
The uncertainty estimate was not quantified.