The unit acre-foot (acre-feet) is used to define large volumes of water. This is useful for computing the volume of water in ponds, lakes and reservoirs where the surface area can be measured in acres. The change in the height of the body of water can indicate the change in volume of water. An acre-foot is equal to:
- 1,233,481.84 Liters
- 325,851.43 Gallons
- 43,560.0 Cubic Feet
- 1,613.33 Cubic Yards
- 1,233.48 Cubic Meters
The Math / Science
Volume can be calculated by multiplying an area by a height.
If one uses the Volume from Area and Height calculator with inputs of 1 acre for the area an 1 foot for the height, you will see the following results:
Results:
1233.48183754752 m³
Inputs:
(A)"Area": 1.0acre
(h)"Height": 1.0ft
The text above was using the Share button that provides the results and inputs for any vCalc calculator.
Using Acre-Feet
In late summer of 2022, large volumes of water were released from a reservoir in the upper Colorado River Basin at Flaming Gorge. The volume was defined as 500,00 acre-feet. That resulted in a drop of roughly nine (9) feet of the Flaming Gorge reservoir in order to supply water down stream to Lake Powell.
The Colorado River Basin has federal reservoirs with approximately 58,000,000 acre-feet of water. 50,000,000 of that can be found in Lake Mead and Lake Powell.