Abstract

PAREDES, Javier; RUBIO, Carolina; SOLERA, Abel  and  ANDREU, Joaquín. Modeling the thermal dynamics of Mediterranean reservoirs: Amadorio Reservoir application case (Alacant, Spain). Tecnol. cienc. agua [online]. 2013, vol.4, n.1, pp.5-25. ISSN 2007-2422.

Water quality in lakes and reservoirs is influenced by several physical, chemical and biological processes. Among them, the thermal stratification cycle is one of the most influential factors. Increased water temperature leads to less solubility of oxygen and an increase in microbial activity. Therefore, modeling is highly important to the study of water quality in lake and reservoirs. This study presents the use of the DYRESM hydrodynamic reservoir model to simulate the thermal structure of the Amadorio reservoir during a six-year period. The Amadorio reservoir is a typical Mediterranean reservoir with high summer releases. The calibration and sensitivity analyses developed demonstrate the importance of the method to calculate cloud cover and the extinction coefficient in the results of the model. Otherwise, in this case and considering what is usual, wind velocity is not one of the determinant factors. Finally it is demonstrated that turbulence processes generated by high summer releases lead to hypolimnion temperatures, which are difficult to model using this tool.

Keywords : water quality modeling; reservoirs; hydrodynamic; water temperature; Amadorio Reservoir.