Approximating the Volume of a Lake

by Jabreea Johnson

Submitted : Fall 2016

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The goal of this project is to use principles of calculus to best approximate the volume of Lake Behnke without the use of image analysis software. One of the first steps to calculating the volume of a body of water is finding the surface area. In recent years, people have employed image analysis software to calculate the surface area rather than using traditional measuring instruments. This current work employs a bathymetric map of Lake Behnke as well as contour integration to calculate the surface area of each stratum of depth. Once the surface area is identified, the volume is computed two separate ways using common formulas.

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