Bronwyn and Greg headed North
16/05/2012
PhD student, Bronwyn Woodward and Chief Technician, Greg Attwater left in the early hours of this morning for Lake Argyle. They will be driving up to the Kimberly in far north WA with the CWR boat, Djinnang IV in tow, in order to conduct a field experiment in the Lake. Jorg will be joining them on the 24th of May.
Lake Argyle, Australia’s second largest artificial lake by volume, is located in the Kimberley Region of Western Australia and was formed in 1971 as part of the Ord River irrigation scheme. Lake Argyle is typical of large lakes in the sub tropical and tropical climates where the stratification is usually weak relative to periodic strong wind events, causing the water column to mix partially or completely vertically on a diurnal or weekly time scale. This is modulated seasonally, with most mixing during the months of March to August and less in December. The lake has extensive shallow areas, but deeper water is found in the drowned river canyons in the northern sectors of the lake. At full supply levels, the lake stores 10.760 GL, covers a surface area of ~1000 km2, with mean and maximum depths of 10.9 m and 51 m, respectively. However, the storage volume, surface area and water depths vary greatly with water level fluctuations throughout the year.
The objective of the field experiment, part of Bronwyn’s PhD thesis, is to gain a comprehensive understanding of the hydrodynamics of Lake Argyle, in particular, differential heating and cooling between the shore and main body of the reservoir. The field experiment will be carried out using the newly acquired CWR research vessel Djinnang IV and the Portable Flux Profiler (PFP). The profiling will take place along several transects along the shallow bays of the reservoir to examine the exchange between the lake boundary and interior.
ARMS is currently running for Lake Argyle and will be used during the course of the experiment to predict the lake behavior and assist in refining the sampling methodology.
For more information on Lake Argyle, please visit the RSMO web page.
