Dam Building
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Water is very important for farming. Farm dams are crucial for irrigation, cattle, and keeping rural communities alive in Australia and around the world.
But every year, millions of litres of valuable water are lost to evaporation, especially in hot, dry places like much of inland Australia.
As an expert dam builder with over 30 years of experience, I’ve seen firsthand the challenges and opportunities that come with managing dams through extreme weather events.
Whether you’re a landholder with a farm dam or responsible for a larger water storage, preparing your dam for drought or heavy rainfall is essential for protecting your assets, ensuring water security, and safeguarding downstream communities. In this guide, we will help you learn how to prepare your dam effectively.
To effectively prepare your dam, understanding the specific risks associated with your location is key. Regularly assessing your dam’s condition will help you prepare your dam for changing weather patterns.
This comprehensive guide will walk you through the best practices, strategies, and maintenance routines to help your dam weather the extremes of drought and deluge.
Calculating the right dam size and capacity for a farm dam requires balancing water demand, evaporation losses, catchment hydrology, and site-specific engineering factors. Here’s a systematic approach refined over decades of agricultural water management.
Evaporation can cause significant water loss from lakes, reservoirs, and farm dams, particularly during hot and windy conditions.
Traditional water management methods are no longer sufficient. This has led to the adoption of innovative solutions like windbreaks and floating covers. These approaches not only reduce evaporation but also improve water quality and promote sustainable water use.
If you own or run a dam—whether it’s for irrigation, livestock, or just a big water feature in your yard—you need to know how much water you’re losing to evaporation. To figure this out, you first need to know the area of your dam’s surface. This guide offers simple, practical ways to get the most accurate measurement possible.
Evaporation loss from farm dams in Australia is a great challenge to water security, ranging from 9% to 36% loss of total volume of water in summer. Reliable quantification and prediction of losses are complicated by numerous factors that include meteorology, dam shape, and inaccuracies in measurement. This paper explores the complexities of evaporation estimation, the limitations of current practice, and the potential for improvement through advanced modeling and abatement technologies like floating covers and windbreaks. Understanding these dynamics is essential to effectively manage water in Australia’s agricultural regions.