A Procedure to Develop Elevation-Area-Capacity
Curves of Reservoirs from Depth Sounding Surveys
Daniela E. Gogoase Nistoran1
Andrei Dragomirescu1
Cristina Sorana Ionescu1
Mihai Schiaua1
Nicolae Vasiliu1
1
Department of Hydraulics, Hydraulic Machinery and
Environmental Engineering
University Politehnica of Bucharest
Bucharest, Romania
daniela.nistoran@upb.ro, andrei.dragomirescu@upb.ro
cristina.ionescu@upb.ro
Abstract—This paper proposes a procedure for developing
reservoir elevation-area-storage capacity curves and
bathymetric charts of a reservoir from depth sounding surveys.
The Morii Reservoir, located in Bucharest (Romania), on
Dambovita River, was chosen as case study. A single beam
bathymeter with GPS was used in 2016 to survey the reservoir’s
bed. The acquired bathymetric data were denoised with a
custom-made program written in Python, that uses the
Butterworth filter and a zero-phase noise cancellation function.
The decontaminated data were subsequently interpolated in
ArcGIS to produce a gridded DEM of the reservoir bed surface
and a bathymetric chart with contour lines. The area-capacity-
elevation curves were obtained by calculating the 2D area and
volume between horizontal planes and the interpolated bed
surface. Comparisons with bathymetric survey from 2010 show
differences of less than 14% in terms of storage capacity and 8%
of the area of the reservoir during these 6 years.
Index Terms—area-capacity curve, bathymetry, data filtering,
GIS, reservoir silting
I. INTRODUCTION
Bathymetric charts and stage-area-storage capacity curves
of lakes and reservoirs are essential tools for water
management and sedimentation monitoring [1], [2]. Getting
high-quality depth sounding data is indispensable for creating
an accurate digital elevation model of the lake or reservoir bed
[3], [4]. GIS processing of the large amount of bathymetric
data requires preliminary correction and filtering of errors [5].
Reservoir bed mapping is currently a topic of large interest
worldwide and in Romania [6], given its importance for the
hydropower sector and sedimentation management. This issue
is particularly important on Arges River, along which most of
the reservoirs are more than 50% sediment silted [7].
978-1-5386-3943-6/17/$31.00 ©2017 IEEE
Mihail Georgescu2
2
Buzău-Ialomița Water District Area,
Argeș-Vedea Sub-District, Dâmbovița River
National Administration “Romanian Waters”
Bucharest, Romania
The present paper proposes a new procedure for filtering
data acquired from a depth sounding survey on a reservoir for
obtaining the area-storage capacity curves and bathymetric
charts.
A single beam bathymetric survey was conducted in 2016
on the Morii Reservoir (Lacul Morii in Romanian), from
Bucharest City (Romania). Large amounts of raw bathymetric
data (over 300 000 records) were corrected through a data
analysis procedure for removing numerous sources of errors,
such as: (1) multiple-return acoustic signals in shallow water
or false echoes (due to fishes), (2) corrupt DGPS signals, (3)
redundant depths recorded near the banks, and, most
important, (4) erroneous spikes due to the rotation of the boat
(roll, pitch, and heave). The last source of depth deviations
was decontaminated with the help of a custom-made program
written in Python. The program uses the Butterworth filter and
a zero-phase noise cancellation function [5], [8].
The objectives of the paper are manifold: (1) to document
the use of advanced instrument technology and software, (2)
to apply new data-processing techniques, (3) to present an
estimate of the storage capacity of the reservoir in 2016 in
comparison with the investigations from 2010 in order to
assess the sedimentation process of Morii Reservoir, and (4) to
develop a bathymetric chart for the management of the
reservoir during floods and draughts.
II. STUDY AREA
The Morii Reservoir is located in the NW of Bucharest
City, upstream of Ciurel Dam, impounding Dambovita River
(Fig. 1). The reservoir has an area of 2.5 mil. m2, with
maximum distances across and along the natural river thalweg
line (in black in Fig. 1) of 1.7 km and 2 km, respectively. Its
volume is of about 14.7 mil. m3 for the Normal Operating
 TABLE I. A SAMPLE OF BATHYMETRIC DATA

Temp HW
Time GPS #Sat HDOP Lat (°) Lon (°) (°C) (m)
18:09.4 DIFF 9 0.9 44.44731 26.03785 26.7 1.21
18:09.5 DIFF 9 0.9 44.44731 26.03785 26.7 1.21
18:09.7 DIFF 9 0.9 44.44731 26.03785 26.7 1.18
18:09.8 DIFF 9 0.9 44.44731 26.03785 26.7 1.19
18:10.0 DIFF 9 0.9 44.44731 26.03785 26.7 1.21
18:10.2 DIFF 9 0.9 44.44731 26.03785 26.7 1.19

Figure 1. Morii Reservoir and depth survey trajectories
Pool (NOP) stage (at 85 m with respect to Black Sea stage); it
has a mean depth of 7 m and a perimeter of about 7 km. Its
main purposes are both flood attenuation and leisure.
Additionally, the reservoir storage is intended to ensure an
ecological flow during draught periods along Dambovita
canal, which crosses Bucharest city from NW to SE.
III. EQUIPMENT AND DATA
The bathymetric survey was conducted with a Geod Bali
single beam sonar, from Cadden (France), equipped with a
GPS to measure horizontal position through its geographical
coordinates, x (longitude) and y (latitude), in degrees (Fig. 2).
The system calculates the depths, h, from the pool level, by
measuring the time t spent between sending sound pulses at a
fixed frequency and receiving their echo reflection from the
reservoir bed. Knowing the sound velocity in water, c,
corresponding to a certain water temperature, the depth can be
calculated with the relation h = c ⋅ t 2 .
The instrument has a differential GPS (with an output rate
of 10 Hz) and a 200 KHz bathymetric transducer (with an
output rate of 6 Hz), both mounted on a segmented rod
anchored on a BIC 252 boat, equipped with a 3.5 hp Mercury
engine (Fig. 2). The average Horizontal Dilution of Precision
(HDOP) for the geographical coordinates (longitude and
latitude in WGS84) equaled 1.1 (corresponding to 7–10
visible satellites, for clear, visible sky). The vertical precision
is of 0.2% of depth, corrected with water temperature (which,
during the survey, was in the range 24–28°C) and salinity to
get an accurate sound velocity in water. No corrections with
pressure were made, since the range of depth values had no
influence on celerity. The system can be linked to a laptop
Figure 2. Geod Bali bathymeter with GPS on the engine boat
with internet connection and Google Earth (for instant
trajectory view).
The depth soundings obtained are relative to the pool level
and the transducer immersion at the time of the survey, so,
during the days when bathymetric surveys were conducted,
both values were registered. The daily mean value of the
absolute pool stage with respect to Black Sea datum was read
at the staff gauge installed on the dam. These values were used
to compute the elevation of the reservoir bed from depth
soundings.
Tab. 1 presents a sample of the measured bathymetric data,
where #Sat represents the number of visible satellites, HW is
the water height with respect to reservoir elevation, and
Lat/Lon are the geographical coordinates (latitude/longitude)
in degrees.
About 34 pre-established transects (20 cross-section
profiles NE-SW, aligned perpendicular to the natural thalweg
line and 14 long-profiles NW-SE) were surveyed in the
reservoir (Fig. 1). Since the boat was not equipped with an
automated steering system to maintain a straight course, the
obtained trajectories were not rectilinear. However, by
interpolating the bed surface from the surveyed bathymetric
points within GIS environment, the only concern for the data
was to uniformly cover the whole reservoir. Data scarcity in
some areas is due to the presence of aquatic vegetation close
to the water surface.
IV. METHOD FOR BATHYMETRIC DATA FILTERING
It is well-known that bathymetric data can be very large
and difficult to manage, especially without the use of
expensive software for processing navigation data. The data
measured with the bathymeter is affected by inherent errors
and noise having multiple causes such as: static draft, vessel
speed, changes in draft with loading and speed changes, vessel
roll, pitch and heave (Fig. 3), sensor positioning (including
horizontal datum), misalignment angles between the sonar and
the motion sensor, sound speed structure, water state, etc. [9].
Other important sources of errors are: biological layers
(vegetation, fish) in the water column or objects on the
reservoir bed and bed penetration due to sonar frequency or
acoustic impedance of the bed [9].
Prior to using the raw measured data (depths and
positions) for generating the surface of the reservoir bed, the
errors and the noise must be filtered. For this purpose, the
digital version of the Butterworth filter [10] was used in this
 the filter roll-off is and at what frequency the stop-band

Figure 3. Rotational motions of a boat generating depth sounding errors

(roll and pitch)

paper as a low pass filter. This filter was chosen because it has
a more linear phase-response in the pass-band than other
filters, such as the Chebyshev Type I and Type II filters or the
elliptic filter. The main drawback of the Butterworth filter is
its slower roll-off, which requires a higher order to implement
a particular stop-band specification. The key parameters of
this filter are its order and the cut-off frequency. To properly
filter the bathymetric data, these two parameters should be
carefully chosen. All data processing was carried out using
Python scripts and functions from Matplotlib [11] and
SciPy [12] libraries.
The choice of the filter parameters is further explained by
using the data measured along two boat tracks (trajectories),
shown in Fig. 4. Track 1 goes from SW to NE, while Track 2
goes from SE to NW. It should be mentioned here that all the
measured bathymetric data were processed with the same filter
parameters, not only the data pertaining to Tracks 1 and 2.

Figure 5. Frequency domains of bathymetric data measured on the tracks

begins, i.e. at what frequency the filter gain drops below -

20 dB, in this case [8]. To evaluate the effect of the filter
order, frequency responses of four Butterworth filters were
plotted in Fig. 6. As the filter order increases from 3 to 7, the
limiting frequency of the stop-band decreases roughly from
0.15 Hz (more than twice the cut-off frequency) to 0.095 Hz.
A further increase in filter order from 7 to 9 does not bring a
significant decrease in the limiting frequency.

Figure 4. Tracks chosen to illustrate the filtering of the bathymetric data

To choose the cut-off frequency of the Butterworth

filter [10], all data were analyzed with the Fast Fourier
Transform (FFT) implemented in the fft function from the
SciPy library. Results are illustrated in Fig. 5 for Tracks 1 and
2. It can be seen that above 0.07 Hz the amplitude remains
very low. This behavior clearly corresponds to that of a white
noise signal of the measured data, which must be filtered out.
Therefore, the cut-off frequency of the Butterworth filter was
chosen to be of 0.07 Hz.
The order of the filter, i.e. the highest exponent in the
denominator of the transfer function [8], controls how steep Figure 6. Frequency responses of Butterworth filters of four different orders
Therefore, the filter order was chosen equal to 7, as a tradeoff
between limiting frequency value and computational time.
With the chosen cut-off frequency and order, a
Butterworth filter was created using the butter function from
the SciPy library. A zero-phase filtering (i.e. a filtering that
does not shift the signal) was then applied to the measured
bathymetric data using the function filtfilt from the SciPy
library.
V. RESULTS
A. Filtered Bathymetric Data
Obtained results are illustrated in Fig. 7 for the data
measured along boat Tracks 1 and 2. It may be seen that in
both situations the chosen filter and parameters perform well,
eliminating the random noise. There are, however, some
sensible regions where the bathymetric data are densely
scattered, being difficult to correctly assess the water depth.
Such regions can be seen along boat Track 1, between minutes
7.5 and 8.5. Similar issues were encountered along boat
Track 2, (from minute 2.4 to minute 4.2 and from minute 17 to
minute 17.8) and along other boat tracks, not shown in this
paper.
Figure 7. Raw and filtered bathymetric data on Tracks 1 and 2
B. Bathymetric chart
The absolute elevation of the reservoir bed with respect to
Black Sea datum was calculated by subtracting the measured
water depth, from the absolute pool stage.
The geographical coordinates (longitude and latitude, in
degrees, as UTM projection with WGS84 datum) measured by
the GPS were transformed into cartesian coordinates (in m, as
Romanian standard projection Stereo70 with S-42 datum). All
bathymetric data were converted under GIS environment to a
3D vector point shapefile with horizontal coordinates (x and y)
and elevation (or depth, z). Also, a contour of the reservoir
(without the island) was digitized as a 2D vector shapefile.
With the help of Topo to raster function from 3D Analyst
tools in ArcGIS [13] a gridded Digital Elevation Model
(DEM) was interpolated from the bathymetric vector-points
data inside the contour of the reservoir, based on the
“elevation” attribute (type PointElevation). The gridded DEM
was obtained with the Drainage Enforcement algorithm and
the Spot output data [13], resulting a 3D surface with square
cells of 7m x 7m. Then, with the help of Extract by mask
function of Spatial Analyst Tools in ArcGIS [13], the DEM
was cropped within the digitized reservoir contour (Fig. 8).
Contour lines spaced each 1 m of elevation were generated
from the DEM (with Generate contours). The lowest and the
highest points inside the reservoir are indicated in Fig. 8 with
red dots. The largest depth of the reservoir is in the proximity
of the dam, on the left side, whereas the lowest depth is
opposite, at the “tail” of the reservoir. This chart is very useful
for reservoir water management and flap gates operation.
Figure 8. Bathymetric chart of Morii Reservoir with contour lines of
constant elevation
C. Elevation-Area-storage Capacity curves
Area-storage capacity curves are prerequisites for knowing
the storage capacity as a function of pool level and for the
reservoir water management [14]. Also, by comparing storage
capacity curves obtained at successive times, engineers may
assess how river sedimentation affects the storage capacity of
the reservoir [15], [16].
from the 3D Analyst – Functional Surface Tool (ArcGIS) [2],
[13], [15] by intersecting the DEM with horizontal planes
drawn each at 0.5–1m elevation increments. (Fig. 9).
Figure 9. Area-capacity curves for Morii Reservoir. On the vertical axis, the
unit m BS means “meters above Black Sea stage”
One may see that during the survey conducted in 2016 the
pool elevation was lower than the NOP level.
VI. CONCLUSIONS
Raw bathymetric data measured on Morii Reservoir in
Bucharest (Romania) was denoised using a custom-made
program written in Python, operating with the Butterworth
filter and a zero-phase noise cancellation function.
The filtered data were used to interpolate a gridded DEM
of the reservoir bed surface in a GIS environment. By post
processing this DEM in ArcGIS, a bathymetric map of the
reservoir and depth-area-volume curves were obtained.
The stage-volume capacity curve calculated with the
bathymetric data from 2016 was compared with the
corresponding curve obtained from a previous (2010) survey.
Maximum differences less than 8% were obtained for the
area-elevation curve and less than 14% for the volume-
elevation curve, for stages in the range 80m-85m. However,
around NOP elevation, the differences in volumes are
negligible. Besides unavoidable errors in measuring depths,
filtering the noise, topobathimetric data quality, density, and
their interpolation procedure, other explanations for these
differences may be: a normal sedimentation trend of the
reservoir between the two surveys and different computation
methods of the area-capacity curves used for the two data sets.
Moreover, these results indicate a requirement to conduct
bathymetric surveys when the water level in the reservoir is
high. In the future, other methods for bathymetry interpolation
should be analysed and compared.
A 2.5% yearly rate of silting for a reservoir along
Dambovita River is considered as an average one by M.
Radoane and N. Radoane [7], similar with the value for the
Ialomiţa River, that flows through the same Romanian Plain as
Damboviţa River. In 6 years this would result in
approximately the same silting rate of about 15%, that the one
observed in this study for Morii Reservoir. This could also
explain the scattering of bathymetric data observed in some
areas of the reservoir. It is known that the acoustic waves
partially penetrate the sediments on the reservoir bed, leading
to unavoidable errors in the echo reflection of the sonar.
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