Once we’ve got a topographic surface with a dam built into it, we can create a pond and calculate the volume of fluid that can be contained in the pond by running Structures >> Ponds >> Create Pond surface.

Both the Ooze and Surface Water modules have advanced conventionality for the creation, manipulation, and reporting of a pond surfaces.

Hit OK, and when prompted, select a point that would be inside the pond area.

If a point outside the pond is selected a warning will appear saying that a pond can’t be created.  Similarly, if the pond elevation is higher than the containment (dam) elevation, or there are holes in the dam (due to inadequate grid spacing or narrow dam structures) a warning will appear indicating that the pond can't be created at the target elevation. 

The pond surface will be created and added to the scene, and the pond volume will be written to the Output Window.

To develop a storage volume vs elevation curve for the pond, use the following command Grid >> Volumes >> Create basin peels.

This command will calculate the volume for horizontal slices inside the selected basin, from the lowest elevation through to the high elevation you nominate. This can be used for calculating the maximum pond volume (versus elevation) without the Ooze or Surface water modules, and also to develop the storage elevation curve for the above example using the Ooze module..

The command also calculates the surface area of the pond, at the upper value of each elevation interval.

Hit OK, select a point inside the basin, and when the command is completed, the file basin.SEAcurve.csv will appear in the Working directory and a 'Click to copy' hyperlink is also written to the Output window.

If we right click on the basin.SEAcurve.csv file and select open, the file will open in Microsoft Excel. If we click on the hyperlink the results can be pasted into Excel.