Bathymetric and supporting data for Sugar Creek Lake near Moberly, Missouri 2018

Sugar Creek Lake is located approximately 4 miles northwest of Moberly, Missouri, in Randolph County, and has a full-pool surface area of approximately 330 acres. The lake primarily is used for recreation and drinking-water supply for the town of Moberly, Missouri. An earthen dam approximately 38-feet high and 1,125-feet long was constructed across the Sugar Creek valley in 1922. The elevation of the top of the dam is approximately 754 feet, with a 90-feet wide concrete spillway located near the right bank (west end) at an elevation of 746.8 feet. A previous bathymetric survey was completed in 2003. In cooperation with the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, the U.S. Geological Survey resurveyed the bathymetry of the lake to update the area-capacity table and compare the current bathymetric surface with the previous bathymetric surface.

Collection of bathymetric data in September 2018 at Sugar Creek Lake near Moberly, Missouri, used a marine-based mobile mapping unit that operates with several components: a multibeam echosounder (MBES) unit, an inertial navigation system (INS), and a data acquisition computer. Bathymetric data was collected using the MBES unit in longitudinal transects to provide complete coverage of the lake. The MBES was tilted in some areas to improve data collection along the shoreline, in coves, and in areas that are shallower than 2.5 meters deep (the practical limit of reasonable and safe data collection with the MBES).

Two bathymetric data sets collected during the September 2018 survey include the gridded bathymetric point data (scl_bath.zip; computed on a 1.64-foot grid using the combined uncertainty and bathymetric estimator method) and the bathymetric quality-assurance data set (scl_qa_raw.zip). The gridded point data used to create the bathymetric surface (scl_bath.zip) was quality-assured with data from 4 selected resurvey areas to test the accuracy of the gridded bathymetric point data. The data are provided in the Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) shapefile format consisting of a group of files that has been compressed into a zip archive that are named scl_bath.zip and scl_qa_raw.zip.

The shoreline was created from lidar derived 1/9 arc-second elevation data that was resampled to a 3.28-foot grid spacing. A contour line representing the lake spillway elevation of 746.8 feet, which is the extent of the lake shoreline when the lake is at full capacity, was generated from the gridded data. The data are provided in the Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) shapefile format and have the common root name of scl_shoreline. All files in the shapefile group must be retrieved to be useable.