Acre foot facts for kids
An acre-foot is a special way to measure very large amounts of water. It's mainly used in the United States to talk about water in big places like reservoirs, lakes, and rivers. This unit helps people manage water resources.
What is an Acre-Foot?
Imagine a piece of land that is one acre big. An acre is about the size of a football field without the end zones. Now, picture covering that whole acre with water that is 1 foot (0.30 m) (one foot) deep. The amount of water needed to do that is exactly one acre-foot!
One acre-foot of water is a huge amount. It's the same as 43,560 cubic feet (1,233 m3) of water. To give you an idea, it's almost enough water to fill a large Olympic-sized swimming pool (one that's 8 lanes wide and 25 meters long).
How is it Used?
Water managers and cities use acre-feet to measure and plan how much water is available. For example, they might say a reservoir holds "10,000 acre-feet" of water.
A typical American family uses about 1 acre-foot of water in a year. This works out to about 892.72 US gallons (3,379.3 L; 743.34 imp gal) per day. In some dry places, like the deserts of the Southwestern United States, people save a lot of water. In these areas, a normal family might use only 0.25 acre-feet of water per year.
When talking about even larger amounts of water, people often use thousands of acre-feet or TAF. So, 10 TAF means 10,000 acre-feet.
See also
In Spanish: Acre-pie para niños
