engineering

Navajo Lake

Navajo Lake is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Navajo Lake rather than just read about it. In short: Navajo Lake is a reservoir located in San Juan County and Rio Arriba County in northwestern New Mexico, in the southwestern United States. Portions of the reservoir extend into Archuleta County in southern Colorado.

Key takeaways

Navajo Lake belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Navajo Lake to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Navajo Lake from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Navajo Lake is a reservoir located in San Juan County and Rio Arriba County in northwestern New Mexico, in the southwestern United States. Portions of the reservoir extend into Archuleta County in southern Colorado. The lake is part of the Colorado River Storage Project, which here manages the upper reaches of the San Juan River, storing and releasing water that is used locally for irrigation, or ultimately reaching the Colorado River in Utah. Water is impounded in Navajo Lake by the earth- and rock-filled Navajo Dam, 3,800 feet (1,200 m) long and 400 feet (120 m) high, completed in 1962. The 15,600-acre (63 km2) lake is over 25 miles (40 km) long and lies at an elevation of up to 6,085 feet (1,855 m). The construction of the dam and the resulting lake flooded and destroyed one of the Navajos' most sacred sites. The Lake and associated shoreline areas near the dam in New Mexico and the river shorelines below the dam are part of New Mexico's Navajo Lake State Park, while the Portion of the shoreline and portion of the lake that is located in Colorado make up Navajo State Park which is managed as part of the Colorado State Parks system. The lake has smallmouth bass, black crappie, northern pike, channel catfish, and trout. The lake also is home to a healthy population of kokanee salmon, which though nonnative to the lake, are thriving. The waters of Navajo Lake forced hundreds of families to leave their homes and communities. The four communities affected were Los Arboles, Los Pinos, Rose and Los Martinez. The 1.7 million acre-foot reservoir displaced an unknown amount of farms and ranches. It has been estimated that almost 200 families had to move. Some families had been living there for nearly 80–90 years.

See also List of largest reservoirs of Colorado

References

External links Media related to Navajo Lake at Wikimedia Commons

Navajo Lake State Park

Illustrations

Navajo Lake: Location of Navajo Lake within New Mexico — Location of Navajo Lake within New Mexico

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Navajo Lake

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Navajo Lake claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Navajo Lake before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Navajo Lake ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Navajo Lake

In research: Navajo Lake appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Navajo Lake in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Navajo Lake is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1962 establishments in New Mexico, Bodies of water of Archuleta County, Colorado, Bodies of water of San Juan County, New Mexico, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Navajo Lake outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Navajo Lake in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Navajo Lake means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Navajo Lake out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Navajo Lake in simple terms?

Why does Navajo Lake matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Navajo Lake?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Navajo Lake.