Calculating water loss from lakes

We were challenged recently to come up with a simple way of estimating water loss due to evaporation on lakes or other water features. This can be useful if you are worried how much the water features are leaking, and also if you are trying to project a water budget that includes turf as well as water features.

The experts are not in total agreement, though most state that using somewhere between 105% and 167% of the reference evapotranspiration value…