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An acre-foot volume (not drawn to scale)

The acre-foot is a unit of volume commonly used in the United States in reference to large-scale water resources, such as reservoirs, aqueducts, canals, sewer flow capacity, irrigation water,[1] and river flows.



Since an acre is defined as a chain by a furlong (i.e. 66 ft × 660 ft or 20.12 m × 201.17 m), an acre-foot is 43,560 cubic feet (1,233 m3).


.11 acre-foot = 43,560 cubic feet = 75,271,680 cu in
1 international acre-foot = 43,560 international cubic feet
≈ 1233.48183754752 m3
≈ 271,328.072596 imp gal
325,851 37 US gal
≈ 1233.4892384681 m3
≈ 271,329.700571 imp gal
≈ 325,853.383688 U.S. gal[nb 1]



The acre-foot (or more specifically the time rate unit of acre-foot per year) has been used historically in the U.S. in many water-management agreements, for example the Colorado River Compact, which divides 15 million acre-feet (MAF) per year (586 m3/s) among seven western U.S. states.

Elsewhere in the world, where the metric system is in common use, water volumes can be expressed in either cubic metres (as in flow rates of cubic metres/second, or "cumecs") or, for water usage, storage or irrigation volumes, in kilolitres (kL = 1 cubic metre), megalitres (ML = 1,000 cubic metres), or gigalitres (GL = 1,000,000 cubic metres). One acre-foot is approximately equivalent to 1.233 megalitres.

See also[edit]




  2. ^ The state of Montana assumes 1.0 acre-foot per year for a family of five. See Water Rights Bureau; state of Montana (April 13, 2004). "Form No. 627 R8/03 Notice of Water Right" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 25 January 2008. Retrieved 2008-01-30. 