Caniapiscau Reservoir
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| Caniapiscau Reservoir | |
|---|---|
| Coordinates | |
| Lake type | Hydroelectric Reservoir |
| Primary sources | Caniapiscau River |
| Primary outflows | La Grande River |
| Catchment area | 36,800 km² |
| Basin countries | Canada |
| Surface area | 4,318 km² |
| Max-depth | 49 m |
| Water volume | 34.25 km³ |
| Shore length1 | 4,850 m |
| Surface elevation | 535 m |
| 1 Shore length is an imprecise measure which may not be standardized for this article. | |
The Caniapiscau Reservoir (in French, Réservoir de Caniapiscau) is a reservoir on the upper Caniapiscau River in the Côte-Nord administrative region of Québec, Canada. Since 1984, most of its waters flow into Hydro-Québec's La Grande River hydroelectric complex, in the James Bay watershed to the west. It is the reservoir for the Brisay generating station.
The natural lakes of the region were formed about nine thousand years ago as glaciers left Québec after having scoured the Canadian Shield for ninety thousand years. The prototype of these lakes was an ice dam lake that drained southwards into the Gulf of Saint Lawrence at a time when areas further north (Nunavik) were still glaciated. As post-glacial rebound elevated the southern part of the Canadian Shield more rapidly than the north, the region began to drain northward into the Caniapiscau River, a tributary of the Koksoak River, and ultimately into Ungava Bay.
The Caniapiscau Reservoir, which covers 4,318 km², or about four times the size of the natural lakes it flooded during impoundment from 1981 to 1984, fills a depression in the highest part of the Laurentian Plateau of the Canadian Shield. The total catchment area is about 36,800 km².
The area surrounding the reservoir is vegetated entirely with taiga, or boreal forest. It is in the zone of discontinuous permafrost and is accessible by bush plane and, since 1981, by a gravel road from James Bay (la Route Transtaïga). At the very end of this road, near the Duplanter spillway, is the former worksite of the Société d'énergie de la Baie-James, named Caniapiscau.
