Local water supply planning and management requires a good understanding of long-term hydrologic conditions within a watershed including streamflow and groundwater recharge rates. Often, determination of these parameters are difficult to determine and expensive for local communities. This project illustrates the development of a GIS-based model that predicts streamflow, groundwater recharge, and storm runoff for Pennsylvania watersheds. The model uses input derived from GIS analysis of several geomorphological, geological, soil and climate conditions for a watershed. The model uses regression equations that are easy to implement and input data that are routinely available throughout the state.
Dr. Day is an Associate Professor of Soil Science and Environmental Information Systems in the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences, College of Agricultural Sciences, Penn State University. His current position is divided among cooperative extension, resident education, and research. He serves as Director of the Land Analysis Laboratory, Director of the Cooperative Extension Geospatial Technology Program, and Director of the Penn State – Chesapeake site of the National Consortium for Rural Geospatial Innovations (RuralGIS). Dr. Day has over 24 years of experience in geospatial sciences. Dr. Day’s extension activities focus on technology transfer of geospatial information system technologies to users throughout Pennsylvania and the surrounding region for use in environmental assessment, agriculture, K-12 education, local government, and land use planning and management. Dr. Day’s research interests include (1) the development of new applications of advanced geospatial technologies in natural resource, agricultural, and environmental studies, and (2) field soil science emphasizing soil physical properties and processes. Basic research interests have been in spatial data analysis, soil morphology, soil hydrologic processes, watershed hydrology, and nutrient and sediment transport modeling. Applied research is focused on the application of advanced information system technologies such as geographic information systems, remote sensing, terrain analysis, global positioning systems and computer modeling, to environmental assessment and management.
Yuanhong Zhu is a Research Associate in the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences, The Pennsylvania State University. He works with Dr. Rick Day for the research project “Estimating ground water recharge rates using geographic information system techniques”. He received a Ph.D. degree in Soil Science and M.S. degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the Pennsylvania State University in 2002. His research interests include GIS applications in landing use planning, soil fertility and nutrient management, modeling, water management, and solute transport and fate in soil and water.