PRO-GRADE: GIS Toolkits for Ground Water Recharge and Discharge Estimation

PRO-GRADE is an ESRI ArcGIS 9.2 plug-in package that consists of two separate toolkits: (1) the pattern recognition organizer for geographic information system (PRO-GIS) and (2) the ground water recharge and discharge estimator for GIS (GRADE-GIS). PRO-GIS is a collection of several existing image-processing algorithms into one user interface to offer the flexibility to extract spatial patterns according to the user's needs. GRADE-GIS is a ground water recharge and discharge estimation interface using a mass balance method that requires only hydraulic conductivity, water table, and bedrock elevation data for simulating two-dimensional steady-state unconfined aquifers. PRO-GRADE was developed to assist ongoing assessments of the water resources in Illinois and Wisconsin, and is being used to assist several ground water resource studies in several locations in the United States. The advantage of using PRO-GRADE is to enable fast production of initial recharge and discharge maps that can be further enhanced by using a follow-up ground water flow model with parameter estimation codes. PRO-GRADE leverages ArcGIS to provide a computer-assisted framework to support expert judgment in order to efficiently select alternative recharge and discharge maps that can be used as (1) guidelines for field study planning and decision making; (2) initial conditions for numerical simulation; and (3) screening for alternative model selection and prediction/parameter uncertainty evaluation. In addition, PRO-GRADE allows for more easy and rapid correlation of those maps with other hydrologically relevant geospatial data.