Geographical Information Systems

Taylor GeoServices (TGS) staff has been providing technical geologic, hydrogeologic, compliance and operations support services to Shrewsbury Borough and have been responsible for developing all aspects of the geologic and hydrogeologic characterization work to the borough since 2010, including developing corresponding geologic and hydrogeologic maps.

The borough is in a drought sensitive headwaters aquifer system underlain by Precambrian/Cambrian schist bedrock of the Wissahickon Formation. TGS utilized GIS to model possible production well locations (in this case, production wells are defined as those that would produce 70 to 100 gallons per minute and have sufficient recharge area to sustain this withdrawal). In order to identify production wells, several factors were analyzed in GIS including fracture trace analysis, defining exclusion zones, and developing hydrogeologic criteria that would result in high yielding wells by evaluating topographic position, overburden thickness, and proximity to highly fractured zones and Triassic age metabasalt intrusion zones. The resulting map identified potential wells sites with characteristics that required further investigation for production well placement.

Benefits of this map project include the potential for future expansion of the database and map display. Additional information can easily be entered into the corresponding database and then displayed on the maps. Other map layers (such as aerial photography, parcel data, streams, etc.) can also be easily added to the project.