Category Archives: Uncategorized

Evolving Soil Moisture Patterns at SMP I & J

Temple and Villanova installed a network of soil moisture sensors at a depth of 10 cm at the newly renovated Stormwater Management Projects I and J along the flank of Highway I-95. Tracking the near-surface soil moisture history is important … Continue reading

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ERT Surveys to Guide Infiltration Measurements

For several years now, I have been part of a team of researches from Temple and Villanova universities that is assisting the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) with the design and monitoring of bioswales, which are landscaped basins being constructed … Continue reading

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Geopython 2023 in Basel, Switzerland

This month I attended the Geopython 2023 conference in Basel, Switzerland. This was a well-organized conference with between 100-200 in-person attendees. The focus of most of the talks was on geospatial applications, particularly the rise of machine learning algorithms is … Continue reading

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Zeros and the Power of Junk on Time

Many years ago, when I worked at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, I remember complaining to a senior colleague that some of the massive project reports we received from consulting firms were little more than a brief introduction and a boiler-plate … Continue reading

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Transitioning Back to the Faculty

Looking Back My final year as Director of General Education (GenEd) has been a busy one and I have fallen behind on my blog posts. After five years as director, I feel a sense of satisfaction — that I’ve made … Continue reading

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Temple’s Tiny Libraries

Many events in Philadelphia are centered around the one book, one Philadelphia program. To encourage students to attend these events we need to get them to read the book, which in 2022 is Quiara Alegría Hudes’ memoir, My Broken Language. … Continue reading

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Academic Wordle

Like so many others, I have been caught up in the daily word puzzle Wordle. a craze covered in the New Yorker, and one that earned its creator a tidy sum when the New York Times purchased the rights.  Inspired … Continue reading

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Reported student workload in General Education

It is a common student lament: “A friend of mine is taking the same class from a different teacher and she has far fewer readings and papers.”  We’ve all heard it. Maybe we made similar complaints when we were college … Continue reading

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Musings on AGU in New Orleans and Funding Professional Societies

Funding Professional Societies I didn’t attend the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Society (AGU) this year, but my graduate student, Gina Pope, went and had a fabulous time in New Orleans despite continuing worries over the pandemic. But something … Continue reading

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A Summer Workshop On Proximal and Remote Sensing for Soil Investigations

In some ways, the virtual conferences that arose from necessity out of the pandemic are a boon for science.  No travel increases foreign participation and, arguably, student participation as well. A case in point is the upcoming symposium Application of … Continue reading

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