Author Archives: Laura Toran

Ryan Frederiks presented on hydrograph separation techniques at the Society for Freshwater Science conference in June 2024.  He is finding our urban watersheds have similar amounts of new fraction (or stormwater) at low flow, but deviate at high flow.  TTF … Continue reading →

Katie Alexandrenko presents her poster on her summer research project on road salt for the Velay Fellowship program.  Katie is continuing to work on the project doing well sampling and running samples in the lab. Sampling a well on Pennypack … Continue reading →

Lucas DeVito, Ryan Frederiks, Katie Alexandrenko and myself at a spring in Pennypack Park this summer.  Lucas and Katie were summer research assistants and Ryan is continuing as a postdoc in my lab.

Ashleigh Kirker was in town to pick up her PhD hood and announce news of accepting a faculty position at Virginia Tech.  She’ll join in January 2025 after wrapping up her postdoc at University of Alabama.

Jim Berglund visited Temple for the Earth Science Educators’ conference in July and took some time out to fly my new Autel drone.  Jim has been teaching at University of Plattsville for the past two years.

Dr. Ryan Frederiks joined the lab this month after completing his Ph.D. at the University of Delaware.  Ryan will be working on monitoring and modeling road salt in urban systems, among other urban hydrology projects. We installed sensors near a … Continue reading →

I worked with Ryan Neuman of the TTF Watershed organization to install some water level loggers in a large infiltration chamber recently installed in Alverthorpe Park in Abington. (That’s Tookany-Tacony-Frankford watershed, a stream that changes names twice along its flowpath.)  … Continue reading →

Josh Caplan from Landscape Horticulture and I went out to a new basin along I-95 to take some drone photos.  These photos help us monitor plant health in the basin.  This basin will use meadow grasses for bioinfiltration.  It collects … Continue reading →

I was interviewed on KYW radio to talk about how sinkholes form.  Recent sinkholes in the King of Prussia area have closed Route 202.  This site is near my urban spring monitoring sites — springs and sinkholes often go together. … Continue reading →

Ashleigh Kirker and I attended the 2023 Gordon Catchment Science conference in Andover, NH.  It was an amazing set of talks and posters with plenty of time to talk to other attendees.  Ashleigh presented a poster on her land use … Continue reading →