Author Archives: Laura Toran

I helped organize a symposium in honor of Gene Likens winning the 2019 Franklin Medal in Earth and Environmental Science.  The theme of the symposium was Science Communication and we had a lively panel discussion about how to do high … Continue reading →

Funded by the NSF Geopath initiative, I am making a video to highlight careers in urban geosciences.    20/20VisualMedia filmed the GIS class this month, along with student research, and HAZWOPER training. We expect to have our cut of the film … Continue reading →

What are these citizen science volunteers looking at?   A mobile app that helps them download temperature data.  Postdoc Sarah Beganskas and I hope to train citizen scientist to help us collect more temperature data in urban streams.  We want to … Continue reading →

I ordered a pile of new waders and got my hydro class out in a stream to try them out.  Training the next generation of urban hydrologists.  

The undergrad hydro class learned how to slug test wells this week.  We went out to the Ambler campus where I have some wells in the Stockton formation, a nice sandstone aquifer.  Cold weather didn’t affect our test results, just … Continue reading →

Undergrad research assistant Ashlynn Young has helped us develop a technique for measuring organic matter the stormwater sediment samples that grad student Liz Cushman collected.  People keep asking us how much organic matter is in the sediment — now we … Continue reading →

Postdoc Sarah Beganskas and I went out early in February to install some temperature loggers for citizen science monitoring and ran into a limitation: the stormwater was frozen in the culverts and pipes.  We were also scouting sites to install … Continue reading →

Postdoc Sarah Beganskas is working with our colleagues in engineering, Rob Ryan and Eve Walters, to develop a calibrated model of WASP for the Wissahickon Creek. This model will help us understand how in stream processes are altered (improved?) by … Continue reading →

PhD student Jim Berglund’s second paper just got accepted in Journal of Hydrology.  Subtitled “Who_Needs_Anomalies“, this paper describes karst flow path mixing using REEs and Ca/Zr ratios. Citation: Berglund, J.L. Toran, L., and Herman, E.K.  In press. Deducing Flow Path Mixing … Continue reading →

Jim Berglund won the Rick Valentino Outstanding TA award at the holiday party in December.  This award is given to a TA that embodies Rick Valentino’s devotion to teaching. Jim’s puns and carefully crafted lectures are a winner with his … Continue reading →