Author Archives: Laura Toran

Chelsea Kanaley successfully defended her thesis on “Turbidity and nutrient response to storm events in the Wissahickon Creek, Suburban Philadelphia, PA” April 19.   Her work was funded by the William Penn Foundation. Congratulations!  

A collaboration with Penn State researchers Henry Lin and Guo Li resulted in an article on examining infiltration patterns using geophysics.  Jon Nyquist and grad student Lacey Pittman are also co-authors. Photo of dye trace in a trench surveyed with … Continue reading →

Liz Cushman and I started installing her stormwater samplers this month, in between snow events.  We will be putting stormwater bottles on hillslopes to capture stormwater runoff.  She also successfully defended her thesis proposal, so the research is off to … Continue reading →

Ellen Herman, Jim Berglund and I had two new papers accepted this past month.  The first is a book chapter summarizing our recent data from central PA springs and comparing it to the data from Shuster and White (1972).  We … Continue reading →

I met with faculty and students at Bucks County Community College in their new science building this month.  The students had a lot of questions about the job market and I explained some programs in our department at Temple University … Continue reading →

I have three honors students in my hydro class this semester, all doing extra projects.  Tyler Wong is writing a program to extract storm data from data loggers files.  Olivia de Oliviera is sampling algae on rocks in the Wissahickon … Continue reading →

I am teaching Groundwater Hydrology in the spring semester for the first time.  My first challenge was finding a field trip for the first month of classes in the winter.  My second challenge was three honors students in the class … Continue reading →

The paper on geophysical monitoring of a tracer test at the Shale Hills Critical Zone observatory was accepted in Vadose Zone Journal: coauthors are Jon Nyquist, Lacey Pittman, along with Penn State collaborators Henry Lin and Guo Li.

I gave a webinar for Onset, the company that makes a lot of the data loggers that I use.  The webinar was about how to use water level loggers for low cost monitoring of stormwater control measures.  I showed a … Continue reading →

Students in my graduate contaminant hydrology class ended the semester with an exercise in the HAZWOPER safety training class.  We used a black light to see if they got through the decon station without touching their clothes.  Everyone passed.