Author Archives: Laura Toran

I helped grad student Vince Carsillo install some soil moisture sensors at his field site.  We are comparing infiltration patterns where an old house was located on the Ambler campus.  The front yard was easy to dig, the house  not … Continue reading →

Steve Scott BS 2004 stopped by for a visit while hosting a Spark Innovation challenge. This is a think tank where students team up solve real world problems along side industry reps with a 24 hour deadline.  Steve and I … Continue reading →

Stephen Rier of Bloomsburg University visited the Wissahickon Creek this month to take a look at the aquatic habitat and find out about our monitoring program.  He shared pictures of algae and diatoms in the stream that we don’t usually … Continue reading →

The annual Geological Society of America (GSA) meeting was in Seattle this year and four students presented on different research projects: Shondricka Burrell: A GEOPATH-funded math mentoring initiative for retention Vince Carsillo: Mapping water infiltration of urban soils using electromagnetic … Continue reading →

During the month of September, we conducted two day-long stream tracer tests near Gwynedd Valley and Ambler.   During the tracer test we add two non-toxic, fluorescent dyes into the Creek and track how that dye signal comes through further downstream. … Continue reading →

Banner month for journal publications.  Two new ones accepted.  One is on the qPCR study of microbial community structure near the WWTP in the Wissahickon that my postdoc Sarah Ledford and Jake Price of Drexel University designed. STOTEN-qPRC_Final (proofs) The … Continue reading →

Liz Cushman joined our research group this fall.  She got her undergrad degree from Juniata College and worked in environmental consulting for several years before joining Temple to work on urban hydrology.  She has already been out in the field … Continue reading →

PhD student Jim Berglund got what we think is the first stormwater data for REEs.  The storm samples had higher concentrations (sample 18) and background (shown in sample 24) had stronger anomalies than storm samples.  This data will help us … Continue reading →

Congrats to Postdoc Sarah Ledford and her colleague Marie Kurz at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University on receiving funds for an NSF Rapid grant.  This is a grant to perform a time-sensitive experiment.   Their project makes use … Continue reading →

We simulated a stormwater event at the I-95 basins to see how they performed at capacity.  Dye tracers helped us follow the event, along with our geophysical survey, monitored by grad student Vince Carsillo and undergrad Tyler Wong.