Author Archives: Laura Toran

I am meeting with a couple of undergraduates this semester for independent studies. Rachel Crowly is reading papers about contamination in karst systems, and will follow up with some sampling of local springs.  Trevor Murray is reading about groundwater-surface water … Continue reading →

We pulled our urban monitoring data loggers  and karst spring ISCO samplers to keep them from freezing over the winter and do some calibration.  Looking at all of the data we collected inspired us to write up some of the … Continue reading →

After a month of meetings with sponsors and regulators to keep the urban hydrology research funded, it was nice to spend some time in the lab teaching this year’s hydro class about solute transport and dispersion. We conducted a tracer … Continue reading →

Grad student Jim Berglund and I are reviewing the groundwater model FEFLOW for use in his PhD research.  We are looking for a code that does flow and transport in conduits, and FEFLOW has the added bonus of allowing heat … Continue reading →

I installed my first wireless logger to replace a broken weather station logger at Temple Ambler.  Now the data can be checked online!  The URL is https://www.hobolink.com/p/5d3befc35fa8777268a5cd604b62564c Help from IT at Temple Ambler was much appreciated during the set up.

I set up stormwater samplers at the College Settlement site in the headwaters of the Pennypack.  The samplers are above and below a large retention basin that captures runoff from neighborhoods along Welsh Road.  Villanova has extensive water budget monitoring … Continue reading →

We repeated our longitudinal sampling in the Wissahickon from the headwaters to the Philly border.  Postdoc Sarah Ledford organized five of us to sample different segments and we met to collect samples in the center of the watershed within 15 … Continue reading →

I tried out a new sediment sampler with grad student Alex Nawotke.  The Helley-Smith sampler uses a net to catch suspended fines. We used it to collect fines in the bedload by kicking them up to create a suspension.  Alex … Continue reading →

The summer students research assistants presented posters at the college undergraduate research symposium.  Congrats to Rachel Crowley (right photo) for winning 3rd place.  She presented on the karst research conducted this summer.  Congrats also to Paul O’Neill (left photo, co … Continue reading →

GSA is early this year, but we still managed to put together 5 presentations for Denver.  Three talks on karst springs, one on microbial communities in urban streams, and one on our new education grant.  Co-authors and titles are listed … Continue reading →