Author Archives: Laura Toran

We now have a field deployable PO4 analyzer to monitor nutrients in our urban streams.  Postdoc  Sarah Ledford evaluated the system in the lab and we deployed on the Wissahickon at the end of July.  More data!  

Working with Villanova University, we have been monitoring a blue roof (rainwater storage system) on an apartment just off Temple’s campus.  The roof was draining too fast to we modified the drainage pipes to try to increase storage time.  The … Continue reading →

The karst research team got a visit from Hank Edenborn of DOEs NETL lab and Dorothy Vesper from WVU to learn about their CO2 sampling and logging techniques.  The loggers are very expensive and not easy to calibrate based on … Continue reading →

No rain?  Just set up some sprinklers! We did that on campus to try out monitoring soil moisture during infiltration using an EM Profiler.  Undergrad Paul O’Neill is looking at this data as part of his summer research project.  Looks … Continue reading →

We spent a day getting samples from the headwaters to the Philly border along the Wissahickon and its tributaries.  Sarah, Marley and I each took a section of the creek to sample the day.  For this round of sampling, the … Continue reading →

We collected samples from 16 spring in central PA and and an urban karst area just outside Philly and had them analyzed for REE.  Rare earth elements (REE) have been used in previous studies to differentiate aquifer source rock and … Continue reading →

I added two new undergrad research assistants to the team.  Rachel Crowley is working on the NSF karst research project and Marley Chertok is working on the William Penn Foundation urban stream project.  In addition, I am co-supervising Paul O’Neill … Continue reading →

I finally tried out a time lapse camera for stormwater monitoring at Haines Run on the Wissahickon.  We hid the camera in a bird house and pointed it at dry bed next to the Haines Run channel. For some storms, … Continue reading →

PhD student Jim Berglund and I visited Birmingham Cave spring and others from the Shuster and White study to get samples for rare earth elements (REE), a new tracer we are exploring.  We also downloaded data from our temperature loggers … Continue reading →

Just received a new NSF Education grant through the GeoPATH program.  The project is   Career paths for urban geoscientists: Recruitment, retention, and apprenticeship.  I will be working on developing new education initiatives along with my colleagues Jon Nyquist, Alix … Continue reading →