Author Archives: Laura Toran

Between Two Owls is hosted by CST Advising to highlight CST faculty members and the work they do. These short interviews (roughly 10 minutes) cover topics such as a professor’s educational background, professional experience, and personal narrative.   My interview included … Continue reading →

My undergraduate assistant Rachel Pendrak and I started biweekly sampling on the Pennypack Creek for the new NSF CZN grant.  These data will be used to understand weather processes in urban environments.    We sample on a regular schedule, rain or … Continue reading →

Two papers for publication were accepted the past month or so.  One is in Freshwater Science on a tracer test to measure stream metabolism in the Wissahickon Creek (Ledfordetal_RazRhu).  The second is on a model of sediment loading and settling … Continue reading →

This month we flew the I-95 stormwater basins with a drone to capture photogrammetry images that measure canopy height.  My colleague, Josh Caplin, will compare these images to the ones we took a year ago to look for growth or … Continue reading →

As part of the new Urban Critical Zone Network grant, our team is collecting water isotope data from streams to identify source areas.  An important source to characterize is rainwater, but you need a local meteoric water line (the relationship … Continue reading →

We wrapped up the virtual Carbonate RCN conference this month, with various study groups honing research questions for future work. Find out more at the RCN website!

We took a tour of meadows in the Pennypack Creek with our collaborators at the Pennypack Ecological Restoration Trust and new grad student Bojan Milinic.  Bojan is interested in using geophysics to study how infiltration differs with different plantings.

I joined with a team of scientists along the east coast to develop a successful proposal to study critical zone processes in urban settings.  We plan to examine how urbanization results in a shift from supply-limited transport of weathering agents … Continue reading →

Dr. Jim Berglund and I produced a virtual field trip together this summer.  We interviewed well-known karst hydrologist Dr. Will White and combined the interview with drone footage of Jim’s PhD dissertation site to produce the 5 minute youtube video.  … Continue reading →

Dr. Sarah Beganskas and I are launching a Citizen Science Data Portal for our stream temperature monitoring project.  This portal allows our volunteers (and you) to see all of the data we are collecting and compare sites. Sarah has also … Continue reading →