Author Archives: Laura Toran

Like everyone else, I am teaching online now.  It is a 3-computer production as you can see from my setup: When I am not teaching or zooming into meetings, I am trying to keep an eye on our field equipment … Continue reading →

This month was full of meetings … but the field season is not far away.  On the last day in January (too late for blog), I met with area hydrogeologists at Rutgers University to talk about textbook author John Cherry’s … Continue reading →

I started teaching a 1 credit drone course this semester to introduce students to the joys of unmanned flights  I have 3o undergrads and 10 grad students in the class. The course gives me an excuse to keep in touch … Continue reading →

Dr. Sarah Ledford and I just got a paper accepted in Hydrological Processes on our nutrient monitoring in Sandy Run (tributary of the Wissahickon).  We used hysteresis plots to distinguish nutrient cycles caused by uptake versus variable source term.  A … Continue reading →

Our group attended the Delaware Watershed Research Conferencen Nov 19 at the Academy of Natural Sciences.  This conference is sponsored by our funding agency, the William Penn Foundation. Postdoc Sarah Beganskas presented on our analysis of a network of temperature … Continue reading →

PhD student Ashleigh Kirker has been hunting for diatoms in stormwater runoff.  She is finding them!  We hope to look for variations with the help of colleagues at the Academy of Natural Sciences who have expertise in diatom identification. This … Continue reading →

Every two years, our funding agency, the William Penn Foundation, comes out to see our stormwater construction projects in the suburban watersheds.  This year we showed them some new monitoring to better understand how land use impacts stormwater runoff. Tour … Continue reading →

Mike Alonzo of American University visited our I-95 storm basins to show Josh Caplan and me how to use photogrammetry and remote sensing to map the canopy.  We collected photos at 2 second intervals along regular transects with the drone.  … Continue reading →

A group of about 50 researchers from various fields attended an NSF-sponsored Sustainable Urban Systems conference at Temple University this month.  This breakout group tried to envision new models for urban infrastructure.

Grad student Ashleigh Kirker and I keep going back to the hillslope at Roychester Park looking for ways to measure overland flow travel time.  This time we added dye pellets and watched the water color change as the infiltration moved … Continue reading →