Author Archives: Laura Toran

I teamed up with Jon Martin and Wendy Graham at University of Florida and Matt Covington at University of Arkansas to develop ideas for a carbonate critical zone research network.  NSF is funding this 5-year effort to  foster collaboration among … Continue reading →

We have a new Ph.D. in the department!  Jim Berglund defended and turned in his dissertation to the graduate school.  Graduation will be May 9. Congratulations Dr. Berglund!  Jim is joining the Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology at Montana … Continue reading →

Dr Martin Helmke of West Chester University came out to the Temple Ambler campus to show us different types of drones and answer questions about starting a drone research program. He took a photo of our group in standard and … Continue reading →

I helped organize a symposium in honor of Gene Likens winning the 2019 Franklin Medal in Earth and Environmental Science.  The theme of the symposium was Science Communication and we had a lively panel discussion about how to do high … Continue reading →

Funded by the NSF Geopath initiative, I am making a video to highlight careers in urban geosciences.    20/20VisualMedia filmed the GIS class this month, along with student research, and HAZWOPER training. We expect to have our cut of the film … Continue reading →

What are these citizen science volunteers looking at?   A mobile app that helps them download temperature data.  Postdoc Sarah Beganskas and I hope to train citizen scientist to help us collect more temperature data in urban streams.  We want to … Continue reading →

I ordered a pile of new waders and got my hydro class out in a stream to try them out.  Training the next generation of urban hydrologists.  

The undergrad hydro class learned how to slug test wells this week.  We went out to the Ambler campus where I have some wells in the Stockton formation, a nice sandstone aquifer.  Cold weather didn’t affect our test results, just … Continue reading →

Undergrad research assistant Ashlynn Young has helped us develop a technique for measuring organic matter the stormwater sediment samples that grad student Liz Cushman collected.  People keep asking us how much organic matter is in the sediment — now we … Continue reading →

Postdoc Sarah Beganskas and I went out early in February to install some temperature loggers for citizen science monitoring and ran into a limitation: the stormwater was frozen in the culverts and pipes.  We were also scouting sites to install … Continue reading →