Kyle Hurley, who graduated in July 2023, started a new position at the MD-DE-DC Water Science Center, US Geological Survey (USGS).
In his role as a data scientist, he’ll have the opportunity to use his impressive coding skills to contribute to interesting USGS science. Kyle did a lot of coding in R – including trends modeling with the USGS Weighted Regression on Time, Discharge, and Season approach – as part of his M.S. thesis.
Greg Woodward successfully defended his M.S. thesis in Environmental Science: Effects of De-icing Salt on pH And Ion Concentrations in Soil, Groundwater, and Surface Water.
In addition to working on his M.S. thesis, one of Greg’s big adventures in the last several years was being one of the founders of Baltimore Music Company, a new music store.
Greg has already started a job at the Maryland Department of Environment in the Water Supply Program.
During his time in the lab, Greg collected field samples, analyzed samples on the ion chromatograph, and much more. Among the projects he helped out with (several years back) was setting up a meteorology station at the Towson University Field Station in Monkton, MD.
MS student Emily O’Donnell started a part-time position at the MD-DE-DC Water Science Center of the US Geological Survey. She will continue her MS thesis work alongside her USGS work.
Emily started working in the lab as an undergraduate and has continued as MS thesis student. The Moore lab contributions to the NSF-funded Urban Critical Zone Cluster, including analysis of 1000s of water samples, would not be possible without Emily.
Congratulations to Kyle Hurley on successfully defending his Environmental Science MS thesis: Quantifying Four Decades of Chloride Pollution Inputs from Road Salt to the Baltimore City Region Drinking Water Reservoirs
After doing his undergrad in Geology at Towson, Kyle taught for a couple of years and then returned to do his MS.
His thesis included analysis of ~40 years of Baltimore City Dept of Public works data for tributaries feeding the Baltimore drinking water reservoirs and also new data collection, including water sampling in some of those same tributaries, collection of high-frequency data, and lab analyses.
He has already started in the Water Supply Program at the Maryland Department of Environment.
Kyle Farrington, a MS student in the lab, was the focus of a write up to highlight a current Environmental Science MS student.
He is in year two of his thesis work investigating regolith geochemistry and mineral weathering in two watersheds in the Baltimore region. His research is part of the Moore lab contribution to the Urban Critical Zone Cluster.
We have partially moved into the new Science Complex, which houses
Much of the instrumentation that we use in the Urban Environmental Biogeochemistry Laboratory is still in Smith Hall with new instrumentation in the process of being installed in the Science Complex.
Congratulations and a fond farewell to Melinda Marsh who has successfully defended and completed her masters thesis entitled: Using high-frequency data and concentration-discharge relationships to describe solute mobilization and transport in suburban and urban watersheds
Melinda’s very cool research is one of the first studies to use multiple ions and concentration-discharge (C-Q) relationships to investigate on the effects of impervious surface area in urban areas on solute mobilization and transport. Her next adventure is doing a Ph.D. at Penn State with Jon Duncan in the Watershed Ecohydrology and Biogeochemistry Lab.
Patrick McMahon (ENVS M.S. ’20) is first author on a just-published Environmental Research Letters paper with several TU co-authors including other ENVS M.S. students about the effects of stream restoration (via the legacy sediment removal & floodplain reconnection approaches) on water quality at six restored reaches in Baltimore and Harford Counties in Maryland.
The paper is part of a Focus Issue on Legacy Effects of Land use and Management on Water Quality and Ecosystem Function that was edited by Nandita Basu, Kimberly Van Meter, Shree Inamdar, Elena Bennett, Emily Bernhardt, and Michelle McCrackin.
P. McMahon, V. B. Beauchamp, R. E. Casey, C. J. Salice, K. Bucher, M. Marsh, and J. Moore (2021) Effects of stream restoration by legacy sediment removal and floodplain reconnection on water quality. Environmental Research Letters. 16: 035009.
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/abe007
Abstract
The effectiveness of many stream restorations in improving water quality is unmeasured. In the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, activity by European settlers resulted in upland erosion and deposition of sediments 1–3 m in thickness in stream valleys. Subsequently, streams incised those legacy sediments creating steep, exposed banks, infrequent floodplain inundation, and water tables disconnected from floodplains. Legacy sediment removal (LSR) and floodplain reconnection (FR) proposes water quality improvement by restoration to a hydrological state closer to pre-European. We investigated water quality at nine sites, six restored with LSR/FR and three comparison sites. Nitrogen baseflow concentrations and fluxes were elevated in urban and agricultural watersheds with little apparent effect due to restoration. Denitrification appeared to be constrained by carbon availability. Ion concentrations were elevated in all watersheds compared to a forested reference and represent a substantial ecological stressor for the post-restoration aquatic community. Storm event data from one site suggest small reductions in nutrient and sediment loads across the restored reach. High-frequency time series indicate that restoration effects are not observable at larger scales. The effects of restoration, particularly for denitrification, may not be observable for years and can be obscured by weather and climate-driven variability.
A huge congratulations to Patrick McMahon for successfully defending and completing his masters thesis entitled: Effects of stream restoration by legacy sediment removal and floodplain reconnection on water quality.
Patrick did excellent work studying the effects of stream restoration (via legacy sediment removal approach) at 6 sites in Baltimore County and Harford County, Maryland.
08/2021 update: Patrick started a job at Bluewater Baltimore.
We received a National Science Foundation grant as part of a collaborative effort to study the urban Critical Zone over the next 5 years with a great group of colleagues from several universities: Network Cluster: Urban Critical Zone processes along the Piedmont-Coastal Plain transition. This research is part of NSF’s broader Critical Zone Cluster Network efforts.
Collaborators include:
Here is Towson’s write up about the project:
https://www.towson.edu/news/2020/geology-nsf-research.html
UMBC did a really nice write up:
https://news.umbc.edu/bedrock-to-treetops-nsf-awards-4-8m-to-urban-environment-study-led-by-umbcs-claire-welty/