Dr. Claire Oswald is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies and the Academic Director of the Urban Water Research Centre . Dr. Oswald is a broadly-trained physical geographer with research interests in catchment hydrology, biogeochemistry, pollutant (e.g. mercury, chloride) fate and transport, and dissolved organic matter quantity and quality. These interests span both natural and human-dominated landscapes, from the Boreal forests of northwestern Ontario to constructed wetlands in the Alberta Oil Sands Region to urban and urbanizing watersheds in south-central Ontario. Dr. Oswald holds a PhD (2011) in Physical Geography from the University of Toronto, an M.Sc (2002) in Physical Geography from McMaster University and a B.Sc (1999) in Physics from McMaster University.
Current Graduate Students and Post-Doctoral Fellows
Sarah Ariano
EnSciMan PhD Sarah's research is focused on investigating the hydrologic cycle in urban landscapes and exploring issues with water quantity to help inform urban watershed management strategies. Nearly 90% of the Canadian population lives in cities therefore, investigating how land use changes and climatic variations in urban watersheds impact stream hydrology and water quality is important for protecting vulnerable aquatic ecosystems, drinking water supplies and municipal infrastructure. This work will contribute to advances in the development of policies and guidelines for managing critical urban water resources and lead to improvements for urban catchment flow tracer models and coupled water-quality-hydrology models. 
Bhaswati Mazumder EnSciMan PhD; co-supervised with Dr. Christopher Wellen After completing her Master of Spatial Analysis at Ryerson, Bhaswati returned as a PhD student to continue her work on water quality dynamics. Her research focuses on chloride trends and pathways in watersheds due to road salt application. Current research interests include chloride retention in soil, legacy impacts in urban and urbanizing catchments, and water quality modelling. 
Wyatt Weatherson
EnSciMan MASc Wyatt's research focuses on assessing regional variability in chloride concentration dynamics along the Niagara Escarpment. Wyatt is working in partnership with Dr. Jim Roy at the Canada Centre for Inland Waters, Environment and Climate Change Canada. 
Lorna Murison
EnSciMan MASc Lorna is a part-time EnSciMan student. Her research focuses on best management practices for reducing chloride application to parking lots. She also works full-time for Credit Valley Conservation doing real-time water quality monitoring in the Water and Climate Change Science division. 
Christopher Randall
EnSciMan MASc Christopher's research focuses on understanding the movement of chloride (from road salt) through 'neighbourhood-scale' sub-catchments of the heavily urbanized Black Creek watershed. Chris is using a mass balance approach to estimate chloride retention in the subsurface. 
Dr. Cody Ross
Post-Doctoral Fellow; co-supervised by Dr. Christopher Wellen Cody joins us from the University of Manitoba where he completed his doctoral studies in process hydrology. Cody's post-doctoral research is focused on improving nutrient load estimates using high-frequency data and assessing the feasibility of using high-frequency sensors to improve our understanding of water quality dynamics. Luke Moslenko
EnSciMan MASc Coming soon. Calder Stark
EnSciMan MASc Coming soon. Alumni
Dwayne Keir
EnSciMan MASc 2021 Dwayne's research focused on assessing the impacts of the early stages of urbanization on stream hydrological response. 
Arsh Grewel MSA 2019; co-supervised with Dr. Stephanie Melles; now a PhD student at McMaster University Arsh's research focused on identifying collinearities among commonly accepted drivers (landscape, hydrological, anthropogenic) of stream phosphorus and sediment concentrations. 
Wai Lam EnSciMan MASc 2019; now a PhD student at University of Toronto Scarborough Wai's research focused on quantifying chloride retention in stormwater management ponds using a mass balance approach. She also examined the receiving stream's response to acute chloride pulses from these ponds. 
Kayla Wong EnSciMan MASc 2019; now a Vancouver-based environmental consultant Kayla's research focused on estimating the age of water leaving stormwater management ponds and stormwater management pond treated catchments. 
Krystal Seibert MSA 2018; now a PhD student at the University of Guelph Krystal's research focused on understanding the relationship between hydrologic connectivity metrics within a watershed and mercury concentrations in fish, throughout Ontario. 
Colin Ash
EnSciMan MASc 2018; co-supervised with Dr. Stephanie Melles; now a medical student at Memorial University of Newfoundland Colin's research focused on understanding fine-scale spatial variations in in-stream chloride concentrations across three watersheds that span a gradient of urbanization. Colin's research was funded through an Environment Canada Lake Simcoe/Southeastern Georgian Bay Clean-Up Fund grant. 
Michelle Lucas EnSciMan MASc 2018; co-supervised with Dr. Lynda McCarthy Michelle's research focused on assessing the potential impacts of elevated chloride concentrations on the abundance and diversity of benthic macro-invertebrates in several urbanizing headwater catchments. Michelle's research was funded through an Environment Canada Lake Simcoe/Southeastern Georgian Bay Clean-Up Fund grant. |
Ela Lichtblau MSA 2018; now a GIS analyst with the Ontario Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks Ela's research focused on developing an automated approach to identify and map impervious areas in the highly urbanized Black Creek watershed using high resolution aerial imagery and LiDAR data. |
|
Doug Seaborn
MSA 2018
Doug worked in utility, telecom and local government GIS applications for 30 years around the world before deciding to refresh his technical skills in the Masters of Spatial Analysis (MSA) program housed in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies. His research focused on the influence of land cover change and long-term trends in water quality in three rural watersheds in south-central Ontario. Doug's research was in partnership with the Nottawasaga Valley Conservation Authority.
Doug Seaborn
MSA 2018
Doug worked in utility, telecom and local government GIS applications for 30 years around the world before deciding to refresh his technical skills in the Masters of Spatial Analysis (MSA) program housed in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies. His research focused on the influence of land cover change and long-term trends in water quality in three rural watersheds in south-central Ontario. Doug's research was in partnership with the Nottawasaga Valley Conservation Authority.
Felix Chan September 2016-August 2017; research technician; now a Water Resources Technician with Hatfield Consultants in Ft. McMurray Felix Chan worked as a research technician for the group from September 2016 to August 2017. He was primarily responsible for establishing the field program and protocols for the Innisfil Creek water quality monitoring project. Felix is now working for Hatfield Consultants as a Water Resources Technician in Fort McMurray. 
Mallory Carpenter MSA 2017; now the manager of the Floodnet NSERC Network Mallory's research focused on modelling chloride fluxes for the East Holland River watershed using INCA-Cl. Mallory's research was funded through an Environment Canada Lake Simcoe/Southeastern Georgian Bay Clean-Up Fund grant. 
Nikolas Dellic EUS; 2016-2017; undergraduate research assistant; now a Masters student in Architecture at University of Toronto Niko assistsed all members of the research group with fieldwork and geospatial data analysis. 
Anna Brooker EUS; 2016-2017; undergraduate research assistant, co-supervised with Dr. Stephanie Melles Anna assisted Claire Oswald with field work in Lake Simcoe and was an adviser for the planning commitee of Ryerson Urban Water’s Green Infrastructure Forum. She worked with Stephanie Melles on longitudinal survey of insectivorous birds breeding in the Riparian zone of Mimico Creek. 
Alexis Robinson MSA 2016; now a PhD student in the Department of Geography and Program in Planning at the University of Toronto Alexis completed her Master of Spatial Analysis under the joint supervision of Claire Oswald and David Atkinson (Polar Seal Lab) in May 2016. Her thesis is entitled: Spatial and temporal modelling of current and predicted streamflow of a High Arctic watershed, Pond Inlet (Mittimatalik), NU. 
Erin Nicholls September 2015-May 2016; research technician; Field Coordinator, Great Lakes Stream Monitoring, Ministry of Environment and Climate Change (2016-17); now a PhD student in the School of Geography and Earth Sciences at McMaster University Erin worked as a research technician for the group from September 2015 to April 2016. Erin is now working for the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change as Field Coordinator, Great Lakes Stream Monitoring. 
Greg Giberson MSA 2016; now a Data and Policy Analyst with the Ontario Alcohol and Gaming Commission Greg completed his Master of Spatial Analysis (MSA) with the group in May 2016. His thesis focused on developing a geospatial protocol for estimating watershed-scale road salt inputs for twelve southern Ontario watersheds. 
Sammy Tangir EUS; 2016-2017; undergraduate research assistant; now works at Clearwater Farms. Sammy assisted all members of the research group with field and laboratory activities. |
|
Griffin Morgan
MSA 2017; now a GIS and Policy Analyst with SLR Consulting in Toronto, ON Bhaswati Mazumder MSA 2017; now a PhD student at Ryerson University Kevin Duffin MSA 2019 |