Dr. Claire Oswald is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies and a member of the Urban Water Research Centre at Toronto Metropolitan University. Dr. Oswald is a broadly-trained physical geographer with research interests in catchment hydrology and water 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 Research Group Members
Bhaswati Mazumder
MSA 2017; EnSciMan PhD; co-supervised with Dr. Christopher Wellen After completing her Master of Spatial Analysis at Ryerson in 2017, 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 2022; EnSciMan PhD; co-supervised with Dr. Carolyn Johns Wyatt's MASc research focused on quantifying exceedances of chloride water quality guidelines in streams along the Niagara Escarpment. His research was completed in partnership with Dr. Jim Roy at the Canada Centre for Inland Waters, Environment and Climate Change Canada. Wyatt is now a PhD student focused on investigating the impacts of climate change on winter road maintenance practices. He is currently collaborating with the Lake Simcoe and Region Conservation Authority. He also currently holds a Bruce Fellowship in water policy. 
Bryant Serre
EnSciMan PhD; co-supervised by Dr. Stephanie Melles Bryant's doctoral research examines the impacts of dynamic chloride exposures on lake invertebrates. Bryant conducts both field- and lab-based research and is the recipient of a NSERC doctoral award. 
Simon Dorenbaum
EnSciMan MASc Simon was an undergraduate research assistant in summer 2024 and started his Masters in January 2025. Simon's Masters research will focus on assessing the spatial variability of soil infiltration rates in the Black Creek research catchment and its implications for precipitation partitioning during extreme events. 
Garrett Holmes
MSA Garrett's masters work aims to develop a workflow for identifying Salt Vulnerable Areas in the Black Creek research catchment by using geospatial technologies to explore impervious surface cover accumulation and integrate stormwater sewer networks. As a research assistant he has helped to collect field samples from outfalls in the Black Creek and analyze the connectivity of the local sewer network. 
Gagan Atwal
Undergraduate Research Assistant Gagan held a NSERC Undergraduate Research Award in summer 2025 and carried out outfall surveys of Black Creek focused on water quality and sources. She is now focused on the storage and transport of microplastics along urban flow paths using novel tracing methods. Alexandra Johnston
Research Technician Alex has been a research technician with the group since 2021. She was an integral part of our 3-year wastewater-based surveillance project and now carries out field-based research related to urban water quality. AlumniCiera Cleary
Undergraduate Research Assistant Ciera held a NSERC Undergraduate Research Award in summer 2024 and carried out water quality related research in the Black Creek catchment. Leo Mursell
MSA Leo's Masters research focused on developing an automated geospatial workflow for impervious feature delineation, in collaboration with the Lake Simcoe and Region Conservation Authority. 
Christopher Randall
EnSciMan MASc Christopher's research focused on understanding the movement of chloride (from road salt) through 'neighbourhood-scale' sub-catchments of the heavily urbanized Black Creek watershed. Chris is used a mass balance approach to estimate chloride retention in the subsurface. Eden Hataley
Research Technician - Wastewater-based surveillance. Claire Gibbs
Research Technician - Wastewater-based surveillance. Dr. Eyerusalem Goitom
Research Associate - Wastewater-based surveillance. 
Calder Stark
EnSciMan MASc 2024 Calder's research investigated chloride concentration dynamics in shallow wetlands suitable for pool-breeding amphibians. By sampling swamps and marshes in the Greater Toronto Area, his research characterized spatial and temporal patterns in wetland chloride concentrations and helped to evaluate the risk to amphibian species across life stages in their critical habitats. 
Luke Moslenko
EnSciMan MASc 2024 Luke’s research focused on hysteretic concentration-discharge relationships at the watersheds of the Multiwatershed Nutrient Study (MWNS) to better understand nutrient dynamics during high flow events. Luke also completed a Mitacs internship with the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority. 
Lorna Murison
EnSciMan MASc 2023 Lorna completed her MASc while working full-time at Credit Valley Conservation doing real-time water quality monitoring in the Water and Climate Change Science division. Her research focused on best management practices for reducing chloride application to parking lots, comparing the effectiveness of beet juice and salt brine applications to rock salt. 
Hafsa Momin
University of Toronto Civil and Mineral Engineering MASc; co-supervised by Dr. Jennifer Drake Hafsa's research focused on the transport of chloride from urban runoff to headwater streams via stormwater management ponds. Co-supervised by Dr. Jennifer Drake at Carleton University, Hafsa's project highlighted the prevalence of chloride pulses in streams from stormwater management ponds in areas of southern Ontario where they are the primary method of stormwater control. 
Dr. Cody Ross
Post-Doctoral Fellow; co-supervised by Dr. Christopher Wellen; now an Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream at University of Toronto Scarborough Cody's post-doctoral research 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. 
Dr. Sarah Ariano
EnSciMan PhD 2022; now a Post-Doctoral Fellow at McGill University Sarah's doctoral research focused on investigating the hydrologic cycle in urban landscapes and exploring issues with water quantity to help inform urban watershed management strategies. 
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. |
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. |
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Griffin Morgan
MSA 2017; now a GIS and Policy Analyst with SLR Consulting in Toronto, ON Kevin Duffin MSA 2019 |