Over the last several decades, it has become clear that urbanization has had major adverse impacts on the hydrology and water quality of downstream water bodies. An increasingly popular solution for managing stormwater has been implementation of green infrastructure solutions, such as retention basins, constructed wetlands, or bioswales. Here I discuss some of my work at the site scale evaluating biogeochemical function of different types of green infrastructure, with insights from field investigation in New York and Pennsylvania, including right here in State College. Moving up in scale, I will also discuss insights at the city and watershed scales around the types of green infrastructure being implemented in various cities, as well as watershed-scale evaluation of hydrologic changes, with connections to green infrastructure implementation. I will wrap up with a brief discussion of some of the new areas of research we are pursuing, including strategies for optimizing green infrastructure planning.
About the speaker
Lauren McPhillips is an assistant professor co-appointed in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering at Penn State. Her work broadly focuses on hydrology and biogeochemistry in the built environment, with a particular interest in green infrastructure and ecological engineering solutions. She has a bachelor's degree in science of earth systems and a master's and doctoral degree in biological and environmental engineering from Cornell University. She was also a postdoctoral fellow for the Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Research Network based at Arizona State University, and has previously worked for the United States Geological Survey as a hydrologic technician.