Crista Kieley conducting graduate research on the complex forces driving cyanobacterial blooms in warm monomictic lakes. Photo courtesy of Crista Kieley.
Crista Kieley, a graduate student in the Department of Marine Biology at Texas A&M University, researches the complex forces driving cyanobacterial blooms in warm monomictic lakes, which overturn only once a year. She focused her graduate research on these harmful blooms, a growing area of study, in the south-central United States.
Kieley was awarded a Mills Scholarship from the Texas Water Resources Institute and used it for academic and research support, expanding a study delineating the drivers of cyanobacterial blooms in warm monomictic lakes.
Led by Daniel Roelke, PhD., Kieley’s advisor and a professor in the Marine Biology Department at Texas A&M University at Galveston, and Jessica Labonté, Ph.D., associate professor of marine biology at Texas A&M Galveston, this research project explores the relationships between harmful algal blooms, watershed land use, nutrient loading, inflows, microbial functioning, and anoxia events.
The Mills Scholarship allowed Kieley and her fellow researchers to expand their cyanotoxin testing by 20% to include stream sampling of microcystins, a common type of cyanobacterial toxin, she said.
“So, the first thing that I wanted to look for was if we had widespread stream cyanotoxins, in this case, microcystins, because widespread cyanotoxins throughout freshwater stream networks have been observed in other parts of the country,” Kieley said. “But to my knowledge, no one’s done that in Texas.”
This led the group to find widespread microcystins in our streams, predominantly in East Texas. The next phase of her research was to create a mathematical model to simulate the loading of stream toxins into downstream reservoirs. This demonstrated that these streams can contribute a considerable portion to in-lake toxins, she said.
“People tend to not look at the streams as much, and I hope this encourages them to do that,” Kieley said.
Her research also works to connect stream microcystins to watershed land use. Preliminary results have shown a strong correlation between cyanotoxins in streams, land used for hay production, and historical precipitation averages, she said, and learning more about that connection is next on her research agenda.
These toxins can have major ecological and economic repercussions. In Texas, affected waterbodies can be closed for recreational use, leading to lost municipal revenue, and in extreme cases the toxins also pose threats to drinking water supplies.
The team does not yet have a definitive answer on how to reduce these toxins in our water bodies here in Texas, but their research is proving to be fruitful, and they are optimistic about the next steps in this process. Kieley is excited about the research she’s produced so far, thanks to TWRI support.
“I am very, very grateful,” she said. “This was a huge help to me and our research team. We’re all really excited about these results and grateful for the resources to expand the project.”
