AWWA Water Science Author Spotlight

Abstract

Having recently published an article in AWWA Water Science, Edna Fernandez-Figueroa answered questions from the publication's editor-in-chief, Kenneth L. Mercer, about the research. Carlson's Trophic State Index Is a Poor Predictor of Cyanobacterial Dominance in Drinking Water Reservoirs Edna G. Fernandez-Figueroa, Riley P. Buley, Mario U.G. Barros, Matthew F. Gladfelter, William D. McClimans, and Alan E. Wilson When I published the article, I was a PhD candidate at Auburn University's School of Fisheries, Aquaculture, and Aquatic Sciences (Auburn, Ala.). Since then, I have graduated and am working as a postdoctoral research fellow at Auburn University's Department of Geo-sciences, where my research is focused on understanding the spatiotemporal patterns of lake eutrophication throughout the contiguous United States. Edna Fernandez-Figueroa holds the fixed-wing multispectral drone she uses to monitor the water quality of commercial aquaculture ponds. I had the privilege of working closely with water utility managers as a PhD student in Dr. Alan Wilson's limnology lab at Auburn University. One of the environmental engineers at Birmingham Water Works, Dr. Jaquice Hughes Boyd, encouraged me to apply for an Alabama–Mississippi Section AWWA scholarship. The scholarship supports registration and travel to attend an AWWA regional conference, as well as financial support to be used for research expenses. I was fortunate to be awarded the scholarship in 2019 and was able to share my preliminary results of the article (published in 2021) with stakeholders at the meeting and learned about the primary research and management focus for water utility managers in my region. It was only natural for me to publish the research that was supported by this scholarship in AWWA Water Science. As a researcher, I believe maintaining a sense of curiosity and creativity is critical. Curiosity fuels us to continue to stay up to date and excited about what others are accomplishing in our field, whereas creativity allows us to identify and address the gaps in knowledge in a way that propels the field forward. All the practical skills that we learn along the way allow us to address the questions we identify, but I would not have gotten very far without curiosity, creativity, and lots of hard work. Edna poses with Oscar at the 2019 Alabama–Mississippi (AL/MS) AWWA regional meeting. Edna is holding her award for the AL/MS Section AWWA scholarship. As an undergraduate student, I had the honor of participating in the National Science Foundation–funded Multicultural Initiative in the Marine Sciences (MIMSUP). Our mentor through that program, Dr. Brian Bingham, truly embodied the idea of inclusion. Many of the MIMSUP participants, including me, were nonnative English speakers. This made understanding and communicating science particularly challenging. Brian dedicated an entire class to teaching us scientific communication and writing, which set me up for success for the rest of my undergraduate career and beyond. Moreover, Brian had a habit of writing “Thank you for making my job so enjoyable” on assignments on which we did particularly well. My PhD advisor, Dr. Alan Wilson, is a tough critic, and watching how he was able to identify gaps in knowledge and research flaws made me a more critical researcher, writer, and reviewer. As scientists, we are constantly judged on the basis of the merit of our proposals and research results, so learning how to accept and incorporate constructive criticism was one of the most important skills I acquired in graduate school. My PhD advisor, Dr. Alan Wilson, works closely with drinking water utility managers in our area to ensure that secondary metabolites produced by cyanobacteria, such as cyanotoxins and off-flavors, are not decreasing the safety and palatability of drinking water. Several water utility managers in our area were reporting issues with off-flavor compounds, which can impart an unpleasant taste and scent in water and are notoriously challenging to remove despite having no adverse health effects. Dr. Wilson realized that we didn't have reliable baseline data for the presence of cyanobacteria or the compounds they produce in the state of Alabama, so he requested funding to sample every single utility in Alabama for two years. The data collected through that project were used to publish this article and will serve as a baseline for several research projects to come. I am generally interested in pursuing efforts of an applied nature. I am very sociable, so interacting with stakeholders to learn about their research needs and how to address them is really fun for me. Those conversations have led to some of the most fun projects I have tackled, such as using drones for monitoring aquatic ecosystems. Ultimately, my interest is to generate results that other researchers can use to inform their next research question, educators or managers can use to inform the public of what their water resources look like and why, or to inform policy or management. Prioritizing the needs of stakeholders; pursuing research questions that directly address the needs of engineers, managers, and the public; communicating research findings in clear and accessible ways; and developing effective, low-cost water treatment solutions are the main ongoing challenges of our field. Organizations such as AWWA play a crucial role in these efforts, and I think active involvement with such groups is critical to identifying and addressing future challenges. Our AWWA Water Science article describes a study in which we surveyed every single surface water utility in Alabama for two years. All utilities were monitored at least once during the growing season, and several utilities provided samples more frequently. The goal was to determine how prevalent cyanobacteria and their secondary metabolites, such as cyanotoxins and off-flavor compounds, were in our surface drinking water sources. We found that although the drinking water sources have all of the environmental drivers for promoting the proliferation and dominance of cyanobacteria, such as elevated water temperatures and nutrient abundance, cyanobacteria, cyanotoxins, and off-flavors were relatively rare in the systems surveyed. However, this means that we have the potential for algal bloom expansion and intensification in our state, and our study provides a great baseline for informing policy and research to identify and prevent the proliferation and expansion of algal blooms. I was born and raised in Puerto Rico, which happens to have several bioluminescent bays. When I was in high school, I saw a newspaper article featuring a professor who was studying bioluminescent dinoflagellates in those systems; I was fascinated. I ended up reaching out to that professor, Dr. Miguel Sastre Wirshing, who helped me design a dinoflagellate diel vertical migration project for my ninth-grade science fair. That project really opened my eyes to the diverse world of phytoplankton, and I have been pursuing research related to these organisms ever since. Gardening is one of my favorite pastimes, and I find myself applying the scientific method to my gardening approach frequently. It is fun to figure out what grows best under different conditions to maximize yield, and it is wonderful to get a break from staring at my computer screen all day, processing data. Growing food has taught me a lot about being patient and the importance of letting the system tell you what it needs. To learn more about Edna's research, visit the article, available online at https://doi.org/10.1002/aws2.1219.