Cottingham studies the dynamics of lake plankton communities and relationships between terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. She joined the faculty at Dartmouth College in 1998. She has studied the reasons that cyanobacteriabloom occur, and the consequences of them blooming in low nutrient clear-water lakes. She has investigated ways to manage the growth of these blooms and mitigate the negative impacts of them on ecosystems.[6] Cottingham showed that cyanobacterial blooms create their own optimised environments, driving nitrogen and phosphorus cycling in otherwise low nutrient lakes.[7][8] She has started work with computer scientists to use big data and artificial intelligence to understand cyanobacteria across the East Coast.[9] Data will be collected using robotic boats, buoys and drones equipped with cameras.[9]
Cottingham also works on environmental health, in particular the occurrence of arsenic in food and drinking water. Her 2012 research on pregnant women's rice consumption and arsenic exposure was selected by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) as one of the most important papers of the year.[10][11] She identified that women who ate rice had considerably higher urinary arsenic concentrations than those who did not consume rice.[11][12] She went on to show that white wine, beer, Brussels sprouts and salmon significantly increased arsenic levels in humans.[13]
Academic service
From 2017 to 2019 Cottingham served as a National Science Foundation Program Director in the Division of Environmental Biology.[14] She returned to Dartmouth College in 2019. Cottingham is involved with several public engagement projects, including acting as Vice Chair of the Science Advisory Boards of the Lake Sunapee Protective Association and Jefferson Project at Lake George.[2]
Cottingham, Kathryn L. (2000). "The relationship in lake communities between primary productivity and species richness". Ecology. 81 (10): 2662–2679. doi:10.1890/0012-9658(2000)081[2662:TRILCB]2.0.CO;2.
Cottingham, Kathryn L. (2001). "Biodiversity may regulate the temporal variability of ecological systems". Ecology Letters. 4: 72–85. doi:10.1046/j.1461-0248.2001.00189.x.
^Cottingham Kathryn K. (2012). "Bite of Arsenic, with Kathryn Cottingham". Podcasts: The Researcher's Perspective. 2012 (1): 8p following A189. doi:10.1289/ehp.trp050112. PMID22696767.