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July 13, 2021
from the University of Massachusetts Lowell
Researchers led by a professor of environmental science at UMass Lowell say that measurements of mercury in a Massachusetts forest suggest the toxic element is being deposited in forests around the world in much greater amounts than previously thought.
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According to Prof. Daniel Obrist, the team’s results underscore the concern for the health and well-being of people, wildlife and waterways, as mercury accumulating in forests eventually drains into streams and rivers and ends in lakes and oceans.
Mercury is a highly toxic pollutant that threatens fish, birds, mammals and humans. Hundreds of tons of it are released into the atmosphere every year by coal-fired power plants, gold mining and other industrial processes, and the pollutant is distributed across the globe by winds and currents. According to Obrist, chair of UMass Lowell’s Department of Environmental, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, long-term exposure to mercury or consumption of foods high in pollutants can lead to reproductive, immune, neurological, and cardiovascular problems.
Forests pose represent the world’s most abundant, productive, and widespread ecosystems on land, according to Obrist, who said the study was the first to examine a full picture of how mercury is deposited in the atmosphere in every rural forest in the world, including the deposition of mercury in gaseous form, which has not been dealt with in most previous studies.
“Trees take in gaseous mercury from the atmosphere through their leaves, and when plants shed their leaves or die, they transfer this atmospheric mercury into the Essentially in the ecosystems, ”he said.
The results of the Proj ekts were published today in an issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. UMass Lowell student Eric Roy, a double major in meteorology and mathematics from Lowell, is one of the co-authors of the study.
For the past 16 months, the team has measured the level of mercury in the atmosphere in Harvard Forest in Petersham, a nearly 4,000 acre site that includes deciduous trees such as red oak and red maple, which lose their leaves every year. A series of measuring systems placed at various heights on the forest’s 30-meter-high research tower assessed the site’s gaseous mercury deposition from the treetop to the forest floor. « Seventy-six percent of the mercury deposition in this forest comes from atmospheric mercury gaseous . It is five times higher than mercury deposited by rain and snow and three times higher than mercury deposited in waste soil, which has previously been used by other researchers as a proxy for estimating gaseous mercury deposition in forests, « Obrist said.
« Our study suggests that mercury pollution in forests has been underestimated by a factor of around two and that forests worldwide could be a much larger global absorber and collector of gaseous mercury than currently assumed. This unexpectedly high accumulation could lead to surprisingly high levels Mercury levels explain levels observed in soils in rural forests, « he said.
Plants appear to be the dominant source of mercury on land, accounting for 54 to 94 percent of soils across North America. According to Obrist, the total amount of mercury landfilled worldwide is currently estimated at around 1,500 to 1,800 tons per year.
The researchers are continuing their work on a second forest in Howland in northern Maine. Howland Forest, a nearly 600 acre research area filled with evergreen plants that keep leaves all year round, offers a significantly different habitat than the deciduous forest in Petersham. Assessing both forests will allow researchers to study differences in mercury accumulation between different forest types, Obrist said.
The work features Roy, a student at UMass Lowell Honors College who was invited to join the Immersive Scholar in 2019. University’s program to get a hands-on research experience, work and research from the start of your studies.
« It’s really exciting to be a co-author, » said Roy. “With this study, we were able to quantify how much mercury accumulates in this type of forest. Modelers can use these results to improve their understanding of how mercury circulates around the world and how this might change in the future. «
» Eric’s contributions to the study are enormous. It is not very common that a student plays such an important role in a large, federally funded research project, « Obrist said. « His work is really impressive and he is becoming more and more active in data analysis and complex flow calculations and data processing. He really earned a second writing position in the work in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. »
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