Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2010 Mar 15;44(6):1998-2003.
doi: 10.1021/es9027925.

Reliance on (210)Pb chronology can compromise the inference of preindustrial Hg flux to lake sediments

Colin A Cooke  1 , William O Hobbs, Neal Michelutti, Alexander P Wolfe
Affiliations

Reliance on (210)Pb chronology can compromise the inference of preindustrial Hg flux to lake sediments

Colin A Cooke et al. Environ Sci Technol. .

Abstract

Lake sediments are frequently used to reconstruct the rate and magnitude of human impacts on the biogeochemical cycle of mercury (Hg). The vast majority of these studies rely on excess (210)Pb inventories in short cores to temporally constrain recent trends in Hg deposition, revealing an approximately 3-fold increase in Hg deposition since preindustrial times. However, the exhaustion of unsupported (210)Pb and the onset of widespread global Hg pollution converge temporally in the late 19th century, raising the possibility that preindustrial Hg fluxes are poorly constrained. Here, we combine (210)Pb and accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) (14)C dated lake sediment records from arctic and Andean lakes to assess the reliability of (210)Pb-derived chronologies in the estimation of preindustrial Hg fluxes. For all four studied lakes, relying on (210)Pb chronologies results in an overestimate of preindustrial Hg fluxes, because extrapolated basal (210)Pb sedimentation rates are systematically overestimated in comparison to accumulation models that include (14)C dates. In the Andes, the use of (14)C dates is critical toward assessing the full history of Hg pollution, which extends beyond the industrial era. In the Arctic, (14)C dating suggests that Hg deposition may have increased >10-fold since the Industrial Revolution, rather than the commonly quoted 3-fold increase. The incorporation of (14)C dates may therefore be necessary if accurate Hg flux histories are sought from oligotrophic lake sediments.

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

Publication types

MeSH terms

LinkOut - more resources