TY - JOUR
T1 - Mercury contamination in the Laurentian Great Lakes region
T2 - Introduction and overview
AU - Wiener, James G.
AU - Evers, David C.
AU - Gay, David A.
AU - Morrison, Heather A.
AU - Williams, Kathryn A.
N1 - Funding Information:
Compilation, synthesis, interpretation, and reporting of the regional mercury data in this special issue were supported in part by the Great Lakes Commission, through Great Lakes Air Deposition (GLAD) Program grants to the Biodiversity Research Institute. We are grateful to the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse and the University of Michigan for hosting the project workshops. We thank ESRI for their donations of software, which facilitated the compilation of data at the Biodiversity Research Institute and the subsequent analysis for several manuscripts. We are grateful to Carolyn O'Neill and Rachel Melzer from the Great Lakes Office of the Ontario Ministry of the Environment for providing information on the geographical, economic and social significance of the Great Lakes in Ontario. Helpful comments on a prior draft of this manuscript were provided by Pierrette Blanchard, Martin Risch, and Kristofer Rolfhus. The lead author (JGW) was supported by the University of Wisconsin (UW) System Distinguished Professors Program and the UW-La Crosse Foundation during preparation of this manuscript.
PY - 2012/2
Y1 - 2012/2
N2 - The Laurentian Great Lakes region of North America contains substantial aquatic resources and mercury-contaminated landscapes, fish, and wildlife. This special issue emanated from a bi-national synthesis of data from monitoring programs and case studies of mercury in the region, here defined as including the Great Lakes, the eight U.S. states bordering the Great Lakes, the province of Ontario, and Lake Champlain. We provide a retrospective overview of the regional mercury problem and summarize new findings from the synthesis papers and case studies that follow. Papers in this issue examine the chronology of mercury accumulation in lakes, the importance of wet and dry atmospheric deposition and evasion to regional mercury budgets, the influence of land-water linkages on mercury contamination of surface waters, the bioaccumulation of methylmercury in aquatic foods webs; and ecological and health risks associated with methylmercury in a regionally important prey fish.
AB - The Laurentian Great Lakes region of North America contains substantial aquatic resources and mercury-contaminated landscapes, fish, and wildlife. This special issue emanated from a bi-national synthesis of data from monitoring programs and case studies of mercury in the region, here defined as including the Great Lakes, the eight U.S. states bordering the Great Lakes, the province of Ontario, and Lake Champlain. We provide a retrospective overview of the regional mercury problem and summarize new findings from the synthesis papers and case studies that follow. Papers in this issue examine the chronology of mercury accumulation in lakes, the importance of wet and dry atmospheric deposition and evasion to regional mercury budgets, the influence of land-water linkages on mercury contamination of surface waters, the bioaccumulation of methylmercury in aquatic foods webs; and ecological and health risks associated with methylmercury in a regionally important prey fish.
KW - Aquatic food webs
KW - Atmospheric deposition
KW - Laurentian Great Lakes
KW - Mercury
KW - Methylmercury
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84855601448&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84855601448&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.envpol.2011.08.051
DO - 10.1016/j.envpol.2011.08.051
M3 - Article
C2 - 22000118
AN - SCOPUS:84855601448
SN - 0269-7491
VL - 161
SP - 243
EP - 251
JO - Environmental Pollution
JF - Environmental Pollution
ER -