Mercury Strategy for the Bay-Delta Ecosystem - CALFED Bay-Delta ...

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multidisciplinary projects. The roles and responsibilities of individual team members should be
clearly described in project proposals. Team members should have demonstrated skill and
expertise in their individual areas of technical responsibility on the proposed work, as well as a
track record of timely reporting of findings in refereed papers with coauthors from multiple
institutions.
The proposal evaluation process should also include critical evaluation of the composition of
project teams. Other large “mercury” research programs have shown that an interdisciplinary
approach is essential for understanding the effects and behavior of mercury at the ecosystem
scale. Project teams should contain the full range of expertise needed to ensure defensible study
design, analyses, and interpretation of data. We recommend that, on average, about half of the
team members on a project be “mercury specialists” and the remainder be scientists who bring
other, appropriate expertise and knowledge on ecosystem processes (e.g., hydrology, microbial
ecology, biogeochemistry, trophic ecology), organismal biology, wetland ecology, sampling
design, statistical analysis, modeling, or other pertinent applications. It is essential that mercury
specialists work in collaboration with scientists and managers who are knowledgeable about the
Bay-Delta ecosystem. Projects estimating mass budgets for mercury or other material
constituents in the tidally influenced Bay-Delta, for example, should involve hydrodynamic
specialists in the design of sampling strategies. Scientific projects should also involve external
scientists who can bring new perspectives, approaches, and analytical capabilities to the team,
such as the use of stable-isotope techniques (Hintelmann et al. 2002) to examine the cycling of
mercury in the Bay-Delta ecosystem.
Project proposals should demonstrate earnest commitments by team leaders and key team
members to provide timely information to ecosystem managers and to participate actively in the
application of project results to adaptive management of the ecosystem. Beyond the project
level, proposals should reflect a willingness by lead investigators to participate substantively in
interdisciplinary syntheses of findings from multiple projects. Project budgets should delineate
and include the estimated costs for time and travel associated with such efforts.
Development of a Monitoring Program for Mercury. The establishment of a systemic
monitoring program for mercury in fish was considered a high-priority goal by scientists and
managers alike. The development and design of an effective monitoring program – capable of
achieving multiple objectives (section V, core component 4) – will be a substantial endeavor,
requiring insightful leadership, input from managers, multidisciplinary technical guidance, and
modest budgetary support. The Proposal Solicitation Package process used by CALFED is not
an optimal approach for developing a monitoring program for mercury in Delta fishes. We
recommend that a monitoring program be developed in a step-wise fashion, as outlined below,
with informed input from leading scientists, managers, and end-users of the monitoring data
along the way.
(1) Establish a multidisciplinary, multi-institutional steering committee to lead and facilitate the
developmental process – This steering committee should include representatives of appropriate
management, regulatory, and scientific groups.
(2) Refine goals and objectives – Refinement of the goals and objectives identified at the
mercury strategy workshop (summarized in Section V, core component 4) is an essential early
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