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FATE OF MERCURY IN THE ARCTIC Michael Evan ... - COGCI

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Fate of Mercury in the Arctic 15<br />

We learned from our experiences measuring gaseous elemental mercury on the Faroe Islands<br />

that measuring gaseous elemental mercury is not trivial. Care must be taken in choosing appropriate<br />

measurement procedures (paper 5, Skov et al., accepted).<br />

Mercury in environmental archives, peat in the Arctic<br />

Mercury was measured in peat cores from S. Greenland, the Faroe Islands, Denmark, and from<br />

the high Arctic (Bathurst Island and Carey Islands) samples from Bathurst Islands were given to N.<br />

Givelet, University of Berne, and will not be discussed. Samples from Nordvestø, Carey Islands,<br />

Greenland, are still being investigated, so preliminary results only will be treated. Cores from S.<br />

Greenland, Denmark and the Faroe Islands had sufficient new growth to examine the geochemistry<br />

during the last 50 years with high resolution.<br />

To do this, a new, direct, approach to high time resolution dating was developed and applied to<br />

peat from sub-arctic southern Greenland and Denmark. The advantages of direct, high time<br />

resolution dating are thoroughly discussed (paper 6, Goodsite et al., 2002).<br />

An analytical method was developed to best determine the amount of mercury in the peat<br />

(paper 7, Roos-Barraclough et al., 2002).<br />

The first long term terrestrial record of mercury on Greenland (paper 8, Shotyk et al., accepted)<br />

and the Faroe Islands are produced (Shotyk, Goodsite et al., unpublished data, manuscript in<br />

preparation). Hg fluxes in the Greenland core (0.3 to 0.5 µg m -2 yr -1 ) were found in peats dating<br />

from AD 550 to AD 975, compared to the maximum of 164 µg m -2 yr -1 in 1953. Atmospheric Hg<br />

accumulation rates have since declined with the value for 1995, 14 µg m -2 yr -1 comparable to<br />

published depositional rates. Lead and stable lead isotopes were measured in these cores, showing<br />

coal burning was the predominant source of lead. Mercury depositional trends in the cores follow<br />

the lead trends suggesting that the profile is dominated with mercury from coal burning and that the<br />

peat cores are faithfully reproducing depositional trends, in agreement with what is known about

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