Comparing ecosystem gaseous elemental mercury fluxes over a deciduous and coniferous forest

Autor: Jun Zhou, Silas W. Bollen, Eric M. Roy, David Y. Hollinger, Ting Wang, John T. Lee, Daniel Obrist
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2023
Předmět:
Zdroj: Nature Communications, Vol 14, Iss 1, Pp 1-9 (2023)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 2041-1723
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-38225-x
Popis: Abstract Sources of neurotoxic mercury in forests are dominated by atmospheric gaseous elemental mercury (GEM) deposition, but a dearth of direct GEM exchange measurements causes major uncertainties about processes that determine GEM sinks. Here we present three years of forest-level GEM deposition measurements in a coniferous forest and a deciduous forest in northeastern USA, along with flux partitioning into canopy and forest floor contributions. Annual GEM deposition is 13.4 ± 0.80 μg m−2 (coniferous forest) and 25.1 ± 2.4 μg m−2 (deciduous forest) dominating mercury inputs (62 and 76% of total deposition). GEM uptake dominates in daytime during active vegetation periods and correlates with CO2 assimilation, attributable to plant stomatal uptake of mercury. Non-stomatal GEM deposition occurs in the coniferous canopy during nights and to the forest floor in the deciduous forest and accounts for 24 and 39% of GEM deposition, respectively. Our study shows that GEM deposition includes various pathways and is highly ecosystem-specific, which complicates global constraints of terrestrial GEM sinks.
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