Impact Of Increased Temperature And Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide On Mercury And Sulfur Speciation In Peatland Soils

Abstract

Environmental mercury (Hg) pollution exists as a global public health issue without any localized borders. Volatile Hg emissions travel freely throughout the atmosphere, allowing anthropogenic point-source industrial emissions to have truly global impact. Recent research demonstrates that climate change may further impact the extent of environmental mercury pollution through increased production of monomethylmercury, more commonly known as methylmercury (MeHg), by various microorganisms within the soil, including sulfate-reducing bacteria, iron-reducing bacteria and methanogens. Continued research on the subject is warranted to fully understand the impacts of climate change on the environmental biogeochemical cycling of Hg and MeHg on various natural systems. Increasing global temperatures and levels of atmospheric CO2 could significantly increase the net conversion of Hg to MeHg by sulfate-reducing and iron-reducing bacteria in systems particularily vulnerable to climate change such as ombrotrophic peatbogs, leading to an increased size in the net MeHg pool overall. The Supplementary Files attached to this thesis document include the following files: raw data (SPRUCE_2012_2014_2015_2016_Peat_Final_Data.xlsx), untransformed multiple linear regression values (Regression_Non_Transformed.xlsx), log transformed multiple linear regression values (Regression_Log_Transformed.xlsx), maximum value calculations (Max_Calculations.xlsx), and fitted XANES data for 2012 (SPRUCE-2012-fit7-tidy.xlsx), 2015 (SPRUCE-2015-fit4-tidy.xlsx), and 2016 (SPRUCE-2016-fit4-tidy.xlsx).