Ambient mercury measurement: equipment operation, data acquisition and deliverables  framed in the projects Global Mercury Observation System FP7-UE and PIP 11220100100064/2011 

Project leaders

Francesca Sprovieri, Maria Del Carmen Dieguez

Agreement

ARGENTINA - CONICET - Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas

Call

CNR/CONICET 2013-2014

Department

Earth and Environment

Thematic area

Earth system science and environmental technologies

Status of the project

New

Research proposal

Mercury (Hg) is a global contaminant that has ground level background concentrations almost constant at hemispheric scale. The major sources of this heavy metal can be both anthropogenic (fossil fuel, coal burning, mining, intentional biomass burning) and natural (volcanic activity, forest fires, etc). The major concern with Hg as a global pollutant is its capacity to travel in the vapor phase through the atmospheric circulation for years, affecting areas far away from the emission sources. The transport of Hg occurs in the boundary layer, in the free troposphere and stratosphere. Thus, the fate of Hg is influenced and determined by the chemical environment of these regions of the atmosphere which reflect local physical and meteorological conditions as well as their interactions (Pirrone and Mason, 2010). At certain physical conditions (25°C, 1 atm), Hg exists in different physical states and chemical forms and readily moves between the atmosphere, water, soil, sediment and living organisms. Inorganic Hg salts exist in nature in the forms like mercuric sulphide (HgS) and mercuric oxide (HgO). Inorganic mercury would dissolve into water, soil, and sediments and affect aquatic ecosystems (USEPA, 1997). Different forms of mercury have different toxicity levels. The most toxic Hg form eoccurring in nature is methylmercury (CH3Hg). Severe human diseases have been reported in wide-ranged places around the world and considerable research has been done to unravel the methylmercury problem in fish. All this research has emphasized the need of a further characterization concerning where and how potentially dangerous Hg travels to enable scientists to more effectively manage the presence of this heavy metal in the environment. The Global Mercury Observation System (GMOS; http://www.gmos.eu) is a project funded by the 7th Frame Program of the European Union (2010) (PI: Dr. N. Pirrone, CNR, Italy) that is building a comprehensive network of atmospheric Hg monitoring sites around the world. The network articulates several existing monitoring sites in Europe and America in charge of experienced Hg scientists. Further, the project GMOS is funding the acquisition of high precision instruments to monitor ambient Hg in several new stations worldwide. The Photobiology Laboratory (LF, INIBIOMA, CONICET, Bariloche, Patagonia Argentina) as one of the external partners in the project GMOS (local Co-PI: Dra. M. C. Diéguez) is setting up a Hg monitoring station aimed to start a long-term monitoring study of atmospheric Hg in the area of Nahuel Huapi National Park. This new facility constitutes the first station of atmospheric Hg monitoring in Southern South America with a total investment in equipment and consumables for the operation of these ambient Hg monitors of around € 220.000 granted to LF-INIBIOMA by GMOS, FP7-UE. Participating in GMOS is particularly important due to the goals of this project as an international network which pursue the goals of providing accurate measurements of ambient Hg, modelling the circulation of this global contaminant and delivering recommendations to application organisms and public entities. The expertise field of the Argentinean group involved in this cooperation is the transference of mercury in pelagic food webs. The focal studies by the group and colleagues have been performed in shallow and deep Andean lakes located inside the Nahuel Huapi National Park (NHNP, Patagonia, Argentina), which constitute a gradient in terms of status, nutrient and dissolved organic matter (DOM concentrations. Several studies developed in LF (INIBIOMA) and the partner laboratory LAAN (CNEA) have detected high levels of total mercury (THg) in phytoplankton (up to 260 µg g-1 DW), zooplankton (up to 42 µg g-1 DW), benthic 
macroinvertebrates (up to 4 µg g-1 DW) and fish (up to 10 µg g-1 DW) (Arribére et al. 2010; Rizzo et al. 2011; Diéguez et al, submitted). The proportion of MeHg to THg in planktonic species within the size fraction 10-200 µm ranges from 0.2 to 0.7%, while organisms in the fraction >200 µm present approximately 3% of MeHg. Recent measurements of natural water samples from these lakes showed that less than 3% of the filter-passing (

Research goals

The present application to the international cooperation program between CONICET and CNR has the following main goals:
1-To train argentine scientists involved in the national project PIP 11220100100064 (2011-2014) and in GMOS in the maintenance and use of the Hg Monitoring equipment which will fulfill the need of knowledge of Hg background levels at a regional scale.
2-To acquire analytical tools required to process and deliver Hg data and information from atmospheric Hg measurements.
3-To perform joint field campaigns to determine ambient Hg in transects set up to cover potential Hg corridor areas in North Patagonia (west-east transects from the active area Cordón Caulle - Puyehue volcano (Chile) to different points inside Nahuel Huapi National Park (Argentina). To collaborate in field campaigns in the counterpart´s sampling sites.
 

Last update: 12/06/2025