Dynamics of temporal and spatial mercury contamination in an urban watershed
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Mercury is a concern in aquatic environments because it can lead to accumulations of methylmercury in fish, which is the primary source of mercury exposure to humans. The Brunette Watershed is a highly urbanized watershed in metropolitan Vancouver with a rich record of monitoring (1973-2003) trace metal distribution and dynamics. This study was conducted to investigate the 294% increase in Brunette Watershed stream sediment mercury concentrations from 1973-1996. The project conducted analysis of field samples, laboratory experiments and examined previous data to determine if methylcyclopentadienyl manganese tricarbonyl (MMT) may play a role in the increase of mercury in the watershed. Little evidence compiled in this study supported the hypothesis that manganese, iron, sulfur or DOC is associated with mercury throughout the watershed. Thus, it is difficult to conclude or rule out that MMT or manganese oxides play a major role in the transport of total mercury. Laboratory experiments creating summer anoxic conditions released a significant amount of mercury from lake sediment into overlying waters. It seems that this release of mercury may be controlled by sulfate reducing bacteria. The study also found an analysis method used in the study caused 66.8% mean loss of mercury in stream sediment samples when the samples were dried. Temporal and spatial analysis of sediment data revealed that mercury concentrations have started to decrease since 1993. When sediment concentrations were adjusted for the 66.8% loss in stream sediment, 1993 mercury concentrations exceeded the Federal Interm Sediment Quality Guidelines at 12 locations; but in 2003, only 1 site exceeded the same guideline. The decrease in mercury concentrations may be linked to the increased public awareness and a large reduction of emissions from a nearby refuse incinerator. Effective imperviousness and mercury levels in stream sediment are significantly correlated throughout the period of high mercury releases from the incinerator. This may indicate that atmospheric mercury deposited on impervious surfaces connected to waterways may contribute to increases in stream sediment concentrations.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".