Using epiphytic lichens as biomonitors of atmospheric mercury and dust at a historical gold mine tailings site in Nova Scotia, Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Historic gold mining in Nova Scotia, Canada, produced mercury (Hg)-contaminated tailings from the 1860s to 1940s that were deposited into the environment and subsequently abandoned upon mine closures.Today, these degraded landscapes are potential sources of contaminated dust, posing risks to human and ecosystem health.The primary objective of this thesis was to use epiphytic lichens (Usnea and Platismatia spp.) as biomonitors of airborne Hg in the Montague Gold District.Spatial distribution patterns of Hg in lichens showed hotspots near tailings deposits, reflecting greater inputs of Hg from windblown tailings, volatilization processes, throughfall, and/or stemflow.The Hg in the lichens was assessed in two ways, including surface-deposited and absorbed Hg fractions.These results suggested that gaseous Hg from the tailings was a more important source of the element compared to particulate-bound Hg.These lichens proved to be effective biomonitoring tools at Montague for assessing Hg pollution and identifying risk areas.
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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 | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 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".