High amounts of atmospheric mercury pollution from artisanal gold mining are captured by amazon forests

 What I found interesting within this article would be the results from burning Hg-gold amalgams. It is unknown how Hg travels across regional landscapes. The mercury was being stored and deposition in a significantly affected area of artisanal gold mining in the Peruvian amazon. The gold mining received extreme high mercury inputs and have increased levels of total mercury and methylmercury in the air canopy vegetation and soils. They noticed a minimal difference between the sites and the low hg flux while the season changed. This difference was found to have come from a higher intensity within mining and dust generation which was found during the dry season. This increased deforestation and the volume of precipitation to be low while the dry season occurs. The Hg inputs that were found in the ASGM in the Peruvian Amazon are primarily deposited to the terrestrial ecosystem. The implications that the article states is that there is a large quantities of Hg that has been stored in the biomass and within the soils with the possibility to release with the land that uses the change along with forest fires. The Peruvian Amazon is known to be one of the biodiverse ecosystems on earth for vertebrate and insect taxa.




Fig.1 The burning process of mercury (Hg)-gold (Au) amalgam deposition pathways within the environment.


Amazon Forests Capture High Levels of Atmospheric Mercury Pollution from Artisanal Gold Mining
Gerson, J. R., Szponar, N., Zambrano, A. A., Bergquist, B., Broadbent, E., Driscoll, C. T., Erkenswick, G., Evers, D. C., Fernandez, L. E., Hsu-Kim, H., Inga, G., Lansdale, K. N., Marchese, M. J., Martinez, A., Moore, C., Pan, W. K., Purizaca, R. P., Sánchez, V., Silman, M., … Bernhardt, E. S. (2022, January 28). Amazon forests capture high levels of atmospheric mercury pollution from artisanal gold mining. Nature News. Retrieved September 19, 2022, from https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-27997-3

 

Comments

  1. Yadixa TeranSeptember 19, 2022 at 9:58 PM

    In lecture we have learned how damaging mining waste can be, and knowing that there are large quantities of Hg placed in the soils. I can only imagine the damage that it could cause to the various ecosystems in the Peruvian Amazon. Thank you for the insight Kristella!

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