Aquatic Sciences Meeting, Albuquerque 2001

CS07 Biogeochemical Cycles

Date: Thursday, February 15, 2001, Time: 12:00:00 PM

Location: Cochiti/Taos

Money, S, D, LUMCON, Chauvin, USA, smoney@lumcon.edu

Powell, R, T, LUMCON, Chauvin, USA, rpowell@lumcon.edu

DETERMINATION OF MERCURY-COMPLEXING ORGANIC LIGANDS

It has been proposed that the speciation of inorganic mercury in aquatic systems is controlled by complexation with organic ligands. These ligands are thought to control how much mercury is photoreduced, mobilised from forested watersheds, incorporated by phytoplankton, and methylated in sediments. To date, only limited studies of the interaction between mercury and these ligands have been carried out. This is largely due to a lack of methods that can discriminate between complexed and free inorganic mercury at the relevant concentrations (low picomolar region). We are currently developing an anodic stripping voltammetry technique for measuring the concentrations of organic mercury-complexing ligands and their associated conditional stability constants. This technique will be used to investigate the geochemical cycle of mercury in a variety of aquatic systems.

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Aquatic Sciences Meeting, Albuquerque 2001

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