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United States Environmental Protection Agency
Water Science
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Mercury Maps

small mercury mapMercury Maps is a tool that relates changes in mercury air deposition rates to changes in mercury fish tissue concentrations, on a national scale. The tool uses a reduced form of widely-accepted complex mercury fate and transport models as applied to watersheds in which air deposition is the sole significant source. The Mercury Maps model concludes that for long-term equilibrium conditions, the ratio of current to future air deposition rates will equal the ratio of current to future fish tissue concentrations. Mercury Maps can be used to to identify those waterbodies expected to attain state water quality standards as a result of air deposition reductions, or to perform Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) analyses for individual or multiple watersheds.

Fact Sheet
A summary on the background, environmental and public health benefits, and technical approach of the project.

Overview Slides
A four page slide show presenting a quick overview of the Mercury Maps project.

You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to view the Adobe PDF files on this page. See EPA's PDF page for more information about getting and using the free Acrobat Reader.

Peer Reviewed Final Report - Mercury Maps: A Quantitative Spatial Link Between Air Deposition and Fish Tissue (PDF, 1.6mb, 61 pages) (September 2001) A report detailing the derivation of the Mercury Maps model as well as the selection and use of mercury source data layers. Peer-reviewed by EPA scientists, the report incorporates their comments and includes a response-to-comments document in the Appendix.

An Additional Note on the Treatment of Pulp and Paper Mills in the Mercury Maps Report. (PDF, 243kb, 2 pages) (April 25, 2003)

Links

BASINS: Better Assessment Integrating Point and Nonpoint Sources
A number of the national data coverages used in Mercury Maps were derived directly from this GIS and environmental modeling program.

National Listing of Fish Advisories (NLFA):
The source of the 69,000 record fish tissue mercury database used in this project.

Fish Tissue Human Health Water Quality Criterion for Methylmercury
Methylmercury is the form of mercury that is taken up by plant and aquatic life and accumulates in fish. The criteria is to be used by states in determining methylmercury levels in fish tissue.

For more information on Mercury Maps, contact: Paul Cocca at US EPA, 1200 Pennsylvania Ave., NW (4305), Washington, DC 20460; e-mail: cocca.paul@epa.gov.

 

Wastewater Management | Drinking Water | Wetlands, Oceans, and Watersheds

 
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