Water Resources Research Act Program

Details for Project ID 2010ME216B

Database development to support spatiotemporal analysis of coastal Maine mercury data

Institute: Maine
Year Established: 2010 Start Date: 2010-03-01 End Date: 2011-02-28
Total Federal Funds: $11,149 Total Non-Federal Funds: $45,523

Principal Investigators: Kate Beard, Melinda Diehl

Project Summary: This project requests funds to support a PhD student for the development of a database to synthesize two decades of coastal Maine mercury (Hg) research across many different sample media. Numerous studies on Hg have been carried out in Maine with widely varying spatial and temporal scales. These disparate, legacy data sets are valuable resources from which Hg sinks and sources across multiple ecosystem pools can be identified and potentially quantified. With thorough metadata development, data contextualized with landscape and climatological factors, and GIS integration of spatial features, we will explore spatiotemporal patterns and test hypotheses relating to patterns among upland and estuarine ecosystem Hg. Outcomes of this research will include the populated database available for future Hg assessments, public resource brief summarizing coastal Maine Hg monitoring efforts, and a basis for expanding this spatiotemporal analysis beyond the coastal area.