Water Resources Research Act Program

Details for Project ID 2012ME260B

Informatics approaches for reuse and modeling of heterogeneous mercury data

Institute: Maine
Year Established: 2012 Start Date: 2012-03-01 End Date: 2014-02-28
Total Federal Funds: $10,539 Total Non-Federal Funds: $117,463

Principal Investigators: Kate Beard, Linda Bacon, Melinda Neville

Project Summary: Maine’s mercury (Hg) research legacy spans three decades and many different ecosystem pools, but the diverse nature of Hg data makes comparison across studies difficult. As such, our ability to measure changes in Hg contamination in response to the regulation of Hg emissions is limited, and researchers have difficulties comparing results or utilizing the wealth of Hg data more broadly. A spatiotemporal database collating research data from Maine was constructed to support disparate data analysis and modeling. The next chapter of this research will create ontologies fostering data integration and reuse for geospatial modeling and prediction of Hg dynamics.