Sponsor
Funding was provided by the USGS Contaminant Biology Program, the National Science Foundation IGERT (grant 0966376: “Sustaining Ecosystem Services to Support Rapidly Urbanizing Areas”) and Graduate Research Fellowship Program (grant 1638278), and the North Coast and Cascades Science Learning Network (agreement P14AC01403).
Published In
Limnology and Oceanography
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
12-9-2020
Abstract
Mountain lakes, while seemingly pristine, have been subjected to historical fish stocking practices and exposure to atmospherically deposited contaminants like mercury. Mercury bioaccumulation in these ecosystems varies widely due to strong environmental gradients, and there are complex, hierarchical factors that affect mercury transport and loading, methylmercury production, and food web biomagnification. We sought to assess how representative variables associated with watershed, lake, and food web-scale processes—specifically, catchment tree cover, lake benthic primary production, and fish diet, respectively—are associated with mercury concentrations in mountain lake fish. Mean fish mercury concentrations varied threefold between lakes, with nearshore tree cover and fish diet accounting for the most variance in fish mercury. Tree cover was likely positively correlated to fish Hg due to its contributions to local deposition and its effect on lake biogeochemistry. Fish with benthic diets tended to have higher mercury concentrations, illustrating that food web processes are an important consideration when investigating drivers of contaminant bioaccumulation. Our results suggest that both landscape and ecological factors are determinants of fish mercury bioaccumulation, and thus variables at multiple scales should be considered when managing mountain lake food webs for mercury exposure risk.
Rights
© 2020 The Authors.
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DOI
10.1002/lno.11659
Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/39006
Citation Details
Chiapella, A. M., Eagles‐Smith, C. A., & Strecker, A. L. (2020). From forests to fish: Mercury in mountain lake food webs influenced by factors at multiple scales. Limnology and Oceanography, lno.11659. https://doi.org/10.1002/lno.11659
Description
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes