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Annotated List of Selected Mercury Publications, Resources, and Web Sites

The Environmental Mercury Mapping, Modeling, and Analysis (EMMMA) project has produced or aided in the production of a growing list of publications. These documents can be broadly classified as:

• supporting documents,
• application documents,
• historical documents, or
• additional resources.

Supporting documents facilitate the use of the EMMMA website and the National Descriptive Model of Mercury in Fish (NDMMF), a model implemented on the EMMMA website. Application documents present research that uses EMMMA or the NDMMF. Historical documents were prepared prior to the inception of the EMMMA project and were important in the development of the EMMMA project. Additional resources includes various Web-available resources (mostly presentations) likely to be useful to and of interest to EMMMA users.

Following the annotated lists below for these four types of documents related to EMMMA and the NDMMF is a list of other Web Sites concerned with mercury in the environment.

Supporting Documents

Hearn and others (2006) provide an overview of the functionality of the EMMMA website. Example applications are presented that use the EMMMA website in conjunction with the predictions of the NDMMF to interpret spatial and temporal trends in fish-tissue mercury concentrations and help in the development of fish consumption advisories.

Hearn, P.P., Wente, S.P., Donato, D.I., and Aguinaldo, J.J., 2006, "EMMMA: A web-based system for environmental mercury mapping, modeling, and analysis", U.S. Geological Survey Open File Report 2006-1086, 13p.
(http://erg.usgs.gov/isb/pubs/ofrs/2006-1086/ofr2006-1086.pdf).

Wente (2004) provides a technical description of the NDMMF. The intended purposes of this document are to explain how the NDMMF works and provide a citable reference for scientists and managers who use the predictions of the NDMMF in their publications.

Wente, S.P., 2004, "A statistical model and national data set for partitioning fish-tissue mercury concentration variation between spatiotemporal and sample characteristic effects", U.S. Geological Survey Scientific Investigation Report 2004-5199, 15p.
(http://pubs.usgs.gov/sir/2004/5199/pdf/2004-5199.pdf).

Application Documents

In 2005, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) proposed the Clean Air Mercury Rule (CAMR). The NDMMF (as implemented by the U.S. EPA) was used in the “Regulatory Impact Analysis of the Final Clean Air Mercury Rule” to estimate current and predicted (after implementation of CAMR) fish-tissue mercury concentrations across the eastern half of the United States. These values were then used in conjunction with health effect estimates to estimate the benefits from implementation of the CAMR.

U.S. EPA, March 2005, "Regulatory Impact Analysis of the Final Clean Air Mercury Rule", Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards, EPA 452/R-05-003.
(http://www.epa.gov/ttn/ecas/regdata/RIAs/mercury_ria_final.pdf).

Christensen and others (2004) use NDMMF predictions to interpret spatial variation in fish-tissue mercury concentrations within the watershed of a National Scenic Riverway. This document is likely to be of general interest for two reasons. First, the document shows how a relatively small number of fish-tissue mercury samples at each site can be used to predict species, cut (tissues sampled), and length-specific fish-tissue mercury concentrations for most of the fish community present at each sampled site. Second, the document shows the NDMMF predictions are highly accurate in this study area and provides an example of how the accuracy of the NDMMF predictions can be assessed in other studies.

Christensen, V.G., Wente, S.P., Sandheinrich, M.B., and Brigham, M.E., 2006, "Spatial variation in fish-tissue mercury concentrations in the St. Croix River Basin, Minnesota and Wisconsin", 2004, U.S. Geological Survey Scientific Investigations Report 2006-5063, 26 p.
(http://pubs.usgs.gov/sir/2006/5063/pdf/SIR20065063.pdf).

Historical Documents

The earliest document describing the model that was eventually to become the NDMMF is a Ph.D. dissertation that was based solely on fish-tissue mercury data collected from Indiana.

Wente, S.P., 1997, "A spatially and temporally variable model of mercury concentrations in aquatic communities with applications to public health protection and water quality assessment", Purdue University, West Lafayette, Ind., Ph.D. dissertation, 132 p.

Watras and others (1998) used a simplified version of the NDMMF to standardize fish-tissue mercury concentrations for comparison among a group of lakes in Wisconsin.

Watras, C.J., R.C. Back, S. Halvorsen, R.J.M. Hudson, K.A. Morrison, and S.P. Wente, 1998, "Bioaccumulation of mercury in pelagic freshwater food webs", The Science of the Total Environment 219: 183-208.

Additional Resources

Two presentations were given at the 2004 Mercury Workshop in Reston, VA, on August 17, 2004:

Hearn, P., "Environmental Mercury Mapping, Modeling, and Analysis (EMMMA) - Web Deployment of the Wente Fish Tissue Mercury Model, Online Access to Mercury Data, and Integration with The National Map".

Wente, S.P., "National descriptive model of mercury in fish tissue".

Both of the preceding presentations are available at:
http://westnilemaps.usgs.gov/mercuryworkshop/presentations.html.

Two presentations were given at the 2004 National Forum on Contaminants in Fish in San Diego, CA on January 25 and 27, 2004:

Hearn, P.; Wente, S.; Aguinaldo, J.; Donato, D.; Price, S.; Tanner, S.; Rivero-Bartolomei, O; "Model Application for Developing Fish Advisories".
(http://www.epa.gov/waterscience/fish/forum/2004/presentations/sunday/wente.pdf).

Hearn, P.; Wente, S.; Aguinaldo, J; Donato, D.; Price, S.; Tanner, S.; Rivero-Bartolomei, O; "Model Application for Monitoring Contaminants in Fish: Mercury Pilot Project".
(http://www.epa.gov/waterscience/fish/forum/2004/presentations/tuesday/wente.pdf)

Other Mercury-Related Web Sites