Mercury and the Everglades. A Synthesis and Model for Complex Ecosystem Restoration

This book presents 30 years of mercury research in the Florida Everglades to provide valuable information for scientists and policy makers. The Everglades is an iconic ecosystem due to its expanse, diverse biota, and multiple international designations. Despite this, it has been subjected to multiple threats, including habitat loss, hydrologic alterations, invasive species and altered water quality. The threat to the human use of the Everglades and its wildlife populations posed by the toxic metal, mercury is less well recognized. The first half of Volume II focuses on biogeochemistry and the factors unique to the Everglades that make it extraordinarily susceptible to CC : warm subtropical climate, shallow depth, high levels of dissolved organic matter, sulfate contamination, nutrient enrichment and sediment redox conditions (for a review of the significance of atmospheric mercury deposition, see Vol. I). The second half then addresses the "so what" question - why biomagnification of the methylmercury produced in the Everglades is a threat to the health of top predators, including humans. It concludes that the mercury problem in the Florida Everglades is one of the most serious in the world in terms of the area affected and the degree of risk to ecological receptors and humans.