Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Skip to content

Hg Concentrations of Fish Tissue Samples in the Vicinity of Yellow Pine, Idaho.

Metadata Updated: November 27, 2025

The USGS examined mercury (Hg) concentrations in fish populations inhabiting impacted and reference streams as part of an investigation into the transport of trace metals in a watershed impacted by legacy mercury mining downstream from the Cinnabar mine site, Valley County, ID. Fish were sampled through an electrofishing survey utilizing a two-pass quantitative depletion approach where possible. Five reaches were selected in the Sugar Creek/Cinnabar Creek watershed, including two background reaches (ID020; ID021) with negligible mining impacts, Cinnabar Creek above the confluence with Sugar Creek (ID019), and two sites on Sugar Creek below the confluence with Cinnabar Creek (ID018 and ID010). Juvenile Bull trout (S. confluentus) were present at all five monitoring sites, and specimens of similar size were selected under permitting with the US Fish and Wildlife Service for laboratory analysis. Sculpin (Cottus Sp.) were present in the two background reaches and on one Sugar Creek reach downstream from the Cinnabar mine site. Three Chinook Salmon (O. tshawytscha) samples were obtained through the Nez Perce Fisheries Resources Program from two carcasses found along Sugar Creek downstream of the Cinnabar mine site. Fish muscle tissue was sampled in the laboratory and analyzed for Hg concentrations by thermal decomposition, amalgamation, and atomic absorption spectrophotometry using direct Hg analyzers, DMA-80 and DMA-80 wide range (method detection limit 0.04 nanograms of mercury (ng Hg)). Lower Hg concentrations (mean ± two times the standard deviation in units of nanograms of mercury per gram of wet mass (ng Hg g^-1 (wet mass)), calculated after averaging replicate analyses of individual fish) were observed for fish from reference stream locations (86 ± 95 ng Hg g^-1 (wet mass) for ID020 Bull Trout, 72 ± 24 ng Hg g^-1 (wet mass) Hg for ID020 Sculpin, 55 ± 39 ng Hg g^-1 (wet mass) for ID021 Bull Trout, 42 ± 18 ng Hg g^-1 (wet mass) for ID021 Sculpin) compared to sites downstream from the Cinnabar mine site (207 ± 122 ng Hg g^-1 (wet mass) for ID010 Bull Trout, 227 ± 93 ng Hg g^-1 (wet mass) for ID018 Bull Trout, 323 ± 144 ng Hg g^-1 (wet mass) for ID018 Sculpin, 267 ± 66 ng Hg g^-1 (wet mass) for ID019 Bull Trout) and for salmon (192 ± 91 ng Hg g^-1 (wet mass)).

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

Downloads & Resources

Dates

Metadata Created Date September 13, 2025
Metadata Updated Date November 27, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from DOI USGS DCAT-US

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date September 13, 2025
Metadata Updated Date November 27, 2025
Publisher U.S. Geological Survey
Maintainer
Identifier http://datainventory.doi.gov/id/dataset/usgs-5ed5618d82ce2832f04814af
Data Last Modified 2020-08-20T00:00:00Z
Category geospatial
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 010:12
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Metadata Catalog ID https://ddi.doi.gov/usgs-data.json
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id 7d91d03f-62eb-489a-ae7c-874c3eefef85
Harvest Source Id 2b80d118-ab3a-48ba-bd93-996bbacefac2
Harvest Source Title DOI USGS DCAT-US
Metadata Type geospatial
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 15a12370830f27163e04c1948917d815121fd23474fe75edb374bbf486f62fd4
Source Schema Version 1.1

Didn't find what you're looking for? Suggest a dataset here.