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

Mercury and selenium chemical characteristics and speciation data of bird, fish, and earthworm tissues

Metadata Updated: November 20, 2025

Birds (Clark’s grebe , Aechmophorus clarkii; Forster’s Tern, Sterna forsteri), fish (Peacock bass, Cichla temensis, Cichla monoculus; Pescada, Plagioscion squamosissimus) and earthworms were analyzed for selenium, total mercury, and methyl mercury c oncentration and mercury speciation. A Clark’s grebe was collected from Lake Berryessa (California, United States) in September 2012. A Forster’s Tern was collected from the San Francisco Bay Estuary (California, United States) in June 2018. Bird necropsies were performed at the U.S. Geological Survey (Dixon, CA) to obtain the following tissues: head feather, breast feather, brain, skeletal muscle, kidney, and liver. Fishes were collected in September 2018 from the Tapajós River (Brazil), which is close to artisanal gold mining areas where liquid elemental mercury is used. Fish necropsies were performed to obtain muscle and liver. Earthworms were collected in 2017-2018 from two soils (Site S1 Champ-sur-Drac, Site S2 Champ-sur-Drac; France) near the chlor-alkali plant of Champ-sur-Drac. Five endogeic and one anecic earthworm were sampled at Site S1 and five endogeic and two anecic at Site S2. Chemical analyses for total mercury and methylmercury were made at the U.S. Geological Survey Mercury Research Laboratory (Middleton, Wisconsin). Chemical analyses for total selenium were made at the U.S. Geological Survey (Menlo Park, California) and University of La Rochelle (La Rochelle, France). Mercury speciation was measured by high energy-resolution X-ray absorption fine structure (HR-XANES) and extended X-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) spectroscopy at beamline ID26 at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility. The screening of selenium and mercury associated with protein extracts was measured by double affinity (AF) high performance liquid chromatography-inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (AF-HPLC-ICPM) at the LGC Group (Teddington, United Kingdom). ORCA, a geometry optimization platform, was used to predict the structures of mercury bound to selenium in two configurations: Hg(selenoeine)4 and Hg10(methaneselenolate)20 (Hg10(SeMe)20). There are 7 files (*.csv) provided in this product: 1) site descriptions 2) analysis descriptions, 3) HR-XANES results and chemical analyses, 4) HR-XANES spectra, 5) EXAFS data, 6) EXAFS spectrum, and 7) modeled cartesian coordinates of the mercury-selenium clusters.

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 14, 2025
Metadata Updated Date November 20, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from DOI USGS DCAT-US

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date September 14, 2025
Metadata Updated Date November 20, 2025
Publisher U.S. Geological Survey
Maintainer
Identifier http://datainventory.doi.gov/id/dataset/usgs-5f47ce1282ce4c3d12280ed4
Data Last Modified 2020-10-22T00:00:00Z
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 0e8a1f17-bf16-46f8-a7a9-5177b8b327d0
Harvest Source Id 2b80d118-ab3a-48ba-bd93-996bbacefac2
Harvest Source Title DOI USGS DCAT-US
Metadata Type geospatial
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 2dbe1b082e3e3e04c003fb6d3c8a998ff210f9de7ed33fe6682345fc56dbec5f
Source Schema Version 1.1

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