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

Metadata Updated: July 6, 2024

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.

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Dates

Metadata Created Date June 1, 2023
Metadata Updated Date July 6, 2024

Metadata Source

Harvested from DOI EDI

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date June 1, 2023
Metadata Updated Date July 6, 2024
Publisher U.S. Geological Survey
Maintainer
@Id http://datainventory.doi.gov/id/dataset/86c4160f218ab97c876a2615bcfb8b41
Identifier USGS:5f47ce1282ce4c3d12280ed4
Data Last Modified 20201022
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://datainventory.doi.gov/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 e3434dcd-8b3e-4f45-ad59-c4debd05f510
Harvest Source Id 52bfcc16-6e15-478f-809a-b1bc76f1aeda
Harvest Source Title DOI EDI
Metadata Type geospatial
Old Spatial -127.0,-10.0,10.0,50.0
Publisher Hierarchy White House > U.S. Department of the Interior > U.S. Geological Survey
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 7571f57c939cbf1a698a3a2a23426bc89a3cb55e3a960500da16b48b2a3b828a
Source Schema Version 1.1
Spatial {"type": "Polygon", "coordinates": -127.0, -10.0, -127.0, 50.0, 10.0, 50.0, 10.0, -10.0, -127.0, -10.0}

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