ArticleScience advances2017
Terrestrial discharges mediate trophic shifts and enhance methylmercury accumulation in estuarine biota.
Article in Science advances, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed, 120 citations in OpenAlex.
- The Athabasca River regulates methylmercury burdens of waterbirds breeding downstream.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Aligning global mercury mitigation with climate action.Nature communications · 2025Review
- Beyond emissions: unravelling the effects of ecosystem change on contaminant concentrations in herring from the Baltic Sea.Environmental science and pollution research international · 2025Article
- Effects of wintering under methylmercury exposure on spring reproductive onset in song sparrows (Melospiza melodia).Journal of neuroendocrinology · 2025Article
- Global mercury concentrations in biota: their use as a basis for a global biomonitoring framework.Ecotoxicology (London, England) · 2024Review
- Effects of sublethal methylmercury and food stress on songbird energetic performance: metabolic rates, molt and feather quality.The Journal of experimental biology · 2024Article
- Review
- Geochemical and Dietary Drivers of Mercury Bioaccumulation in Estuarine Benthic Invertebrates.Environmental science & technology · 2022Article
- Elevated temperature and browning increase dietary methylmercury, but decrease essential fatty acids at the base of lake food webs.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Permafrost Thaw Increases Methylmercury Formation in Subarctic Fennoscandia.Environmental science & technology · 2021Article
- Historic contamination alters mercury sources and cycling in temperate estuaries relative to uncontaminated sites.Water research · 2021Article
- Effects of temperature, salinity, and sediment organic carbon on methylmercury bioaccumulation in an estuarine amphipod.The Science of the total environment · 2019Article
- Factors affecting MeHg bioaccumulation in stream biota: the role of dissolved organic carbon and diet.Ecotoxicology (London, England) · 2019Article
- Rice-paddy field acts as a buffer system to decrease the terrestrial characteristics of dissolved organic matter exported from a typical small agricultural watershed in the Three Gorges Reservoir Area, China.Environmental science and pollution research international · 2019Article
- Sediment organic carbon and temperature effects on methylmercury concentration: A mesocosm experiment.The Science of the total environment · 2019Article
- Organic carbon content drives methylmercury levels in the water column and in estuarine food webs across latitudes in the Northeast United States.Environmental pollution (Barking, Essex : 1987) · 2019Article
- Spatial and taxonomic variation of mercury concentration in low trophic level fauna from the Mediterranean Sea.Ecotoxicology (London, England) · 2018Article
- Projected amplification of food web bioaccumulation of MeHg and PCBs under climate change in the Northeastern Pacific.Scientific reports · 2018Article
- Quantification of Mercury Bioavailability for Methylation Using Diffusive Gradient in Thin-Film Samplers.Environmental science & technology · 2018Article
- Impact of Water-Induced Soil Erosion on the Terrestrial Transport and Atmospheric Emission of Mercury in China.Environmental science & technology · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The input of mercury (Hg) to ecosystems is estimated to have increased two- to fivefold during the industrial era, and Hg accumulates in aquatic biota as neurotoxic methylmercury (MeHg). Escalating anthropogenic land use and climate change are expected to alter the input rates of terrestrial natural organic matter (NOM) and nutrients to aquatic ecosystems. For example, climate change has been projected to induce 10 to 50% runoff increases for large coastal regions globally. A major knowledge gap is the potential effects on MeHg exposure to biota following these ecosystem changes. We monitored the fate of five enriched Hg isotope tracers added to mesocosm scale estuarine model ecosystems subjected to varying loading rates of nutrients and terrestrial NOM. We demonstrate that increased terrestrial NOM input to the pelagic zone can enhance the MeHg bioaccumulation factor in zooplankton by a factor of 2 to 7 by inducing a shift in the pelagic food web from autotrophic to heterotrophic. The terrestrial NOM input also enhanced the retention of MeHg in the water column by up to a factor of 2, resulting in further increased MeHg exposure to pelagic biota. Using mercury mass balance calculations, we predict that MeHg concentration in zooplankton can increase by a factor of 3 to 6 in coastal areas following scenarios with 15 to 30% increased terrestrial runoff. The results demonstrate the importance of incorporating the impact of climate-induced changes in food web structure on MeHg bioaccumulation in future biogeochemical cycling models and risk assessments of Hg.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.