Surface-Water Geochemistry of Mercury and other Constituents in Clear Lake, Lake County, California

Publication Date

2024-09-26

Start Date

2020-06-04

End Date

2022-06-22

Agee, J.L., Alpers, C.N., Marvin-DiPasquale, M.C., Fleck, J.A., Kieu, L.H., Kakouros, E., Bennett, P.A., Watanabe, P.T., and Sushch, D., 2024, Surface-Water Geochemistry of Mercury and other Constituents in Clear Lake, Lake County, California: U.S. Geological Survey data release, https://doi.org/10.5066/P9ACHWLJ.

There is a need to develop spatially and temporally robust monitoring programs to study both mercury and nutrients within Clear Lake and elsewhere. Because traditional water-quality studies are expensive, and water quality may vary significantly on an hourly or daily time scale in some locations, deployable in-situ electrochemical and optical sensors offer an opportunity to collect critical water-quality data at high temporal and spatial resolution to a degree previously unobtainable. These approaches require a detailed examination of the relationships between the constituent of concern (for example, the concentration of suspended sediment or various Hg species) and the electrochemical or optical properties of water for which the current class of sensors are best suited (for example, turbidity, dissolved organic carbon, algal concentration, or fluorescent properties of dissolved organic matter). This study of particulate and filtered Hg species (including total mercury and methylmercury) and non-Hg water-column constituents was designed to provide data that will be useful in developing a more robust Hg monitoring program for Clear Lake. The period of record for the current version of this data product encompasses the 2020-2022 study period. The product is designed such that it can be subsequently updated as new data becomes available annually.

• USGS Data Release Products