Air/surface exchange processes of mercury species and their linkage to atmospheric pools studied by nuclear techniques

Conservative estimates of global natural mercury fluxes into the atmosphere suggest a total of 500 t/a originating from the mercuriferous belt and about 200 t/a degassing from background soils. Recent flux measurements at different terrestrial sites suggest that mercury emissions and re-emissions from terrestrial sites have been significantly underestimated. This could result in an inaccurate ratio between natural and anthropogenic sources in global emission inventories. However, all this estimates are based on a fairly raw database, and considering that, it becomes clear that an accurate assessment of air/surface exchange processes will be critical to refine the global mercury cycle. For upscaling mercury fluxes derived from field experiments to regional or global scales a detailed process understanding of the driving forces behind air/surface exchange is imperative.We studied the influence of environmental parameters on mercury fluxes for 8 different soils