Assessing Mercury Exposure in Urban Coyotes

Professor Luengen's research at USF focuses on the cycling and bioavailability of trace metals. She frequently works in the San Francisco Bay and Delta, an estuary where there are elevated concentrations of many metals, including mercury. Mercury, in the form of methylmercury, biomagnifies up food chains, reaching concentrations in fish that can be a million times higher than in the water. Professor Luengen is interested in how methylmercury is accumulated by organisms at the base of the marine food chain. She is also interested in the transfer of mercury between different environmental compartments, including between marine and terrestrial environments. A major goal of her work is to understand metal accumulation in terms of water chemistry and mechanistic processes...

Speaker: Allison Luengen, University of San Francisco