DURHAM, N.C. – If you had to guess which part of the world has the highest levels of atmospheric mercury pollution, you probably wouldn’t pick a patch of pristine Amazonian rainforest. Yet, that’s exactly where they are. In a new study appearing Jan. 28 in the journal Nature Communications, an international team of researchers show that illegal gold mining in the Peruvian Amazon is causing exceptionally high levels of atmospheric mercury pollution in the nearby Los Amigos Biological Station.
DURHAM, N.C. Emily Ury remembers the first time she saw them. She was heading east from Columbia, North Carolina, on the flat, low-lying stretch of U.S. Highway 64 toward the Outer Banks. Sticking out of the marsh on one side of the road were not one but hundreds dead trees and stumps, the relic of a once-healthy forest that had been overrun by the inland creep of seawater. I was like, Whoa. No leaves; no branches. The trees were literally just trunks. As far as the eye could see, said Ury, who recently earned a biology Ph.D. at Duke University working with professors Emily Bernhardt and Justin Wright.
Credit: Photo by Emily Bernhardt, Duke University
DURHAM, N.C. Emily Ury remembers the first time she saw them. She was heading east from Columbia, North Carolina, on the flat, low-lying stretch of U.S. Highway 64 toward the Outer Banks. Sticking out of the marsh on one side of the road were not one but hundreds dead trees and stumps, the relic of a once-healthy forest that had been overrun by the inland creep of seawater. I was like, Whoa. No leaves; no branches. The trees were literally just trunks. As far as the eye could see, said Ury, who recently earned a biology Ph.D. at Duke University working with professors Emily Bernhardt and Justin Wright.