Carl Lamborg
University of California-Santa Cruz, CA·Earth & Environmental Science
Mercury released by human activities such as gold mining and burning fossil fuels, along with natural sources, travels through the air and water and can turn into methylmercury, a highly toxic form. Methylmercury builds up through food webs and reaches people and wildlife that eat seafood.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
Chemistry
Ecology & Evolution
- Topics
mercury
biomagnification
bioaccumulation
- Grants
- 3 known grants, through Jul 2029
What they work on
- Characterize zooplankton communities along the central and western Aleutian Islands at sites with known differences in mercury levels in marine life, combining oceanography and genomics.
- Test whether gut microbiomes of key zooplankton species produce methylmercury, by measuring mercury in seawater, sediments, phytoplankton and zooplankton and relating it to community composition and ocean conditions.
- Quantify mercury in Greenland glacial meltwater rivers, receiving coastal waters and nearby air to build a numerical budget of mercury moving from the ice sheet to the ocean.
- Use mercury isotope ratios to fingerprint mercury sources and assess the Greenland Ice Sheet's role in the Arctic mercury cycle under climate warming.
- Measure dissolved and particulate mercury species, including methylmercury and dimethylmercury, in air, water and sediments of the South Pacific and Southern Ocean on GEOTRACES expeditions.
- Use mercury stable isotopes to distinguish natural from human-derived mercury sources and delivery by wet or dry deposition or glacial melt in remote Southern Hemisphere waters.
More about the research
The lab's projects follow mercury through the ocean system: where it comes from, how it changes chemically, and how it enters marine life. The work spans the Arctic, Greenland and the remote South Pacific and Southern Oceans.
Why it matters
Methylmercury in seafood threatens human and wildlife health, particularly Arctic communities whose diets and cultures depend on fishing and hunting, and endangered Steller sea lions. Identifying mercury sources, including glacial melt that may increase with warming, and how mercury enters food webs could inform policymakers. It could also help predict future exposure in marine life eaten by people.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Collaborative Research: The role of zooplankton in mercury biomagnification in Arctic environments
NSF · Aug 2026 – Jul 2029
Collaborative Research: MEGA - Mercury biogeochemical cycling and export from Greenland to the Arctic
NSF · May 2023 – Apr 2027
Collaborative Research: US GEOTRACES GP-17-OCE and -ANT Sections: External sources, cycling and processes affecting mercury speciation in the South Pacific and Southern Oceans
NSF · Apr 2022 – Jan 2027
Closest labs
Jennifer Middleton
Columbia University, NY·Earth & Environmental Science
Test whether settling particles, rather than ocean circulation, mainly control beryllium-10 (a cosmic-ray-made radioactive isotope) in the South Pacific, using co-located seawater, particle and sediment samples from GEOTRACES GP16 and GP17-OCE.
Gregory Cutter
Old Dominion University, VA·Earth & Environmental Science
Quantify the total inventory of dissolved organic sulfur (DOS), trace carbon-bound sulfur compounds, across the Pacific Ocean using archived samples from over 100 sites between Alaska and Antarctica.
Yuan Gao
Rutgers University-Newark, NJ·Earth & Environmental Science
Determine aerosol composition and mineral content over the Amundsen Sea and trace the sources of dust and trace elements such as iron, aluminum, and zinc, using ICPMS, electron microscopy, and air-mass back-trajectory cluster analysis.
The school
University of California-Santa Cruz: 15 labs on PI Pages, $218M a year on research, 183 research doctorates a year.
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