Everglades REMAP Fish Mercury Bioaccumulation Modelling Report
EPA Region 4’s Everglades Regional Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program (REMAP) has been documenting nutrient pollution, and the health of the Everglades and Big Cypress since the 1990s. Samples have been collected for water, soil, fish, vegetation and algal communities. The key analytical focuses to date have included nutrient, mercury, and sulfur pollution along with other water quality parameters. The Program design has made it possible to define the total area of the Everglades that is healthy, and determine whether the conditions are improving, unchanged, or worse. Mercury contamination has been modelled by previous studies that featured structural equation modeling, but did not include variables that implicitly reflected habitat quality or food web complexity. This report applied a different modelling technique to all REMAP data (1995-2014), and includes consideration of habitat, food web dynamics, and the resultant efficiency of biomagnification.