In this paper, the relationship between sulfate reduction potential and mercury methylation potential was studied in the Aha, Baihua and Hongfeng reservoirs from Guiyang City. The methylmercury (MeHg) concentrations of lake water in the Aha Reservoir were greatly elevated as compared to those of the Hongfeng and Baihua reservoirs, which was correlated with its distinctly high SRB abundance, SO42-, and S2- concentrations. Among the three reservoirs, however, the highest MeHg was observed in in the top several centimenters of pore water profile in the Hongfeng Reservoir where the lowest S2- in pore water occurred. The distributions of MeHg in lake water and pore water showed the highest methylation potential occurred at water-sediment surface for the Aha Reservoir and the in the top several centimenters of sediments for the Hongfeng Reservoir. It is guessed that the highest mercury methylation only occurs at the sites with certain sulfide concentrations.
HE TianrongLI TingYang RuidongLUO GuangjunLANG XiaofangAn YanlingYAN Haiyu
Sediment cores（containing sediment and overlying water） from Baihua Reservoir（SW China）were cultured under different redox conditions with different microbial activities, to understand the effects of sulfate-reducing bacteria（SRB） on mercury（Hg） methylation at sediment–water interfaces. Concentrations of dissolved methyl mercury（DMe Hg） in the overlying water of the control cores with bioactivity maintained（BAC） and cores with only sulfate-reducing bacteria inhibited（SRBI） and bacteria fully inhibited（BACI） were measured at the anaerobic stage followed by the aerobic stage. For the BAC and SRBI cores, DMe Hg concentrations in waters were much higher at the anaerobic stage than those at the aerobic stage, and they were negatively correlated to the dissolved oxygen concentrations（r =- 0.5311 and r =- 0.4977 for BAC and SRBI, respectively）. The water DMe Hg concentrations of the SRBI cores were 50% lower than those of the BAC cores, indicating that the SRB is of great importance in Hg methylation in sediment–water systems, but there should be other microbes such as iron-reducing bacteria and those containing specific gene cluster（hgc AB）, besides SRB,causing Hg methylation in the sediment–water system.
