Environmental Geochemistry of Atmospheric Mercury: Its Backgriound Concentrations and Exchange Across the Air-Surface Interface

대기수은의 환경지화학: 배경농도측정 및 대기-지표면간의 교환작용

Mercury (Hg) is ubiquitous throughout the earth's atmosphere. The uniqueness of its atmospheric geochemistry is well-known with the high environmental mobility and relatively long atmospheric residence time (c.a., 1 year) associated with its high chemical stability. Despite a growing recognition of the environmental significance of its global cycling, the prexisting Korean database for atmospheric Hg is extremely rare and confined to a number of concentration measurements conducted under relatively polluted urban atmospheric environments. To help activate the research on this suvject, an in-depth analysis on the current development in the measurements of atmospheric mercury and the associated fluxes has been made using the most using the most updated data ests reported worldwide. As a first step toward this purpose, the most reliable techniques commonly employed in the measurements of its concentration in the background atmosphere are introduced in combination with the flux measurement techniques over soil surface such as: dynamic enclosure (or field flux chamber) method and field micrometeorological method. Then the results derived using these measurement techniques are discussed and interpreted with an emphasis on its mobilization across the terrestrial biosphere and atmosphere interface. A unmber of factors including air/soil temperature, soil chemical composition, soil water content, and barometric pressure are found out to be influential to the rate and amount of such exchange processes. Although absolute magnitude of such exchange processes is insignificant relative to that of the major component like the oceanic environment, this exchange process is thought to be the the predominant natural pathway for both the mobilization and redistribution of atmospheric Hg on a local or regional scale.