Developing a Cyberinfrastructure for integrated assessments of environmental contaminants.

The objective of this study was to design and implement prototype software for capturing field data and automating the process for reporting and analyzing the distribution of mercury. The four phase process used to design, develop, deploy and evaluate the prototype software is described. Two different development strategies were used: (1) design of a mobile data collection application intended to capture field data in a meaningful format and automate transfer into user databases, followed by (2) a re-engineering of the original software to develop an integrated database environment with improved methods for aggregating and sharing data.

Relating land cover characteristics and common loon mercury levels using geographic information systems.

This effort models the relationship between mercury (Hg) levels in the common loon (Gavia immer) and land cover types as defined by the National Land Cover Database (NLCD). We constructed the model within the framework of a GIS to analyze the spatial relationships between land cover types and blood Hg levels in male common loons. Thiessan polygons were used to generate the territory for each loon.