1 Introduction Mercury (Hg) is a naturally occurring element, but human activities such as mining and fossil-fuel combustion have released approximately 1.5 Tg of Hg from stable geologic reservoirs to the atmosphere, land, and water over the past 500 years (1510–2010) (Streets et al., 2019a). This has significantly altered the natural biogeochemical Hg cycle (Geyman et al., 2023; Streets et al., 2019a) and adversely affected the health of exposed humans and wildlife (Basu et al., 2023).