Inner Workings: Big wildfires mobilize mercury. What are the risks to surface water?

The landscape was still smoldering in October 2020 as Jeff Prancevic and Charles Alpers, part of a multidisciplinary team of US Geological Survey (USGS) researchers, drove into the scorched hills above Lake Berryessa in California. Masked and traveling separately because of the pandemic, the team met up at EcoCamp Berryessa, a site that had recently hosted firefighters as they battled the LNU Lightning Complex fires in Northern California. The USGS team was there to sample soils and ash amidst the devastation.