Mercury hazard of earthquakes in the Baikal seismic zone

Rasskazov, S.V.; Ilyasova, A.M.; Snopkov, S.V.; Chuvashova, I.S.; Chebykin, E.P.

doi:10.31951/2658-3518-2022-A-3-1332

Авторы

Rasskazov, S.V. ^{1, 2}
Ilyasova, A.M. ¹
Snopkov, S.V. ²
Chuvashova, I.S. ^{1, 2}
Chebykin, E.P. ^{1, 3}

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DOI:

https://doi.org/10.31951/2658-3518-2022-A-3-1332

Ключевые слова:

mercury, groundwater, earthquake, Lake Baikal, monitoring

Аннотация

On the west coast of Lake Baikal, we defined long-term and short-term variations in Hg concentrations of groundwater in 2017 to 2019 and from 2019 to the present, respectively; the latter variations were associated with the 2020–2021 Baikal-Khubsugul seismic reactivation of active faults. We inferred that increasing Hg concentration in groundwater was due to crustal extension with the highest Hg enrichment related to aftershocks. We argue that a Hg flux depends on the nature of fault activities and elevated Hg concentrations in sedimentary layers may designate the release of Hg_gas and Hg_gw from seismically active faults in the past 14.4 Ka.