Plants instinctive accumulation of compounds present in soil could help us understand possible solutions to mercury, its effects on the native plant life, and ways to identify heavy metal sediments at Utah’s Great Salt Lake (GSL). This project's main goal is to find whether or not Salicornia, otherwise known as Pickleweed, is absorbing mercury from soil at GSL. Sampling of pickleweed at Great Salt Lake and the consecutive use of a Direct Mercury Analyzer (DMA-80) to quantify the present mercury. It is hypothesized that trace amounts of mercury will be found, but not a significant amount as mercury is more common in deeper substrates than the shoreline soil. If there's mercury in the shoreline soil it tells us that it will be present in dust storms that would affect the populations across Utah.
