Abstract
We have investigated the effect of soil moisture on mercury emission fluxes (MEFs) from soils under controlled conditions with a laboratory flux chamber system. Over wet soils MEFs first increase by a factor of five to ten with decreasing soil moisture, peak between 33% and 10% and than decrease to less than 2% of the maximum observed flux at soil moisture levels below 1%. Our results strongly indicate that the MEFs are more likely to be controlled by the soil moisture tension rather than by the soil moisture level.
