BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Toxicology, Pollution and the Environment
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2025.1657891
This article is part of the Research TopicPolluted Ecosystems: How Global Climate Change Drives Pollutant Dynamics in Aquatic and Terrestrial EcosystemsView all 5 articles
Trophic transfer of trace elements within and between aquatic and terrestrial food webs in a forested watershed
Provisionally accepted
- 1The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, China
- 2UNC Greensboro, Greensboro, United States
- 3City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong, SAR China
- 4Pohang University of Science and Technology, Pohang-si, Republic of Korea
- 5Auburn University, Auburn, United States
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Abstract – Global biogeochemical cycling of trace elements is under influences of anthropogenic inputs and climate change, and their trophic transfers within natural food webs are not yet fully characterized. The present study investigated the trophodynamics of four trace elements (essential: copper and zinc, and non-essential: arsenic and cadmium) in a river food web and compared those with an upland forest food web in a semi-remote watershed in northern California, USA. We found empirical evidence of biomagnification for copper, zinc, and cadmium in the lower trophic levels of both aquatic and terrestrial food webs while we showed biodiminution for arsenic in food webs within the river, but not the forest as shown by calculating Trophic Magnification Factor (TMF), a direct and robust approach to explore the biomagnification efficiency of trace elements along the food web. There was a positive intercorrelation between copper, zinc, and cadmium among the food web components, indicating potential common mechanisms in controlling the trophic transfer of these three cationic trace elements in the natural food webs.
Keywords: Biomagnification, trophic transfer, Trace Elements, food webs, river, Forest
Received: 02 Jul 2025; Accepted: 13 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Cheng, Tsui, Monteverde, Kwon and Hoang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Martin Tsz-Ki Tsui, mtktsui@cuhk.edu.hk
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