USGS Regional Monitoring Program Bird Egg Data

As part of the Regional Monitoring Program (RMP) and the USGS’s long-term Wildlife Contaminants Program, the USGS samples double-crested cormorant (Phalacrocorax auritus) and Forster’s tern (Sterna forsteri) eggs throughout the San Francisco Bay Estuary approximately every three years to assess temporal trends in contaminant concentrations. This sampling has been carried out in 2006, 2009, 2012, and 2016. This dataset summarizes egg collections for 2016, as well as mercury concentrations in Forster’s tern eggs on an individual egg basis.