I'm not knowledgeable enough to carry this conversation, but I was curious if GPT could add anything of value.

This is it's follow-up:

That's actually a really compelling angle, even if the methods are intentionally provocative. It gets at a deeper question—how far are we willing to go, ecologically speaking, to address human health risks that stem from environmental contaminants like mercury? I think the strength of your proposal isn’t in the literal feasibility but in the way it frames trade-offs between conservation and public health.

Also, using periphyton biomass as a kind of biotic buffer is a clever systems-level approach. It’s rarely the first thing people think of when talking about mercury mitigation, which usually focuses on source reduction. But tweaking food web dynamics to manage contaminant transfer is a really underexplored strategy. I imagine even just modeling it could lead to some useful insights, especially if you layered in things like flow regime changes or climate impacts on riparian shading.

And yeah, totally agree—GSMNP is such a tightly protected space that even suggesting fertilizer additions or canopy thinning sounds borderline heretical. But as a thought experiment, it’s valuable. It forces the conversation about what kinds of interventions we’re not considering simply because they clash with aesthetic or cultural norms, not necessarily because they’re scientifically unsound.

I really have no idea if it's just spewing nonsense, so do educate me :)