Metabolically active prokaryotes in tundra soil near Utqiagvik, Alaska in summer and fall, 2018

When wet Arctic tundra soils begin to freeze in the fall, an unfrozen layer remains between the frozen surface and deeper permafrost layers. This period is known as the zero curtain, as liquid water keeps the temperature of this soil layer near 0 Celsius (C) while latent heat is gradually dissipated. This project investigates the microbes that are metabolically active in the unfrozen layer during the fall zero curtain period and compares this community to that which is active in the late summer at the same depth (10-20 centimeters (cm)). This dataset contains the abundance and taxonomic designation of distinct 16S ribosomal ribonucleic acid (16S rRNA) sequences (operational taxonomic units, OTU's) associated with samples in this study. These data complement the sequences and metadata deposited in GenBank Bioproject PRJNA780202.