Microbial communities from subglacial water of naled ice bodies in forefield of Werenskioldbreen, Svalbard

An access to study subglacial microbial environment is very difficult by sterile drilling but such methods are in progress. Nevertheless, not applied to the Svalbard glaciers yet. Surface drilling or sampling of subglacial water flowing out of glaciers are more frequently used as a source of data. Here, we present innovative sampling of water flowing out from underneath of glaciers during winter to avoid contamination by the superficial meltwater or rain water carrying microbes from other sources than from the glacier bedrock interface. Water from the winter seepage from underneath of Svalbard glaciers refreezes at their forefields forming layered dome- or cone- shaped ice bodies called naled ice.In this work direct sampling of water from naled ice bodies was done.This method was used for the first time in Svalbard and elsewhere. We used Werenskioldbreen as well-studied in terms of naled ice glacier located in South Spitsbergen (Svalbard). Microbial communities of the dlacier bed were assessed using 16S rRNA sequencing followed by bioinformatic analysis.