Crossing Treeline: Bacterioplankton community composition in alpine and subalpine lakes of the Rocky Mountain southern ecoregion and associated physical and chemical characteristics

This dataset includes lake water samples collected in the summer of
2016 from 16 different mountain lakes in the Rocky mountains in both
Rocky Mountain National Park and the Snowy Range of southern Wyoming.
Each lake was sampled twice: once in the early summer when hydrologic
connections with the surrounding terrestrial environment were high and
again in the late summer when hydrologic connections were low. The
main goal of the study was to compare communities of bacterioplankton
in alpine and subalpine lakes to determine if communities differed
across treeline as soil microbes in the surrounding terrestrial
environment were. To do so, we collected water samples from the
deepest point of each lake, mixed it with a surface water sample and
characterized bacterioplankton communities with 16S sequencing
technology. Additionally, we wanted to identify abiotic factors that
may correlate with community dissimilarity and characterized a suite
of chemical attributes for each lake. Lake characteristics reported
included surface temperature, soluble reactive phosphorous (SRP),
ammonia (NH3+), pH, total dissolved nitrogen (TDN), total dissolved
phosphorus (TDP), and total dissolved organic carbon (DOC), and
chlorophyll a (chl-a).