Biodiversidad de diatomeas actuales de la Patagonia Argentina.

The surface sediment samples analysed were collected from lakes and lagoons located between 47˚ and 52˚ S, in the province of Santa Cruz,Argentina, during campaigns carried out in 2013, 2015, 2016. These campaigns were part of UBACyT projects 2011-2014 N˚ 20020100100999; UBACyT2015-2017 N˚ 20020130100413BA and, for the 2016 samples only, FONCYT PICT 2013-0794. Surface sediment samples were obtained from 26 lagoons representing an environmental gradient from the Andean foothills to the Patagonian steppe zone. The sediments, extracted as close to the centre as possible, were obtained by dragging a purpose-built device consisting of a wide-mouthed metal container held horizontally by a 1.5 m long rod. In the field, temperature, pH, conductivity and dissolved oxygen concentration were measured with a portable Hanna HI 9828 multiparameter meter. The dataset has been formatted following the standards of the Tropical South American Diatom Database (https://zenodo.org/records/5721364)--a database constituent of Neotoma (www.neotomadb.org), a global community-curated database by regional experts for multiple types of paleoecological data--and as part of the project "DiatomS mEEt Databases: resources and practices to enable large-scale ecological research (SEED)" funded by the International Society for Diatom Research (https://isdr.org/early-career-networking-award/).