Milwaukee harbor and Lake Michigan Targeted loci environmental. freshwater metagenome

Water quality is impacted significantly by urbanization. The delivery of increased nutrient loads to waterways is a primary characteristic of this land use change. Despite the recognized effects of nutrient loading on aquatic systems, the influence of urbanization on the bacterial community composition of these systems is not understood. We used massively-parallel sequencing of bacterial 16S rRNA genes to examine the bacterial assemblages in transect samples spanning the heavily urban impacted rivers and harbor of Milwaukee, WI USA to the relatively un-impacted waters of Lake Michigan. From these data, we examined the source, the conditions promoting enhanced delivery, and the persistence of fecal bacteria and urban-infrastructure bacteria in the waters surrounding the city of Milwaukee. We also examined whether the conditions in urban waterways impact the composition of common freshwater bacterial lineages and assemblage characteristics of the microbial communities present.