Microbial Community Composition and Nitrogen Transformation Genes of Legacy Sediments in the Mid-Atlantic Region, USA

The goals of this study were to identify the microbial communities within stream bank legacy sediments and how these communities are influenced by multiple factors such as: land use, bank depth, and environmental gradients. Additionally, we wanted to see what the nitrogen functional gene distribution told us about the potential nitrogen processing in legacy sediments. The microbial communities in legacy sediment reside in a unique environment that is currently understudied. To our knowledge this is the first data-set that identifies which types of communities reside in legacy sediment.