Characterization of high mountain glacier microbiota following inundation with wildfire soot

Glacier ecosystems are shrinking at an accelerating rate due to changes in climate, but also due to increased deposition of soot, which has resulted in darkening of glacier surfaces and subsequent changes in absorption of light, associated heat, and altered microbial communities. In this study, compositions of microbial communities on surfaces of the Athabasca Glacier (Alberta, Canada) were measured by use of DNA metabarcoding. Three matrices, glacier ice, cryoconite hole, and glacial surface sediment, were analyzed. The samples were extracted for DNA and were PCR amplified targeting the hypervariable V3-V4 region of the 16S ribosomal RNA subunit I gene of prokaryotes, as well as the hypervariable V3 region of the 18S ribosomal RNA gene of eukaryotic organisms. Amplicons were sequenced performing a 600-cycle paired-end sequencing run on an Illumina® MiSeq sequencer. This dataset includes the demultiplexed sequencing output, the feature table with taxonomic annotation, and the sample metadata.