The microbial community of a melting Rocky Mountain glacier

Glaciers in the Rocky Mountains of North America are disappearing rapidly, and with their disappearance, we may be losing as-yet-unstudied biodiversity and genetic resources. A variety of different habitats for microorganisms exist on these glaciers, especially within pockets of supraglacial sediments that support higher microbial abundances compared to bare ice. Here we characterize the microbial communities in contrasting sediment habitats on the surface of the Dinwoody Glacier in the Wind River Range of central Wyoming. We used biogeochemical approaches, high-throughput DNA sequencing, and microscopic observations to describe the biogeochemistry and the bacterial and eukaryotic communities of supraglacial sediments from 30 samples on Dinwoody Glacier.