VAG Mine Pit Pond Metagenome

The Vermont Asbestos Group (VAG) mine provides an experimental model to investigate resident microbial communities exposed simultaneously to multiple environmental stressors. The VAG Pit Pond and its Outlet present an alkaline aquatic environment, contaminated with asbestos-laden mine tailings and a variety of heavy metals.As no information is available on the microbial community structure of this aquatic ecosystem, our first goal was to characterize the taxonomic profile of its resident microorganisms. Investigations of human-induced perturbation have provided little understanding of microbial community dynamics. The overarching goal of this project is to expand our knowledge of these microbial community interactions using a combination of sequence-based and function-based methodologies. The work lays the foundation for study of microbial dynamics in ecological and geochemical processes of human-impacted environments.