The purpose of this experiment, performed as part of the McMurdo Dry Valleys Long Term Ecological Research (MCM LTER) program, was to investigate the impact of lake level rise and moat expansion on microbial community diversity and function in the East Lobe of Lake Bonney, located in Taylor Valley, Antarctica. The “tLICE” experiment tested the following MCM5 Hypotheses: H3-Disturbance increases connectivity and accelerates shifts towards homogeneity, and H4-Decreased heterogeneity reduces community resistance and resilience.
Dataset Results
To evaluate the role of Antarctic aeolian transport in surface chemistry homogenization, fifty-three samples of aeolian material from the McMurdo Dry Valleys region of Antarctica were collected and analyzed for water-soluble major ions and nutrients at a 1:5 sediment:water ratio. Samples were collected seasonally from Alatna Valley, Victoria Valley, Miers Valley, and Taylor Valley (Taylor Glacier, East Lake Bonney, F6 (Lake Fryxell), and Explorer’s Cove) at five heights (~5, 10, 20, 50, 100 cm) above the surface between 2013 and 2015.
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Snow patches within and adjacent to stream channels in the Fryxell Basin of Taylor Valley, Antarctica were sampled during the 2021-2022 austral summer as part of the McMurdo Dry Valleys Long Term Ecological Research program. This data package includes snow pit measurements (snow temperature, depth, density, and water equivalent) as well as chemical characteristics of snow samples that were analyzed for nutrient, cation, and anion concentrations.
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This data package includes ecological parameters of biocrust and soil from samples collected in-situ within the Lake Fryxell Basin of the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica during December of 2019. Parameters include biological (ash-free dry mass, pigment concentration, and counts of soil invertebrates), physical (water content, electrical conductivity, and pH), and chemical properties (inorganic nitrogen, inorganic phosphorous, total nitrogen, and total organic carbon) of the surface soil, biocrust, and underlying soil.