skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: Landscape topography structures the soil microbiome in arctic polygonal tundra

Journal Article · · Nature Communications
 [1];  [1]; ORCiD logo [1];  [1];  [1];  [1]; ORCiD logo [2];  [3];  [1];  [4]
  1. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
  2. USDOE Joint Genome Institute (JGI), Walnut Creek, CA (United States)
  3. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States); Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)
  4. Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)

In the Arctic, environmental factors governing microbial degradation of soil carbon (C) in active layer and permafrost are poorly understood. Here we determined the functional potential of soil microbiomes horizontally and vertically across a cryoperturbed polygonal landscape in Alaska. With comparative metagenomics, genome binning of novel microbes, and gas flux measurements we show that microbial greenhouse gas (GHG) production is strongly correlated to landscape topography. Active layer and permafrost harbor contrasting microbiomes, with increasing amounts of Actinobacteria correlating with decreasing soil C in permafrost. While microbial functions such as fermentation and methanogenesis were dominant in wetter polygons, in drier polygons genes for C mineralization and CH 4 oxidation were abundant. The active layer microbiome was poised to assimilate N and not to release N 2 O, reflecting low N 2 O flux measurements. These results provide mechanistic links of microbial metabolism to GHG fluxes that are needed for the refinement of model predictions.

Research Organization:
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC05-76RL01830; AC02-05CH11231
OSTI ID:
1423412
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1433134
Report Number(s):
PNNL-SA-126595
Journal Information:
Nature Communications, Vol. 9, Issue 1; ISSN 2041-1723
Publisher:
Nature Publishing GroupCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 58 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

References (73)

Plant community composition and vegetation height, Barrow, Alaska, Ver. 1
  • Sloan, Victoria; Brooks, Jonathan; Wood, Sarah
  • Next Generation Ecosystems Experiment - Arctic, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (US); NGEE Arctic, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States) https://doi.org/10.5440/1129476
dataset January 2014
Metagenomic Insights into Anaerobic Metabolism along an Arctic Peat Soil Profile journal May 2013
Impact of fire on active layer and permafrost microbial communities and metagenomes in an upland Alaskan boreal forest journal April 2014
Stoichiometry and temperature sensitivity of methanogenesis and CO 2 production from saturated polygonal tundra in Barrow, Alaska journal November 2014
Tundra soil carbon is vulnerable to rapid microbial decomposition under climate warming journal February 2016
Metagenomic analysis of a permafrost microbial community reveals a rapid response to thaw journal November 2011
Climate change and the permafrost carbon feedback journal April 2015
Microbes in the neonatal intensive care unit resemble those found in the gut of premature infants journal January 2014
Genomic Insights into Syntrophy: The Paradigm for Anaerobic Metabolic Cooperation journal October 2012
Quality-filtering vastly improves diversity estimates from Illumina amplicon sequencing journal December 2012
Demonstrating microbial co-occurrence pattern analyses within and between ecosystems journal July 2014
An active atmospheric methane sink in high Arctic mineral cryosols journal April 2015
Detecting microbial N-limitation in tussock tundra soil: Implications for Arctic soil organic carbon cycling journal December 2012
The functional potential of high Arctic permafrost revealed by metagenomic sequencing, qPCR and microarray analyses journal April 2010
MEGAHIT: an ultra-fast single-node solution for large and complex metagenomics assembly via succinct de Bruijn graph journal January 2015
FastTree 2 – Approximately Maximum-Likelihood Trees for Large Alignments journal March 2010
Permafrost thaw and resulting soil moisture changes regulate projected high-latitude CO 2 and CH 4 emissions journal September 2015
Geophysical estimation of shallow permafrost distribution and properties in an ice-wedge polygon-dominated Arctic tundra region journal January 2016
AmphoraNet: The webserver implementation of the AMPHORA2 metagenomic workflow suite journal January 2014
Prodigal: prokaryotic gene recognition and translation initiation site identification journal March 2010
Effect of permafrost thaw on CO 2 and CH 4 exchange in a western Alaska peatland chronosequence journal August 2014
Molecular adaptations to psychrophily: the impact of ‘omic’ technologies journal August 2010
Isotopic insights into methane production, oxidation, and emissions in Arctic polygon tundra journal June 2016
Bacterial quorum sensing and nitrogen cycling in rhizosphere soil: Bacterial QS and rhizosphere nitrogen cycling journal November 2008
CheckM: assessing the quality of microbial genomes recovered from isolates, single cells, and metagenomes journal May 2015
Permafrost thaw and soil moisture driving CO 2 and CH 4 release from upland tundra journal March 2015
FLASH: fast length adjustment of short reads to improve genome assemblies journal September 2011
Identifying multiscale zonation and assessing the relative importance of polygon geomorphology on carbon fluxes in an Arctic tundra ecosystem: ZONATION APPROACH IN AN ARCTIC ECOSYSTEM journal April 2015
Pathways of anaerobic organic matter decomposition in tundra soils from Barrow, Alaska: BIOGEOCHEMISTRY OF ANOXIC ARCTIC TUNDRA journal November 2015
Pan-Arctic ice-wedge degradation in warming permafrost and its influence on tundra hydrology journal March 2016
Methane stable isotope distribution at a Carex dominated fen in north central Alberta journal December 1999
phyloseq: An R Package for Reproducible Interactive Analysis and Graphics of Microbiome Census Data journal April 2013
Permafrost thermal state in the polar Northern Hemisphere during the international polar year 2007-2009: a synthesis journal April 2010
UPARSE: highly accurate OTU sequences from microbial amplicon reads journal August 2013
Microbial Functional Potential and Community Composition in Permafrost-Affected Soils of the NW Canadian Arctic journal January 2014
Occurrence, Classification, and Biological Function of Hydrogenases:  An Overview journal October 2007
Changes in microbial communities along redox gradients in polygonized Arctic wet tundra soils: Soil microbial communities along a redox gradient journal July 2015
Effects of experimental warming of air, soil and permafrost on carbon balance in Alaskan tundra: WARMING OF ALASKAN TUNDRA journal February 2011
Multi-omics of permafrost, active layer and thermokarst bog soil microbiomes journal March 2015
Effects of thermo-erosion gullying on hydrologic flow networks, discharge and soil loss journal October 2014
The microbial ecology of permafrost journal May 2014
Isotopic identification of soil and permafrost nitrate sources in an Arctic tundra ecosystem: NITRATE ISOTOPES IN TUNDRA SOILS journal June 2015
The carbohydrate-active enzymes database (CAZy) in 2013 journal November 2013
Recent trends and drivers of regional sources and sinks of carbon dioxide journal January 2015
Observation of rapid drainage system development by thermal erosion of ice wedges on Bylot Island, Canadian Arctic Archipelago journal January 2007
Methanolinea tarda gen. nov., sp. nov., a methane-producing archaeon isolated from a methanogenic digester sludge journal January 2008
Pathways and transformations of dissolved methane and dissolved inorganic carbon in Arctic tundra watersheds: Evidence from analysis of stable isotopes: DISSOLVED CH journal November 2015
QIIME allows analysis of high-throughput community sequencing data journal April 2010
Quantifying and relating land-surface and subsurface variability in permafrost environments using LiDAR and surface geophysical datasets journal December 2012
Spatial Extent, Age, and Carbon Stocks in Drained Thaw Lake Basins on the Barrow Peninsula, Alaska journal August 2003
The deep cold biosphere: facts and hypothesis journal July 1997
Methane dynamics regulated by microbial community response to permafrost thaw journal October 2014
Nonlinear controls on evapotranspiration in arctic coastal wetlands journal January 2011
X-Ray computed tomography examination and comparison of gas hydrate dissociation in NGHP-01 expedition (India) and Mount Elbert (Alaska) sediment cores: Experimental observations and numerical modeling journal December 2014
Methane-cycling communities in a permafrost-affected soil on Herschel Island, Western Canadian Arctic: active layer profiling of mcrA and pmoA genes journal March 2012
The SEED and the Rapid Annotation of microbial genomes using Subsystems Technology (RAST) journal November 2013
Methanocella paludicola gen. nov., sp. nov., a methane-producing archaeon, the first isolate of the lineage 'Rice Cluster I', and proposal of the new archaeal order Methanocellales ord. nov. journal April 2008
Comparative genomic and physiological analysis provides insights into the role of Acidobacteria in organic carbon utilization in Arctic tundra soils journal April 2012
FOAM (Functional Ontology Assignments for Metagenomes): a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) database with environmental focus journal September 2014
Discovery of a novel methanogen prevalent in thawing permafrost journal February 2014
Metabolic and trophic interactions modulate methane production by Arctic peat microbiota in response to warming journal April 2015
MaxBin: an automated binning method to recover individual genomes from metagenomes using an expectation-maximization algorithm journal August 2014
Occurrence, Classification, and Biological Function of Hydrogenases: An Overview journal December 2007
Fungal diversity driven by bark features affects phorophyte preference in epiphytic orchids from southern China journal May 2021
Succession of endophytic fungi and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi associated with the growth of plant and their correlation with secondary metabolites in the roots of plants journal April 2021
Recent trends and drivers of regional sources and sinks of carbon dioxide text January 2015
MEGAHIT: An ultra-fast single-node solution for large and complex metagenomics assembly via succinct de Bruijn graph preprint January 2014
Salinimonas marina sp. nov. Isolated from Jeju Island Marine Sediment journal June 2021
Horizontal gene transfer enables programmable gene stability in synthetic microbiota journal September 2022
Infant gut microbiota characteristics generally do not modify effects of lipid-based nutrient supplementation on growth or inflammation: secondary analysis of a randomized controlled trial in Malawi journal September 2020
Naive Bayesian Classifier for Rapid Assignment of rRNA Sequences into the New Bacterial Taxonomy journal June 2007
Phylogenetic Distribution of Potential Cellulases in Bacteria journal December 2012
Aerotolerance of strictly anaerobic microorganisms and factors of defense against oxidative stress: A review journal November 2007

Cited By (13)

Understanding spatial variability of methane fluxes in Arctic wetlands through footprint modelling journal December 2019
The known and the unknown in soil microbial ecology journal January 2019
Distinct Taxonomic and Functional Profiles of the Microbiome Associated With Different Soil Horizons of a Moist Tussock Tundra in Alaska journal June 2019
Microbial community composition and abundance after millennia of submarine permafrost warming journal January 2019
Nutrient Release From Permafrost Thaw Enhances CH 4 Emissions From Arctic Tundra Wetlands journal June 2019
Mechanistic Modeling of Microtopographic Impacts on CO 2 and CH 4 Fluxes in an Alaskan Tundra Ecosystem Using the CLM‐Microbe Model journal December 2019
Tundra microbial community taxa and traits predict decomposition parameters of stable, old soil organic carbon journal August 2019
Climate change microbiology — problems and perspectives journal May 2019
Genome-centric view of carbon processing in thawing permafrost journal July 2018
Denitrifiers, nitrogen-fixing bacteria and N2O soil gas flux in high Arctic ice-wedge polygon cryosols journal April 2019
New Biological Insights Into How Deforestation in Amazonia Affects Soil Microbial Communities Using Metagenomics and Metagenome-Assembled Genomes journal July 2018
Prokaryotic community shifts during soil formation on sands in the tundra zone journal April 2019
Bacterial and Archaeal Metagenome-Assembled Genome Sequences from Svalbard Permafrost journal July 2019