Antarctic Water Tracks: Microbial Community Responses to Variation in Soil Moisture, pH, and Salinity.

ABSTRACT: Ice-free soils in the McMurdo Dry Valleys select for taxa able to cope with challenging environmental conditions, including extreme chemical water activity gradients, freeze-thaw cycling, desiccation, and solar radiation regimes. The low biotic complexity of Dry Valley soils makes them well suited to investigate environmental and spatial influences on bacterial community structure. Water tracks are annually wetted habitats in the cold-arid soils of Antarctica that form briefly each summer with moisture sourced from snow melt, ground ice thaw, and atmospheric deposition via deliquescence and vapor flow into brines. Compared to neighboring arid soils, water tracks are highly saline and relatively moist habitats. They represent a considerable area (∼5-10 km²) of the Dry Valley terr

SUBMITTER: George SF 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7873294 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature