Metagenomic and satellite analyses of red snow in the Russian Arctic

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1 Department of Biology, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, United States
2 Microbiology, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, Netherlands
3 White Sea Biological Station, Zoological Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia
4 National Park Russian Arctic, Archangelsk, Russia
5 Ronin Institute, Montclair, NJ, United States
6 National Geographic Society, Washington DC, United States
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.1341v1
Published
Accepted
Subject Areas
Biodiversity, Ecology, Genomics, Microbiology, Virology
Keywords
red snow, snow, arctic, watermelon snow, viruses, Franz Josef Land, phage, metagenomics
Copyright
© 2015 Hisakawa et al.
Licence
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
Cite this article
Hisakawa N, Quistad S, Hester ER, Martynova D, Maughan H, Sala E, Gavrilo M, Rohwer F. 2015. Metagenomic and satellite analyses of red snow in the Russian Arctic. PeerJ PrePrints 3:e1341v1

Abstract

Cryophilic algae thrive in liquid water within snow and ice in alpine and polar regions worldwide. Blooms of these algae lowers albedo (reflection of sunlight), thereby altering melting patterns (Kohshima et al. 1993; Lutz et al. 2014; Thomas & Duval 1995) . Here metagenomic DNA analysis and satellite imaging were used to investigate red snow in Franz Josef Land in the Russian Arctic. Franz Josef Land red snow metagenomes confirmed that the communities are composed of the autotroph Chlamydomonas nivalis that is supporting a complex viral and heterotrophic bacterial community. Comparisons with white snow communities from other sites suggest that snow and ice are initially colonized by fungal-dominated communities and then succeeded by the more complex C. nivalis-heterotroph red snow. Satellite image analysis showed that red snow covers up to 80% of the surface of snow and ice fields in Franz Josef Land and globally. Together these results show that C. nivalis supports a local food web that is on the rise as temperatures warm, with potential widespread impacts on alpine and polar environments worldwide.

Author Comment

This is a submission to PeerJ for review.

Supplemental Information

Supplemental Methods, Figures, and Tables

This file contains additional information about the methods used to estimate red snow abundances, and has additional figures and tables.

DOI: 10.7287/peerj.preprints.1341v1/supp-1

Landsat IDs

This file lists the Landsat IDs used for satellite image analysis of snow/ice/red snow abundances. Images can be acquired freely at: http://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/

DOI: 10.7287/peerj.preprints.1341v1/supp-2