Microbial community composition and abundance after millennia of submarine permafrost warming

Abstract

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> Warming of the Arctic led to an increase of permafrost temperatures by about 0.3 °C during the last decade. Permafrost warming is associated with increasing sediment water content, permeability and diffusivity and could on the long-term alter microbial community composition and abundance even before permafrost thaws. We studied the long-term effect (up to 2500 years) of submarine permafrost warming on microbial communities along an onshore-offshore transect on the Siberian Arctic Shelf displaying a natural temperature gradient of more than 10 °C. We analysed the in-situ development of bacterial abundance and community composition through total cell counts (TCC), quantitative PCR of bacterial gene abundance and amplicon sequencing, and correlated the microbial community data with temperature, pore water chemistry and sediment physicochemical parameters. On time-scales of centuries, permafrost warming coincided with an overall decreasing microbial abundance while millennia after warming microbial abundance was similar to cold onshore permafrost and DOC content was least. Based on correlation analysis TCC unlike bacterial gene abundance showed a significant rank-based negative correlation with increasing temperature while both TCC and bacterial gene copy numbers showed a negative correlation with salinity. Bacterial community composition correlated only weakly with temperature but strongly with pore-water stable isotope signatures and depth, while it showed no correlation with salinity. Microbial community composition showed substantial spatial variation and an overall dominance of Actinobacteria, Chloroflexi, Firmicutes, Gemmatimonadetes and Proteobacteria which are amongst the microbial taxa that were found to be active in other frozen permafrost environments as well. We suggest that, millennia after permafrost warming by over 10 °C, microbial community composition and abundance show some indications for proliferation but mainly reflect the sedimentation history and paleo-environment and not a direct effect through warming.</p>