title: Bacterial responses to environmental change on the Tibetan Plateau over the past half century.
abstract: Climate change and anthropogenic factors can alter biodiversity and can lead to changes in community structure and function. Despite the potential impacts, no long-term records of climatic influences on microbial communities exist. The Tibetan Plateau is a highly sensitive region that is currently undergoing significant alteration resulting from both climate change and increased human activity. Ice cores from glaciers in this region serve as unique natural archives of bacterial abundance and community composition, and contain concomitant records of climate and environmental change. We report high-resolution profiles of bacterial density and community composition over the past half century in ice cores from three glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau. Statistical analysis showed that the bacterial community composition in the three ice cores converged starting in the 1990s. Changes in bacterial community composition were related to changing precipitation, increasing air temperature and anthropogenic activities in the vicinity of the plateau. Collectively, our ice core data on bacteria in concert with environmental and anthropogenic proxies indicate that the convergence of bacterial communities deposited on glaciers across a wide geographical area and situated in diverse habitat types was likely induced by climatic and anthropogenic drivers.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China.|CAS Center for Excellence in Tibetan Plateau Earth Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China.
authors.forename: Yongqin
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Department of Land Resources and Environmental Sciences, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT, 59717, USA.
authors.forename: John C
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Priscu
authors.affiliation: Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China.|CAS Center for Excellence in Tibetan Plateau Earth Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China.
authors.forename: Tandong
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Yao
authors.affiliation: Department of Land Resources and Environmental Sciences, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT, 59717, USA.
authors.forename: Trista J
authors.initials: TJ
authors.lastname: Vick-Majors
authors.affiliation: Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China.|CAS Center for Excellence in Tibetan Plateau Earth Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China.
authors.forename: Baiqing
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Marine Environmental Science, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361005, China.
authors.forename: Nianzhi
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Jiao
authors.affiliation: Department of Land Resources and Environmental Sciences, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT, 59717, USA.
authors.forename: Pamela
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Santibáñez
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Marine Bio-resources Sustainable Utilization, South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, 510301, China.
authors.forename: Sijun
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.affiliation: Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou, 730000, China.
authors.forename: Ninglian
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Department of Mathematical Sciences, Montana State University, Bozeman, Montana, 59717, USA.
authors.forename: Mark
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Greenwood
authors.affiliation: Department of Land Resources and Environmental Sciences, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT, 59717, USA.
authors.forename: Alexander B
authors.initials: AB
authors.lastname: Michaud
authors.affiliation: CAS Center for Excellence in Tibetan Plateau Earth Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China.|Key Laboratory of Marine Bio-resources Sustainable Utilization, South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, 510301, China.
authors.forename: Shichang
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Lake Science and Environment, Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, 210008, China.
authors.forename: Jianjun
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China.
authors.forename: Qun
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Gao
authors.affiliation: State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China.
authors.forename: Yunfeng
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Yang
mesh_terms: D001419:Bacteria / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D044822:Biodiversity; D057231:Climate Change; D017753:Ecosystem; D046448:Ice Cover / Q000382:microbiology*; D013696:Temperature; D018609:Tibet