title: WGS of Escherichia coli from soil
design: Escherichia coli were isolated from surface soils in the watershed of the Buffalo River of Minnesota using a random spatial sampling design that was stratified by predicted pH of the surface soil layer.  E. coli were isolated using EC medium with MUG and phylogroup was determined by SNP genotyping assays.  Genomes of 944 isolates were sequenced for the purposes of determining how deposition in soil might affect selection for persistence or virulence traits, given that E. coli are rapidly dispersed to soil as a non-host environment.  Libraries for sequencing were generated using Illumina Nextera XTTM kits, sequenced using paired 100 bp reads on an Illumina HiSeq 4000 at Macrogen Clinical Laboratories.  The fastq files contain trimmed, demultiplexed reads.