Solfatara Crater metagenome Targeted loci
Volcanic and hydrothermal areas represent extreme environments affected by high temperatures, low soil pH, significant diffuse gas emissions and high soil interstitial gas and metal contents. In such areas, microbial life develops in harsh and spatially rapidly changing environments, affecting and being affected by the local geochemical conditions. Solfatara Crater (Campi Flegrei, Italy) represents a perfect natural laboratory to study the interplay between microbial communities and CO2-rich fluids uprising from deep hydrothermal reservoirs. Here, microbial activity was suggested to exert a trivial control on hydrothermal emissions from diffuse degassing (Tassi et al., 2015). Samples were collected from 12 sites within Solfatara Crater, including soil samples from two different depths (10 and 30 cm) along 5 vertical profiles and 2 sediment samples from acidic mud pools. Complete geochemical data, including temperature, pH, EC, WHC, total carbon and nitrogen, gas fluxes and composition, water composition, trace metal contents, soil and sediment mineralogical composition, are provided. The DNA sequencing of soil and sediment samples from this multi-disciplinary study site provides a detailed picture of biodiversity in hydrothermal environments and insights into the complex relations with the chemical and isotopic features of the fluid constituents involved in the microbially-driven processes. PI Franco Tassi, University of Florence.