Forearc hot springs of Southern Costa Rica and Panama Targeted loci environmental
In 2017, the Census of Deep Life provided sequencing support for bacterial and archaeal 16S rDNA amplicons as well as metagenomes for about 30 samples across the Costa Rican arc from samples collected through the Deep Carbon Observatory Biology Meets Subduction project. These microbiological data are nested against an extraordinarily rich set of environmental metadata that provide context for biogeochemical processes in the volcanic arc. In April 2018, we completed our second field season, sampling all new hot springs and deep wells along the Central American subduction zone in Costa Rica and Panama, which has a very different subduction signal than the region covered by our 2017 sites. Most notably, subduction in this region does not result in active volcanoes. Our objective is to determine whether this stark change in the nature of the subduction zone is reflected in the composition of subsurface microbial communities. PI Karen LLoyd University of Tennessee