Study Overview
Abstract
This dataset was generated as part of a study characterising (16S RNA metabarcoding) the prokaryote community associated with blue carbon ecosystem sediments, detailed in the manuscript “Unearthing Blue Carbon Core Microbiomes: Sediment Microbial Communities in Coastal Vegetated Ecosystems.” Sampling was conducted in March 2023 at Nahoon Estuary (32°98′ S, 27°95′ E), a permanently open estuary in the Eastern Cape province, located within the warm-temperate biogeographic region of South Africa. Three sites (up to ~3 km from the river mouth) targeted the three prototypical blue carbon ecosystems: seagrass meadows (Zostera capensis) in the lower intertidal zone, salt marsh (mixed species of Bassia diffusa, Salicornia tegetaria and Sporobolus virginicus), and mangrove (Avicennia marina) in the intertidal to supratidal zone. At each site, sediment samples (n = 5) were collected randomly at a distance of 5-20 m apart from the top surface (0-5 cm) of the sediment profile using a stainless-steel Russian peat corer (5 cm diameter × 50 cm length). Samples (n = 15 for mangroves, n = 15 for salt marsh, and n = 15 for seagrass) were acidified with 1N hydrochloric acid and rinsed to remove the inorganic carbon and the organic carbon content quantified using an Elementar Vario EL Cube CHNS analyzer.
Keywords: seagrass, salt marsh, mangrove, sediment core microbiome, South Africa
Authors
Data Publication
This data publication was assembled and published by the Coastal Carbon Research Coordination Network through the Smithsonian Institution Figshare repository. Please direct any comments or inquiries to CoastalCarbon@si.edu.
Temporal coverage
Start Date: 2023
End Date: 2023
Geographic coverage
Taxonomic coverage
Data Tables
Study materials and methods
Physical: Searle_et_al_2024_materials_and_methods.csv
Soil core information
Physical: Searle_et_al_2024_cores.csv
Soil core depthseries information
Physical: Searle_et_al_2024_depthseries.csv
Study species information
** Funding Sources **
Funding for this research was provided by the National Research Foundation (NRF) of South Africa through the Marine and Coastal Research grant UID 116048, awarded to Sophie von der Heyden. Andrew Ndhlovu was supported through a grant-holder linked Post-Doctoral Fellowship from the NRF awarded to Sophie von der Heyden. Andrew Searle was supported by an Honours bursary through the NRF.
Intellectual Rights
This dataset is listed under a Creative Commons BY 4.0 and can be used with attribution.