Glaciers are retreating rapidly worldwide, particularly at high elevations, changing the environments and habitats of microorganisms, plants, and animals drastically and leaving behind nutrient-poor sediment. We sought to explore seasonal, elevational, and soil age differences in microbial community diversity found in moraine deposits exposed by recent deglaciation and previously exposed during the Little Ice Age in the Cordillera Vilcanota of southeastern Peru. In the wet and dry seasons of 2023, JMU students and other researchers collected soil samples from 35 sites across a 2.5 square kilometer range in the Andes mountains. Each sample was assigned to the season collected, elevation of collection, and age of exposure. Total DNA was extracted from samples and the 16S rRNA gene was amplified and sequenced on an Illumina MiSeq platform. The data were then processed and analyzed using the QIIME2 bioinformatics pipeline. This dataset will be useful to the field for studying ecological community and ecosystem formation in glacier forefields emerging from climate change.
Reider et al. (2026) studied this question.