Microbial diversity and activity along the NEEM ice core Greenland

This project was an integral part of the large international effort to drill the new NEEM Greenland ice core. Our long-term goals were to study the abundance, viability and diversity of the intrinsic microbial populations at different depths (100 to 2051 m)/ages (300 to 80,000 years) along the NEEM Greenland ice core and to address the question of possible microbial origin of anomalies of nitrous oxide (N2O) concentrations in Greenland ice due to in-situ microbial activity. We used high-resolution geochemical and microbiological analyses including cultivation and Illumina next generation sequencing.