Investigation of microbial ecosystems and their turnover processes in the sediments of the saline, alkaline Lake Van as part of the ICDP Drilling Project - PaleoVan -

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Within the framework of the ICDP drilling Project „PaleoVan“ long sediment cores from saline, alkaline Lake Van (Turkey) will be retrieved. The goals of the proposed project are the characterization of the microbial processes, cell abundance and distribution of the major phylogenetic groups in the sediments of Lake Van. One part of the project will be devoted to the identification and quantification of the turnover processes in the sediment column, the other part will focus on the spatial variability of microbes and look at the different microhabitats, e.g single laminae and sedimentary interfaces around volcanic ash layers. For turnover rate measurements, both direct radiotracer experiments and numerical modeling of turnover processes based on concentration gradients of dissolved compounds in the porewater will be used in order to obtain the gross and the net rate of a process. The microbiological characterization of the samples will be done by enumeration of the total microbial cell abundance and the quantification of the dominant groups of organisms (e.g. Bacteria, Archaea, Sulfate reducers, methanogens, ANME, etc.). The data will provide a basic understanding of the fundamental processes in alkaline sediments, an environment that has so far not been studied in greater detail.