Groundwater ecosystems are globally widespread yet still poorly understood. We investigated the microbiology of groundwater samples from various monitoring wells (<250m depth) located in 14 aquifers in the Canadian Prairie. This dataset contains archaeal community diversity indices based on 16S rRNA gene amplicons retrieved from 52 groundwater samples of aquifers in the Canadian Prairie, collected between 2015 and 2020. The study area comprised 14 major aquifers and a geographic area of ~210.000 km2. The goal of the study was to understand the links between the biogeochemistry and microbial ecology of groundwater ecosystems in diverse geological settings on a broad spatial scale. Details concerning DNA extraction, sequencing and sequence analyses can be found in the associated publication by Ruff et al. 2023.

Note: Absolute singe sequence OTUs (operational taxonomic units), also abbreviated as SSOabs are OTUs (based on 16S rRNA gene sequences) that occur only once in an entire dataset. In this case, these OTUs would only occur once in all 138 samples. These are generally rare organisms.Relative SSO are OTUs that occur only once in 1 sample, but also occur at least once in another sample. These OTUs are conditionally rare. They are rare in one environment, but may become abundant when conditions change.