Plant DNA metabarcoding record from a sediment core from Lake Naleng, southeastern Tibetan Plateau

Here, we provide the raw plant DNA metabarcoding data archived in Lake Naleng sediment core spanning the late-glacial to the present (17,700 to 0 cal yr BP).

Lake Naleng (31.10° N, 99.7°5 E, 4200 above sea level) is situated in a glacially-formed basin on the southeastern Tibetan Plateau. It is an alpine freshwater lake with a maximum water depth of 36.7 m, an open surface area of 1.7 km²,  a specific conductivity of 0.045 mS/cm, a Secchi depth of 2.9 m, a pH of 8.1, a dissolved oxygen content of 6.9 mg/L (measured 19.09.2003), and a catchment area of 128 km². The catchment is used for seasonal grazing by yaks and sheep. The lake is located at the upper treeline with main vegetation of alpine meadow. The detailed geographic, biogeochemical and vegetation information are described in Kramer et al., 2010a, b, c (doi: 10.1007/s00334-009-0219-5, 10.1016/j.yqres.2009.12.003, and 10.1016/j.palaeo.2009.12.001) and Opitz et al., 2015 (doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2015.03.011).

The lake sediment cores (17.81 m) was recovered from water depth of 32 m using an UWITEC (Niederreiter 60) piston corer system on the frozen lake surface in February 2004 (Kramer et al., 2010a).  Due to lack of macrofossil remains, ten bulk organic carbon samples were selected for AMS (accelerator mass spectrometry) radiocarbon dating at the Leibniz Laboratory, Kiel. The age-depth model was built after subtracting the lake reservoir effect of 1500 cal yr BP. The original ¹⁴C dating and chronology is given by Kramer et al., 2010a, b, c.

In this project, we inferred the plant richness based on DNA data and simulated glacial dynamics and habitat area within lake catchment. We synthesized these data with published palaeoenvironmental data  (temperature, soil development, and treeline location) to find the direct factor of plant richness variations over the past ~18,000 years. According to the inferred relationship, we predicted the plant richness change in the next 250 years (until 2300 C.E.).