Data were collected as part of the DiatomARCTIC project during the Multidisciplinary Arctic Program - Last Ice sampling campaign (82.576 N 62.471 W), 7-23 May, 2018. The bottom 10 cm of ice samples were collected during this time from neighbouring first-year and multi-year sea ice floes, from which the following parameters were determined: chlorophyll a, exopolymeric substances, ice algal taxonomic composition, oxygen-based net community production and bulk-ice nitrate, nitrite and phosphate concentrations. All samples were melted without dilution and were processed by K Campbell. This work is a contribution to the Diatom ARCTIC project (NE/R012849/1; 03F0810A), part of the Changing Arctic Ocean program, jointly funded by the UKRI Natural Environment Research Council and the German Federal Ministry of Education (BMBF) and Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) Science and the Marine Productivity Laboratory Program. The Multidisciplinary Arctic Program (MAP) - Last Ice is funded by Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) Science in support of Tuvaijuittuq Marine Protected Area (MPA). Additional support was provided by Polar Continental Shelf Program (PCSP, Project 10718) and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery Funds to CM and CHSR.

This dataset consists of 75 destructive ice surface samples for which glacier algae cell counts were undertaken. The sample locations were distributed randomly over a 250 X 250 m area. Funding was provided by the NERC standard grant NE/M021025/1.

The abundance, photophysiology, pigmentation, bio-optical properties, cellular energy balance and instantaneous radiative forcing of glacier algal assemblages from the surface of the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) are quantified throughout the 2016 ablation season. The effects of assemblages on ice surface albedo are further derived using a newly developed model of glacier algal blooms for the GrIS, radiative transfer modelling using BioSNICAR-GO, and comparisons to MODIS broadband albedo observations over the same season. Data represent a composite of in-situ observations, in-situ incubations studies, laboratory analyses, modelling and remote sensing. All in -situ work was performed at site S6 of the K-Transect in the southwestern GrIS ablation zone as part of the Black and Bloom project. Funding was provided by the NERC ''Black and Bloom'' grant NE/M021025/1 and the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 675546.

This database contains information on the herbarium specimens held in the herbarium of the British Antarctic Survey (international code AAS) as well as information about specimens collected in the Antarctic and sub-Antarctic and held in other world herbaria. There are over 70 000 records, predominantly of mosses and lichens, but also of vascular plants, ferns, fungi and algae collected in Antarctic and sub-Antarctic regions as well as some from surrounding continents, particularly South America. The collection from South Georgia And The South Sandwich Islands started in 1775 and from Antarctica in 1834. Documents relating to the Herbarium are kept in the BAS Archives (LS2/4). The records can be searched and downloaded on: http://apex.nerc-bas.ac.uk/f?p=148:1. There is also a facility to see a distribution map of specimens retrieved by querying the database.