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Soil-covered strategy for ecological restoration alters the bacterial community structure and predictive energy metabolic functions in mine tailings profiles

  • Environmental biotechnology
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Abstract

Native soil amendment has been widely used to stabilize mine tailings and speed up the development of soil biogeochemical functions before revegetation; however, it remains poorly understood about the response of microbial communities to ecological restoration of mine tailings with soil-covered strategy. In this study, microbial communities along a 60-cm profile were investigated in mine tailings during ecological restoration of two revegetation strategies (directly revegetation and native soil covered) with different plant species. The mine tailings were covered by native soils as thick as 40 cm for more than 10 years, and the total nitrogen, total organic carbon, water content, and heavy metal (Fe, Cu, and Zn) contents in the 0–40 cm intervals of profiles were changed. In addition, increased microbial diversity and changed microbial community structure were also found in the 10–40 cm intervals of profiles in soil-covered area. Soil-covered strategy rather than plant species and soil depth was the main factor influencing the bacterial community, which explained the largest portion (29.96%) of the observed variation. Compared directly to revegetation, soil-covered strategy exhibited the higher relative abundance of Acidobacteria and Deltaproteobacteria and the lower relative abundance of Bacteroidetes, Gemmatimonadetes, Betaproteobacteria, and Gammaproteobacteria. PICRUSt analysis further demonstrated that soil-covered caused energy metabolic functional changes in carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur metabolism. Given all these, the soil-covered strategy may be used to fast-track the establishment of native microbial communities and is conducive to the rehabilitation of biogeochemical processes for establishing native plant species.

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Acknowledgements

We appreciate the subsidization support by the Personnel Training Project of the Mining Environmental Restoration and Wetlands Ecological Security Collaborative Innovation Center, Anhui University.

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  1. School of Resources and Environmental Engineering, Anhui University, Hefei, Anhui Province, China

    Yang Li, Qingye Sun, Jing Zhan, Yang Yang & Dan Wang

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  2. Qingye Sun
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Correspondence to Qingye Sun.

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This study was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant number 41171418).

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Li, Y., Sun, Q., Zhan, J. et al. Soil-covered strategy for ecological restoration alters the bacterial community structure and predictive energy metabolic functions in mine tailings profiles. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 101, 2549–2561 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-016-7969-7

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