Abstract
Purpose
Soil water and nutrients are easily lost from tailings in rare earth mining areas, resulting in slow plant restoration and limited remediation effects. The present study was conducted to explore the remediation effect of superabsorbent polymers (SAPs) incorporated with organic and inorganic fertilizers on the retention capacity of soil water and nutrients in rare earth mining areas.
Materials and methods
In this experiment, five treatments were established: the control (CK), 0.4% SAPs (S), a mixture of 8% organic fertilizer, 0.2% urea, and 1% minerals (F), and mixtures of F with 0.2% SAPs (FS1) and 0.4% SAPs (FS2). The processes of water infiltration, wetting front migration, and water leaching, the pH value and total nitrogen (TN), total phosphorus (TP), and total potassium (TK) contents in the leachate and the water content, pH value, and bulk density (BD) in the soil column were measured.
Results and discussion
The results showed that all amendments significantly reduced soil infiltration and the migration of the wetting front, with decrease rates of 46.39–58.76% and 31.43–54.29%, respectively. Among them, the greatest significant delay in water infiltration in the initial period was observed in the FS1 treatment. A similar effect was found in the leaching process after 50 or 80 days of incubation, after which the leachate volume was reduced by 10.11–23.61% for the FS1 treatment. The soil water content also significantly improved, and greater effects were found in the F, FS1, and FS2 treatments, where the contents increased by 0.49–29.61%. Fertilizer addition increased soluble soil nutrients, resulting in increased TN, TP, and TK contents and a decrease in the pH value of the leachate. Nutrient loss and acidification were alleviated in the FS1 and FS2 treatments due to mixing with SAPs, with reductions of 2.00–34.21% and 2.27–6.82%, respectively. In addition, adding SAPs (in the S, FS1, and FS2 treatments) alleviated soil compaction and decreased the BD.
Conclusion
Our findings indicated that SAPs incorporated with organic and inorganic fertilizers could increase soil fertility and enhance the soil retention capacity of soils for water and nutrients, thus providing a promising reference for the positive phytoremediation effects of this method.
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Data availability
The data used in this study will be made available on request.
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Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Dr. Xuezheng Shi and Dr. Meiyan Wang for supporting our lab work. The anonymous reviewers are greatly acknowledged for their valuable suggestions, which improved the quality of the manuscript.
Funding
This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2019YFC1805104, 2021YFD1500801).
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Yanzi He: conceptualization, methodology, software, validation and formal analysis, investigation, data analysis and interpretation, and writing (original draft preparation and review and editing). Zhiyuan Tian: conceptualization, methodology, writing (original draft preparation and review and editing), and funding acquisition. Rui Ma: validation and formal analysis, investigation, data analysis, and interpretation. Yin Liang: writing (review and editing), supervision, and funding acquisition. Xuchao Zhu: writing (review and editing). Lili Qu: software, investigation, data analysis, and interpretation.
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He, Y., Tian, Z., Ma, R. et al. Effects of superabsorbent polymers (SAPs) incorporated with organic and inorganic fertilizer on the water and nutrient retention of soil in rare earth mine tailing areas. J Soils Sediments 23, 3384–3395 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11368-023-03538-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11368-023-03538-3