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Microbial response to antimony-arsenic distribution and geochemical factors at arable soil around an antimony mining site

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Abstract

Antimony (Sb) mining often causes severe Sb pollution and associate arsenic (As) compound contamination. To further understand the interaction mechanism among soil microorganisms, heavy metal distribution, and geochemical factors, the effects of environmental factors on soil microbial communities under different levels of Sb-As co-contamination were studied in situ of Chashan antimony mine, Guangxi Province. The results showed that the range of Sb and As contents in soil were 1339.63–7762.28 mg/kg and 2170.3–10,371.36 mg/kg, respectively, and the residual fraction accounted for more than 98.0% with less than 2.0% of bioavailable fraction. Besides, the concentration of the two metals is both related to the distance to surface runoff. Different microbial communities in arable soils of each sample site were analyzed, which was significantly affected by soil environmental factors such as pH, ALN, AP, OM, Tot-Sb, Tot-As, Bio-As, and Bio-Sb. The phylum of Actinobacteria in sites 1, 4, and 5 was the most dominant and the phylum of Proteobacteria were the most dominant in sites 2 and 3. Moreover, the results of redundancy analysis (RDA), variation partition analysis (VPA), and Spearman correlation analyses demonstrated that microorganisms, heavy metal distribution, and geochemical factors interacted with each other and together shaped the microbial community. Our findings are beneficial for understanding the response of soil microorganisms to As-Sb distribution and geochemical factors in arable soils under Sb mining areas.

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Acknowledgements

The authors also would like to thank Professor Guanglei Cheng of Sichuan University for the technical support.

Funding

This study was financially supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2020YFC1807703; 2020YFC1807704) and the Regional Innovation Cooperation Project of Sichuan Province (2022YFQ0081).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Bio-Resource and Eco-Environment of Ministry of Education, College of Life Sciences, Sichuan University, Chengdu, 610065, Sichuan, People’s Republic of China

    Huayan Huang, Kangkai Lin, Ling Lei, Yongyun Li, Yipeng Li, Ke Liang & Heng Xu

  2. Soil and Fertilizer Institute, Sichuan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Chengdu, 610066, China

    Yuxian Shangguan

  3. Sichuan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, No. 4, Shizishan Road, Jinjiang District, Chengdu, 610066, China

    Yuxian Shangguan

  4. Key Laboratory of Environment Protection, Soil Ecological Protection and Pollution Control, Department of Ecology and Environment of Sichuan, Sichuan University, Chengdu, 610065, Sichuan, People’s Republic of China

    Heng Xu

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  1. Huayan Huang
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  2. Kangkai Lin
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  3. Ling Lei
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  7. Yuxian Shangguan
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Contributions

Huayan Huang: conceptualization; investigation; methodology; data curation; writing — original draft; writing — review and editing; visualization; supervision. Kangkai Lin: investigation; data curation. Ling Lei: investigation; visualization. Yongyun Li: visualization. Yipeng Li: investigation. Ke Liang: writing — review and editing. Heng Xu: revising and editing; data processing; supervision; funding acquisition. Yuxian Shangguan: writing — review and editing; supervision; investigation; funding acquisition.

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Correspondence to Yuxian Shangguan.

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Huang, H., Lin, K., Lei, L. et al. Microbial response to antimony-arsenic distribution and geochemical factors at arable soil around an antimony mining site. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30, 47972–47984 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-25507-6

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