Abstract

Improvement of soil quality after land reclamation is a key concern in mining areas. However, the characteristics and internal mechanisms of variation of bacterial community structure over different reclamation periods are currently unclear. The recovery and evolution of soil microbial community structure are important indicators of the level of soil quality improvement of reclaimed soil. Therefore, this study investigated soil samples from coal gangue-filled land after reclamation periods of 1, 6, and 15 years. To accomplish this, 16S rRNA gene libraries were produced to determine the microbial community composition of the soils. In addition, various soil microbial community characteristics in the filled reclamation areas were compared with soil samples from areas unaffected by coal mining. The results showed the following: (1) The diversity and abundance of bacterial communities in reclaimed soils was slightly different from that of natural soils. However, the soil bacterial community structure was highly similar to natural soil after a 15-year reclamation period; therefore, the recovery of bacterial communities can be used as an indicator of the effects of rehabilitation. (2) Some soil physicochemical properties are significantly correlated with the main bacteria in the soil. (3) The dominant bacteria included members of the phyla Firmicutes and Proteobacteria, as well as members of the genera Bacillus, Enterococcus, and Lactococcus. Taken together, the results of this study indicated that the application of microbial remediation technology can be used to adjust the soil microbial community structure, improve soil quality, and shorten the soil recovery period.

Details

Title
Variation in the Soil Microbial Community of Reclaimed Land over Different Reclamation Periods
Author
Hou, Huping 1 ; Wang, Chen 1 ; Ding, Zhongyi 1 ; Zhang, Shaoliang 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Yang, Yongjun 1 ; Ma, Jing 2   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Chen, Fu 2   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Li, Jinrong 1 

1  School of Environment Science & Spatial Informatics, China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou 221116, China 
2  Low Carbon Energy Institute, China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou 221116, China 
First page
2286
Publication year
2018
Publication date
2018
Publisher
MDPI AG
e-ISSN
20711050
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/su10072286
ProQuest document ID
2108865097
Copyright
© 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.