AUTHOR=Li Zihao , Liu Bingru , Chen Zifeng , Mao Dachuan , Jiang Xingsheng 

TITLE=Re-vegetation Improves Soil Quality by Decreasing Soil Conductivity and Altering Soil Microbial Communities: A Case Study of an Opencast Coal Mine in the Helan Mountains

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Microbiology

VOLUME=13

YEAR=2022

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/microbiology/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2022.833711

DOI=10.3389/fmicb.2022.833711

ISSN=1664-302X

ABSTRACT=<p>Microbial communities constitute a diverse genetic resource pool in the soil and are key indicators of soil health and quality. How re-vegetation affects soil microbial diversity and community composition at the dump of an opencast coal mine is largely unknown. Using high-throughput sequencing, we performed a comparative study of the bacterial and fungal communities from non-vegetated (bare land) soil and from areas re-vegetated by <italic>Astragalus laxmannii</italic>, <italic>Halogeton arachnoideus</italic>, and <italic>Artemisia desertorum</italic> at an opencast coal mine in the Helan Mountains in western China. These results indicated that re-vegetation significantly reduced soil conductivity. The soils re-vegetated by all three plant species showed greater richness of bacterial species than the bare land, and soils re-vegetated with <italic>A. desertorum</italic> and <italic>A. laxmannii</italic> showed significantly greater richness of fungal species than bare land. The bacterial and fungal β-diversity values differed significantly between vegetated and non-vegetated soil, and these differences were more pronounced for bacterial communities than for fungal communities. Re-vegetation significantly increased the relative abundances of <italic>Proteobacteria</italic> and <italic>Bacteroidota</italic> and decreased the relative abundance of <italic>Chloroflexi</italic>. The decreasing soil conductivity that occurred with re-vegetation was found to be an important environmental determinant of the soil microbial community. This study provides evidence that re-vegetation may enhance soil quality via decreasing soil conductivity and altering the soil microbial community, and <italic>A. laxmannii</italic> was found to be a more effective species than <italic>H. arachnoideus</italic> or <italic>A. desertorum</italic> with respect to decreasing soil conductivity and altering the soil microbial communities in the Opencast Coal Mine arid region. This work may provide a helpful guideline for selection of plant species for re-vegetation projects.</p>