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Variations in organic carbon, aggregation, and enzyme activities of gangue-fly ash-reconstructed soils with sludge and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi during 6-year reclamation

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Abstract

Mining activities can cause drastic disturbances in soil properties, which adversely affect the nutrient cycling and soil environment. As a result, many efforts have been made to explore suitable reclamation strategies that can be applied to accelerate ecology restoration. In this study, we reconstructed mine soils with fly ash, gangue, sludge, planted ryegrass, and inoculated arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) in Pangzhuang mine of Xuzhou during 2009 to 2015. The soil aggregation process, enzyme activities (i.e., invertase, urease and acid phosphatase activities), soil organic carbon (SOC) as well as other soil nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium contents of the reconstructed mine soils were monitored during 6-year reclamation. The integrated application of sludge and AMF led to a promising reclamation performance of mining areas, in which soil aggregate stability, enzyme activities, SOC, and ryegrass biomass were effectively enhanced. The micro-aggregates (< 0.25 mm) decreased with the increase of macro-aggregates (> 0.25 mm) during the reclamation, indicating that macro-aggregates were gradually formed from micro-aggregates during the pedogenesis of reconstructed mine soils. The correlation analysis shows that SOC contents in aggregate fraction of 0.25∼0.5 mm were correlated with aggregate distribution and enzyme activities. Enzyme activities, however, were not significantly correlated with aggregate distribution. The outcomes from the present study could enrich our understanding on soil property changes in pedogenesis process of reconstructed mine soils, and meanwhile, the employment of sludge combined with AMF is suggested to be an effective alternative for the mine soil reclamation.

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Acknowledgment

The research was provided by a project funded by the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions and The Program of Environmental Science and Technology of Jiangsu Province (no. 2007024).

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    Authors and Affiliations

    1. School of Environment and Spatial Informatics, China University of Mining & Technology, No. 1, Daxue Road, Xuzhou, Jiangsu, 221116, China

      Ningning Yin & Liping Wang

    2. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, New Territories, Hong Kong

      Zhen Zhang

    3. School of Environmental Engineering, Xuzhou Institute of Technology, Xuzhou, China

      Kuimei Qian

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    1. Ningning Yin
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    Correspondence to Liping Wang.

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    Responsible editor: Hailong Wang

    Ningning Yin and Zhen Zhang contributed equally to this work and should be considered co-first authors.

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    Yin, N., Zhang, Z., Wang, L. et al. Variations in organic carbon, aggregation, and enzyme activities of gangue-fly ash-reconstructed soils with sludge and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi during 6-year reclamation. Environ Sci Pollut Res 23, 17840–17849 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-016-6941-5

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