Effects Of Fertilization On Soil Quality Under Artificial Vegetation Restoration In Typical Mining Areas

The exploitation of mineral resources leads to serious water and soil erosion,which induced the destruction of the ecological environment in the mining area.The vegetation restoration becomes more difficult,which resulted from the shortage of water and low fertility in the soil.Soil moisture,physical and chemical properties,soil enzyme activities,and microbial communities are often used as indicators for evaluating the soil quality.Soil quality variations can be known during the process of vegetation restoration by measuring these indicators,which could provide theoretical basis for the vegetation restoration and suitable fertilization mode in the mining area.Taking Xiyu coal mine in Taiyuan as the study area,four fertilization treatments(organic fertilizer plus water retention agent,water retention agent,organic fertilizer and no fertilizer)were carefully selected for the resorted grassland and shrub land.The variations of soil moisture,soil pH and nutrients(soil total nitrogen,soil total carbon and organic matter),soil enzyme activity(catalase,phosphatase,urease,and sucrase)and soil microbial community structures and diversities under four different fertilizer treatments were analyzed in grassland and shrub land.The main conclusions were presented as follows:(1)Analyzing the change of soil moisture in four different fertilization treatments.In grassland,the soil moisture content of organic fertilizer plots was relatively high in August.The soil moisture contents were higher in both the water retention agent and organic fertilizer treatments in the plant growth season in the shrub land.(2)Soil pH and chemical properties in four different fertilizer treatments were analyzed.Soil pH values do not change significantly.In the grassland and shrub land,three fertilization treatments increased the soil total carbon,total nitrogen and organic matter content.In the grassland,the improvements of soil nutrient content were better at mixture fertilizer and organic fertilizer plots than others.(3)Soil enzyme activity in different fertilization treatments under artificial restored grass and shrub vegetations were analyzed.The results showed that the activities of catalase,phosphatase,urease and sucrase were relatively high for both mixture fertilizer and organic fertilizer treatments in the grassland.In shrub land,four enzyme activities had been improved for mixture fertilizer treatment.(4)Soil microbial community structures and diversities in four different fertilization treatments were analyzed.The results showed that the microbial community structures among four fertilization treatments plots were similar.Besides,the community richness and diversity were relatively high in grassland for water retention agent treatment.There was a high degree of bacterial community richness in the mixture fertilizer treatment,and a high degree of richness and diversity in the fungal community in shrub land.