There are many problems for the reclaimed soil in opencast-mining areas of the Loess Plateau of China such as poor soil structure and extreme poverty in soil nutrients and so on. For the sake of finding a better way to improve soil quality, the current study was to apply the weathered coal for repairing soil media and investigate the physicochemical properties of the reclaimed soil and the changes in enzyme activities after planting Robinia pseucdoacacia. The results showed that the application of the weathered coal significantly improved the quality of soil aggregates, increased the content of water stable aggregates, and the organic matter, humus, and the cation exchange capacity of topsoil were significantly improved, but it did not have a significant effect on soil pH. Planting R. pseucdoacacia significantly enhanced the activities of soil catalase, urease, and invertase, but the application of the weathered coal inhibited the activity of catalase. Although the application of appropriate weathered coal was able to significantly increase urease activity, the activities of catalase, urease, or invertase had a close link with the soil profile levels and time. This study suggests that applying weathered coals could improve the physicochemical properties and soil enzyme activities of the reclaimed soil in opencast-mining areas of the Loess Plateau of China and the optimum applied amount of the weathered coal for reclaimed soil remediation is about 27 000 kg hm À2 .
China has set up ecological protection and high-quality development of the Yellow River Basin as its national strategy. However, the fragile natural ecosystem and intensive human disturbances pose challenges to it. This study evaluates habitat quality change and analyzes its drivers in a representative county of this region, aiming to provide scientific basis for ecological protection and sustainable development. We took Liulin, a representative county of middle Yellow River Basin as the study area and evaluated the spatiotemporal variation of habitat quality from 2000 to 2020 with the InVEST model. Further, the influencing factors of habitat quality pattern were explored using GeoDetector, and their gradient ranges dominating the habitat quality change were determined by gradient analysis. The results showed that: (1) Areas of low and medium-low habitat quality grades were distributed interactively in the whole county; medium grade areas were scattered in the northeast and southwest parts of the county; and medium-high and high grades area were distributed sporadically along the Yellow River and its branches. (2) Habitat quality of the county almost unchanged from 2000 to 2010. However, from 2010 to 2020, with the rapid expansion of construction land (increased by 9.62 times), the area proportion of medium, medium-high, and high habitat quality grades decreased from 7.01% to 5.31%, while that of low and medium-low habitat quality grades increased from 92.99% to 94.69%. (3) The habitat quality was influenced by multiple natural-human factors. The main influencing factor was land use, followed by elevation. (4) Most changes of habitat quality occurred in areas with lower elevation, gentler slope, and higher vegetation coverage, which were affected by intensive human activities. These results suggest that in future land use policy making and, the construction land expansion in Liulin County should be restricted and differentiated ecological protection and restoration strategies should be implemented in areas with different habitat quality.
The identification of contamination "hotspots" are an important indicator of the degree of contamination in localized areas, which can contribute towards the re-sampling and remedial strategies used in the seriously contaminated areas. Accordingly, 114 surface samples, collected from an industrially contaminated site in northern China, were assessed for 16 polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and were analyzed using multivariate statistical and spatial autocorrelation techniques. The results showed that the PCA leads to a reduction in the initial dimension of the dataset to two components, dominated by Chr, Bbf&Bkf, Inp, Daa, Bgp, and Nap were good representations of the 16 original PAHs; Global Moran's I statistics indicated that the significant autocorrelations were detected and the autocorrelation distances of six indicator PAHs were 750, 850, 1,200, 850, 750, and 1,200 m, respectively; there were visible high-high values (hotspots) clustered in the mid-bottom part of the site through the Local Moran's I index analysis. Hotspot identification and spatial distribution results can play a key role in contaminated site investigation and management.
Soil chemical and topographic properties are two important factors influencing available micronutrient distribution of soil in the horizontal dimension. The objective of this study was to explore the relative influence of soil chemistry (including soil pH, soil organic matter, total nitrogen, available phosphorus, and available potassium) and topography (including elevation, slope, aspect, and wetness index) on the availability of micronutrients (Fe, Mn, Cu, Zn, and B) using structural equation modeling (SEM) at the watershed scale. To do this, levels of soil micronutrients, pH, soil organic matter, total nitrogen, available phosphorus, available potassium, and topographic factors were measured at 523 sampling points of Fanshi County on the Chinese Loess Plateau, and the spatial distribution of soil available micronutrients were analyzed by geostatistical method. The results showed that topography had both direct effects and indirect effect on some soil micronutrients, while the indirect effect indicated effects from topography on soil chemistry and then further on micronutrient concentration. Soil chemistry had direct effects on levels of all soil micronutrients, and topography had direct effects on levels of all micronutrients except for Cu and B, and indirect effects on Fe, Zn, and B. The direct effect of soil chemistry on Fe levels was greater than the total effects (including both direct and indirect) of topography. Topography had a stronger direct effect on Mn than soil chemistry, and topography had less direct but stronger total effects on Zn than soil chemistry. Soil chemistry directly influenced both Cu and B, but topography only influenced B in an indirect manner. The semivariance indicated that the micronutrients had moderate spatial dependency except for B which had weak spatial dependency. Within the spatial distribution of the micronutrients, there was a zone in the middle of the watershed with lower values than in the northern and southern areas for Fe, Mn, Zn, and B, which were related to the characteristics of topography and soil chemistry. These results may guide the management of soil micronutrients of the Chinese Loess Plateau and other similar regions in the world.
This article discusses the existing problems associated with reclaimed land in the area of the Antaibao Opencast Coal Mine, which is located in the semi-arid region of northwest China. The following eight indicators of the suitability of the reclaimed land were developed based on the theory of soil genesis and landscape ecology: the thickness of the effective soil layer, composition of the soil surface, vegetation index, types of covering vegetation, slope of the terrain, time of reclamation, area of the evaluation unit, and the shape index of the evaluation unit. The suitability evaluation indexes of the reclaimed land were determined using the 3S technology and fuzzy evaluation methods, which revealed that the suitability of the reclaimed land in the study area could be divided into six grades and two categories, land suitable for farming, and land suitable for trees or grass. The suitability evaluation indicators and evaluation methods developed to evaluate reclaimed land in this study will be beneficial to the large-scale rapid monitoring and the effective management of reclaimed land in the opencast mine area.
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