Restoration of damaged ecosystems in desert steppe open‐pit coal mines: Effects on soil nematode communities and functions

Abstract

Repair of damaged areas in open-pit (opencast) coal mines has emerged as an important environmental concern. Our research investigated the mechanism by which different ecological restoration methods affected soil nematode communities in damaged areas of desert steppe coal mines. Using high-throughput sequencing technology, nematode community composition, diversity, and function were analyzed to determine the response of nematodes to different ecological restoration methods in damaged areas of coal mines. For slope rehabilitation, vegetation blanket restoration exhibited more favorable effects than those exhibited by vegetation bag restoration and natural restoration. For rehabilitation of the platform area under the slope, the diversity of soil nematodes and the soil fauna analysis under alien soil restoration conditions were performed and exhibited similar characteristics to those of the native vegetation. Findings based on Linear discriminant analysis Effect Size (LEfSe) multi-level discriminant analysis and determination of shared genera suggest that Paraphelenchus, Cervidellus, Panagrolaimus, Microdorylaimus, Cephalobus, and Ecumenicus may be the key genera of soil nematodes in the damaged ecosystem of open-pit coal mines in the desert steppe. We found that reasonable water and fertilizer management in slope restoration and under-slope platform area restoration may play a key role in the restoration of damaged ecosystems in open-pit coal mines. We comprehensively analyzed the response of soil nematode communities and their functions to different ecological restoration methods, and provided a reference for evaluating the quality of underground ecosystem restoration of damaged areas in abandoned desert steppe open-pit coal mines.

Soil nematode communities and functions: Ecological package restoration responses in damaged desert steppe open‐pit mining ecosystems

“…This was also consistent with our hypothesis that ecological package restoration can be beneficial to the restoration of nematode communities. At the same time, combined with our previous research findings(Han et al, 2021), we recommend using ecological package restoration and alien soil restoration to carry out ecological restoration of open-pit mine wasteland.…”

“…At the same time, the results of the fauna analysis suggested that the nutrient status of the Ba treatment soil was good, and associated with a lower disturbance intensity and a relatively stable food web. Similarly, from the correlation between genera (Figure S6), it can be seen that, compared to the other treatments, the soil nematode community under the Ba treatment was more complex and the proportion of positive correlations between genera was larger (Han et al, 2021). The goal of effective ecological restoration is that the ecosystem has homeostasis post restoration (Dunger et al, 2001; Gatica‐Saavedra et al, 2017), eventually reaching the same state as the original ecosystem (i.e., a complete return to the conditions of the pre‐disturbed ecosystem ).…”

“…In our study, the greater abundance of OP nematodes in the soils of both the Ha and Hb treatments compared to that in the native vegetation soil, suggests that succession of the experimental site may be ongoing, and the succession rate of the Ha treatment soil may be faster compared to that of the Hb treatment soil. At the same time, as shown in Figure S5, the complexity of the relationship among nematode genera can be used to infer the stability of the soil nematode community (Han et al, 2021). Our results show that the Ha treatment has a more complex nematode community than the Hb treatment, indicating a higher community stability.…”

Exploring the optimal grazing intensity in desert steppe based on soil nematode community and function

“…We used internationally accepted methods to measure soil pH, organic matter, ammonium nitrogen (ammonium root‐N), nitrate nitrogen (nitrate‐N), available phosphorus (AP), available potassium (AK), total nitrogen (TN), and moisture content (Han et al, 2021).…”

“…The total DNA content present in the soil samples was extracted following the instructions of the EZNA soil kit (Omega Bio-Tek, Norcross, GA, USA). The sequences D2A 5 0 -ACAAGTACCGTGAGGGAAAGT-3 0 and D3B 5 0 -TGCGAAGGAACCAGCTACTA-3 0 were used for amplification of the 28S rDNA highly conserved region (Gao et al, 2022;Han et al, 2021;Nunn, 1992). The Shanghai Meiji Biomedical Technology Co., Ltd. performed the sequencing using the MiSeq PE300 platform (Illumina).…”