Soil disruption from open-cut mining practices can adversely impact microbial communities and the ecosystem services that they mediate. Despite this, assessment of impacts of soil disruption, and the subsequent recovery of microbial communities is rarely studied. Monitoring of ecological restoration success on mine sites has traditionally focused on vegetation; however, most plants rely, at least in part, on associations with soil fungi for enhanced nutrient and water acquisition. Here, we used high-throughput phylogenetic marker gene sequencing to characterize the diversity of soil fungal communities along a restoration chronosequence ranging from 3 to 23 years at a rehabilitated mine site. We used nonmined analogue sites as a baseline for comparative purposes and examined the associations of soil fungal communities with soil physicochemical and aboveground vegetation variables. Fungal richness on rehabilitated sites was significantly larger than on nonmined sites, suggesting that mixing of topsoil during stockpiling resulted in a composite microbial community. Fungal community composition was significantly influenced by edaphic variables and the length of rehabilitation, with mined sites becoming more similar to nonmined sites over time. Fungal populations associated with ectomycorrhizae were relatively more abundant than those associated with arbuscular mycorrhizae and declined in response to disturbance, but recovered over time on the woody dominated sites indicating a strong coupling of these fungi with aboveground vegetation. Our data indicate that soil fungal diversity is a useful bioindicator of soil restoration in mined sites and may complement more traditional vegetation-based surveys.

中文翻译：

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煤炭开采后土壤真菌多样性沿恢复时间序列的演替动态

露天采矿作业造成的土壤破坏会对微生物群落及其介导的生态系统服务产生不利影响。尽管如此，对土壤破坏影响的评估以及随后微生物群落的恢复很少被研究。矿区生态恢复成功的监测历来侧重于植被；然而，大多数植物至少部分依赖与土壤真菌的结合来增强养分和水分的获取。在这里，我们使用高通量系统发育标记基因测序来表征土壤真菌群落的多样性，沿着恢复时间序列从 3 年到 23 年不等。我们使用未开采的类似地点作为比较的基线，并检查了土壤真菌群落与土壤物理化学和地上植被变量的关联。修复地点的真菌丰富度明显高于非开采地点，这表明在储存过程中表土的混合导致了复合微生物群落。真菌群落组成受到土壤变量和恢复时间的显着影响，随着时间的推移，开采地点变得与非开采地点更加相似。与外生菌根相关的真菌种群比与丛枝菌根相关的真菌种群相对更丰富，并且随着干扰而减少，但随着时间的推移在木质为主的地点恢复，表明这些真菌与地上植被有很强的耦合。