Revegetation approach and plant identity unequally affect structure, ecological network and function of soil microbial community in a highly acidified mine tailings pond.

Owing to its sustainability and low cost, direct revegetation (DR) has been considered a promising alternative to capped revegetation (CR) for dealing with the serious environmental problem derived from various types of mine wastelands that are widespread in the world. However, a direct comparison of the performance of these two revegetation approaches for reclamation of extremely acidic mine wastelands and the underlying mechanisms is still lacking. To bridge this critical knowledge gap, we established 5000 m of vegetation on a highly acidified (pH < 3) Pb/Zn mine tailings pond employing both CR and DR schemes (2500 m for each scheme). We then profiled the structure, ecological network and function of soil microbial communities associated with two dominant plant species of the vegetations via high-throughput sequencing. Our results showed that CR and DR achieved a vegetation coverage of 59.7% and 90.5% within two years, respectively. This pattern was accompanied by higher concentrations of plant nutrients and lower acidification potentials in topsoils of the rhizospheres of the vegetation established by DR compared to those of CR. Revegetation approach, rather than plant identity, mostly affected the structure, ecological network and function of soil microbial community in the mine tailings pond. Rhizosphere soils of the vegetation established by DR generally had higher microbial diversity, higher relative abundances of dominant microbial phyla (e.g. Nitrospirae) that can aid plant uptake of nutrients, more complicated microbial interactive networks and more microbial genes responsible for nutrient cycling than those by CR. As the first report on a direct comparison of CR and DR schemes for reclamation of an extremely acidic mine wasteland, our study has important implications for not only the understanding of microbial ecology in revegetated mine wastelands but also the further development of sustainable revegetation schemes.