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Linking soil variability with plant community composition along a mine-slope topographic gradient: Implications for restoration

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Abstract

Soil heterogeneity generated during the topographic restoration of opencast coalmines determines important differences in vegetation dynamics. The relationship between soil and vegetation along a reclaimed mine slope was assessed. Two vegetation patches (grassland and shrubland) were distinguished and compared with the adjacent forest. Seven sampling transects (3:3:1, grassland:shrubland:forest) were implemented for soil and vegetation characterization. Eleven years after reclamation significant differences between the reference community and the reclaimed communities, and along the reclaimed mine slope, were found. A topographic gradient was observed in the vegetation distribution associated with water and organic matter content: Grassland patches occupy the upper parts of the mine slope to where easily oxidizable-carbon/total-carbon ratio increases and shrubland patches occupy the lower parts towards where water retention capacity increases. The plant species segregation along the mine-slope topographic gradient was related to stages of different maturity of vegetation and soil properties. Novel aspects in plant-soil systems understanding in reclaimed mine slopes were addressed.

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Acknowledgements

We thank ‘UMINSA’ for the information on their restoration procedures and permission to work in their mines and AEMET (Meteorological Spanish Agency) for providing meteorological data. We also thank Luis Alfonso Ramos Calvo and Elena López Laureiro for fieldwork assistance, Carmen Blanco de Castro and Juan Carlos Arranz Moral for helping in the laboratory analyses, Josu G. Alday for statistics assistance, and Juan Manuel Diez Clivillé and Pilar Zaldívar for his assistance with English. We also thank the editor in chief, Bo Söderström, the associate editor, Graciela Rusch, and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments to improve the manuscript. This study was partially supported by the Project VA042A10-2 and VA035G18 from ‘Junta de Castilla y León’ to C. Martínez-Ruiz.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Ciencias Agroforestales, E.T.S. de Ingenierías Agrarias, Universidad de Valladolid, Campus La Yutera, Avda. Madrid 50, 34071, Palencia, Spain

    Daphne López-Marcos, María Belén Turrión & Carolina Martínez-Ruiz

  2. Sustainable Forest Management Research Institute, Universidad de Valladolid & INIA, Avda. Madrid 50, 34071, Palencia, Spain

    Daphne López-Marcos, María Belén Turrión & Carolina Martínez-Ruiz

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  1. Daphne López-Marcos
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  2. María Belén Turrión
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Correspondence to Daphne López-Marcos.

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López-Marcos, D., Turrión, M.B. & Martínez-Ruiz, C. Linking soil variability with plant community composition along a mine-slope topographic gradient: Implications for restoration. Ambio 49, 337–349 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-019-01193-y

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