Response of microbial community composition and function to land use in mining soils of Xikuang Mountain in Hunan

PLoS One. 2024 May 14;19(5):e0299550. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0299550. eCollection 2024.

Abstract

Nine land types in the northern mining area (BKQ) (mining land, smelting land, living area), the old mining area (LKQ) (whole-ore heap, wasteland, grassland), and southern mining area (NKQ) (grassland, shrubs, farmland) of Xikuang Mountain were chosen to explore the composition and functions of soil bacterial communities under different habitats around mining areas. The composition and functions of soil bacterial communities were compared among the sampling sites using 16S rRNA high-throughput sequencing and metagenomic sequencing. α diversity analysis showed the soil bacterial diversity and abundance in the old mining area were significantly higher than those in the northern mining area. β diversity analysis demonstrated that the soil bacterial community composition was highly similar among different vegetation coverages in the southern mining area. Microbial community function analysis showed the annotated KEGG function pathways and eggNOG function composition were consistent between the grassland of the old mining area and the grassland of the southern mining area. This study uncovers the soil bacterial community composition and functions among different habitats in the mining areas of Xikuang Mountain and will underlie soil ecosystem restoration in different habitats under heavy metal pollution around the mining areas there.

MeSH terms

  • Bacteria* / classification
  • Bacteria* / genetics
  • Biodiversity
  • China
  • Ecosystem
  • High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing
  • Microbiota*
  • Mining*
  • RNA, Ribosomal, 16S* / genetics
  • Soil Microbiology*
  • Soil* / chemistry

Grants and funding

This research was supported by the Major Science and Technology Project of Huaibei (HK2021012), the Innovation Fund for College Students of Huaibei Normal University (202110373001S), Huaibei Normal University (2023ZK010), and Huaibei Mining Company Limited (www.hbcoal.com; funding support numbers are 2020108 and 202113). The corresponding author, Fei Liu, received the fundings. No author received funding in the form of salary from Huaibei Mining Co., Ltd. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.