Abstract
Heavy metal (HM) pollution is a severe and common environmental problem in mining area soil. It is imperative to understand the micro ecological characteristics of mining area soil for HM contaminated soil remediation. This study described the effects of HM pollution level and soil physical and chemical parameters on microbial diversity. In this study, high-throughput sequencing technology was used to study the effects of HM pollution on the diversity and composition of the soil microbial community. The soil groups were barren, exhibiting alkaline pH, low total nitrogen (TN), and total potassium (TK) according to soil fertility standard. Compared with the control group, there was severe multiple HM pollution in the other five groups, including lead (Pb), cadmium (Cd), zinc (Zn), and copper (Cu). The dominant phyla accounting for more than 1% of the overall community in all soil groups were Proteobacteria (34.432 ± 7.478%), Actinobacteria (22.947 ± 4.297%), Acidobacteria (10.47 ± 2.439%), Chloroflexi (7.89 ± 2.980%), Planctomycetota (5.993 ± 1.558%), Bacteroidota (4.275 ± 1.980%), Cyanobacteria (3.478 ± 2.196%), Myxococcus (2.888 ± 0.822%), Gemmatimonadota (2.448 ± 0.447%), Firmicutes (1.193 ± 0.634%), Patescibacteria (0.435 ± 0.813%), and Nitrospirota (0.612 ± 0.468%). Proteobacteria and Actinobacteria were predominant at the phylum level, which showed a certain tolerance to HMs. In addition, redundancy analysis (RDA) results showed that Pb, Cu, Zn, and Cd were strongly correlated with each other (P < 0.01). Other nutrient elements (except for TK) were significantly positively correlated with each other. Cu and nutrient element TK had an important impact on bacterial community structure. Therefore, bacteria with the function of HM tolerance and bioremediation in extreme environments should be researched, which provides a foundation for future ecological remediation of contaminated soil by using microbial remediation technology.
Highlights
Soil pollution by heavy metals (HMs), caused by rapid social and economic development activities, is one of the most serious environmental problems faced globally [1,2]
According to the number and abundance of Operational Taxonomic Units (OTUs), bacterial community richness (Chao and Ace) was adopted to reflect the richness of the species in the communities, and Shannon and Simpson indices were calculated by DPS v2.1.2 to evaluate the soil bacterial community diversity
The results showed that all eight variables, including COM, total nitrogen (TN), Total phosphorus (TP), cation exchange capacity (CEC), Cd, Zn, Cu, and Pb, had different effects on the structure of bacterial communities (P < 0.05)
Summary
Soil pollution by heavy metals (HMs), caused by rapid social and economic development activities, is one of the most serious environmental problems faced globally [1,2]. The development and utilization of mineral resources can guarantee the stable development of the economy, the limitation of management level and development technology causes a series of ecological environment problems, including local vegetation destruction, grassland degradation, soil erosion, and water pollution [3,4]. Acidic wastewater and solid waste are rich in HMs. Acidic wastewater and solid waste are rich in HMs They migrate and accumulate in the surrounding environment and within humans, causing severe harm to the environment and human health [5,6]. Bijiashan mining area is a typical sedimentary reformed lead–zinc (Pb–Zn) deposit in Chengxian County, Gansu Province [7]. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
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