Abstract
The aim of this study was to determine the sources, accumulation rate and relationships between macronutrients in reclaimed mine soils (RMS) and aboveground plant biomass on external slopes of lignite mines in central Poland. The study was conducted on two different types of sites with 10-year-old Scots (Pinus sylvestris L.) pine stands located on Quaternary loamy sands (QLS) and on Tertiary acidic carboniferous sands following neutralisation (TCS). The control plot was located in the same vicinity on an external slope in a natural pine ecosystem on a Haplic Podzol in a young mixed coniferous forest habitat (NPE). The nutrient resources, apart from N, were higher in RMS than in comparable Haplic Podzols, however, N primarily accumulated in the mineral horizons. In forest soils, the main macronutrient resources were accumulated in organic horizons, which in natural soils of coniferous forest habitats constitute the main source of nutrients. The proportion of individual macronutrients accumulated in the biomass vs. pools in soil was much lower on the external slope RMS than in the natural site, which in view of the potential richness of RMS, indicated poorer sorption and utilization of macronutrients in aboveground plant biomass than in natural habitats. Other important linear correlations (p = .05) were found between the sources of nutrients in RMS and elements accumulated in biomass (most clearly in case of K, Ca and Mg), which indicates important relationships between soil and vegetation in the first stages of ecosystem development as stimulated by reclamation.
Highlights
As is true in many contemporary environmental problems, the rehabilitation of a drastically disturbed terrestrial system, such as lands mined for coal and minerals, requires site-specific knowledge to ensure the reclamation strategies chosen will be sustainable [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16]
In the top portion of the spoil heap the soils were classified as Urbic Anthrosols with initial development of organic OL/f horizons which produced semi-mor-type humus at the development stage with raw humus and a thin layer of initial transitional organic-mineral horizons reflecting the features of the parent rock (AiC)
In Quaternary loamy sands (QLS), soils developing from these strata exhibited predominantly sandy clay textures with an average of 28% silt and 4% clay. They were sometimes interbedded with clay (43% silt fraction and 9% clay fraction) or sand
Summary
As is true in many contemporary environmental problems, the rehabilitation of a drastically disturbed terrestrial system, such as lands mined for coal and minerals, requires site-specific knowledge to ensure the reclamation strategies chosen will be sustainable [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16]. In central Europe, a large proportion of post-mining landscapes are reclaimed to forest. From an ecological point of view, reclamation is a process of restoring the whole ecosystem [2]. A complete assessment of the reclamation processes should take into consideration many ecological factors [18]. It is important to determine the soil development rate including the depth of organic horizons, nutrient accumulation rates, balance of elements [3,19,20,21,22] and plant community devel- opment. Plant community parameters should include the number of species, biodiversity of communities, and the proportion of species characteristic of forest and nonforest communities [23,24,25]
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