Authors: Josu G Alday Rob H Marrs Carolina MartínezRuiz
Publish Date: 2011/11/18
Volume: 353, Issue: 1-2, Pages: 305-320
Abstract
Little is known about how soil parameters change during early stages of revegetation dynamics on newlyrestored coal mines particularly in a Mediterranean climate Our aim was to explore the shortterm interactions of changes in soil physicochemical properties and vegetation succession composition and structure in these newlyforming ecosystems and discuss potential functional relationshipsBetween 2004 and 2009 we monitored soil and vegetation changes in nine permanent plots 20 m2 each one at a restored openpit coal mine annually these plots were set up in a structured way to account for site aspect north south and flat We used linear mixed models and multivariate analysis to derive patterns of soil parameters changes through time and to relate soil variables with vegetation structure or floristic compositional changesSoil variables showed a general trend over time of increasing soil organic matter total carbon and nitrogen sand content and exchangeable calcium but a reduction in soil pH clay and lime contents whereas electrical conductivity P Mg2+ and K+ showed no change through time More importantly these changes in soil properties were independent of aspect whereas vegetation functional/structural changes were related to the accumulation of organic matter and sand content and pH reduction Surprisingly floristic compositional changes had little relationship with soil factorsThe results indicate that age since restoration was the main driving agent at least in the shortterm of soil and vegetation compositional changes during ecosystem development through the restoration of a coal mine whereas vegetation functional/structural changes are involved in the mechanism that induce some soil changes favouring the increase of plant community complexity in such mined areas Finally these results suggest that if soilforming material is sufficiently good for vegetation development floristic compositional differences are mainly driven by a combination of abiotic and stochastic factors in the shorttermWe thank ‘UMINSA’ for the information on their restoration procedures and permission to work on their mines Sonia GarcíaMuñoz for fieldwork assistance We also thank the BasqueCountry Government Programa de Formación de Personal Investigador y Programa de Perfeccionamiento Postdoctoral en el Extranjero del Dpto de Educación Universidades e Investigación for financial support to Josu González Alday BFI06114 BFI2010245
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