Comparison of Soil Bacterial Communities under Canopies of Pinus tabulaeformis and Populus euramericana in a Reclaimed Waste Dump

To compare the effects of different remediation tree species on soil bacterial communities and provide a theoretical basis for the selection of ecosystem function promotion strategies after vegetation restoration, the characteristic changes in soil bacterial communities after Pinus tabulaeformis and Populus euramericana reclamation were explored using high-throughput sequencing and molecular ecological network methods. The results showed that: (1) With the increase in reclamation years, the reclaimed soil properties were close to the control group, and the soil properties of Pinus tabulaeformis were closer to the control group than those of P. euramericana. (2) The dominant bacteria under the canopies of P. tabulaeformis and P. euramericana was the same. Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria, Acidobacteria, Chloroflexi, Gemmatimonadetes, Planctomycetes, Bacteroidetes, and Cyanobacteria were the dominant bacteria in the restored soil, accounting for more than 95% of the total abundance. The average values of the Shannon diversity index, Simpson diversity index, Chao 1 richness estimator, and abundance-based coverage estimator of the bacterial community in the P. euramericana reclaimed soil were higher than those in the P. tabulaeformis reclaimed soil. The influence of reclamation years on the bacterial community of samples is greater than that of species types. (3) The results of ecological network construction showed that the total number of nodes, total number of connections, and average connectivity of the soil bacterial network under P. euramericana reclamation were greater than those under P. tabulaeformis reclamation. The bacterial molecular ecological network under P. euramericana was more abundant. (4) Among the dominant bacteria, the relative abundance of Actinobacteria was negatively correlated with soil pH, soil total nitrogen content, and the activities of urease, invertase, and alkaline phosphatase, while the relative abundance of Proteobacteria and Bacteroidetes was positively correlated with these environmental factors. The relationship between the soil bacterial community of P. tabulaeformis and P. euramericana and the environmental factors is not completely the same, and even the interaction between some environmental factors and bacteria is opposite.

Automated summary

By using high-throughput sequencing and molecular ecological network methods, this study compared the effects of different remediation tree species on soil bacterial communities and provided a theoretical basis for selecting ecosystem function promotion strategies after vegetation restoration. The results showed that the reclaimed soil properties became closer to the control group as the reclamation years increased, with Pinus tabulaeformis having properties closer to the control group than Populus euramericana. The dominant bacteria in the restored soil were Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria, Acidobacteria, Chloroflexi, Gemmatimonadetes, Planctomycetes, Bacteroidetes, and Cyanobacteria, and the bacterial community diversity and abundance were higher in the P. euramericana reclaimed soil than in the P. tabulaeformis reclaimed soil. The ecological network analysis indicated that the bacterial network under P. euramericana reclamation was more abundant than under P. tabulaeformis reclamation.