ABSTRACT
In recent years, interest has been generated in the succession of soil microbes during reclamation and ecosystem restoration. Land reclamation includes the management of all types of physical, chemical and biological disturbances of soils affected by mining activities, with the purpose to make the degraded land productive (Islam et al. 2009). Significant alterations in soil microbial community potentially occur following drastic disturbance during soil reclamation (O’Neill et al. 2013). Changes in microbial activities, structure, and functions can precede detectable changes in soil physicochemical status, thereby providing early signs of environmental degradation and indicators for evaluation of soil restoration in mining area (Grant et al. 2007; Anderson et al. 2008; Shen et al. 2008; Zhan & Sun 2014). Most of the earlier studies were focused on effects of reclamation on soil erosion or physicochemical properties, and so far, very few studies have reported in-depth characterization of soil microbial diversity associated with abandoned mine land (Cai & Qin 2006; Mallarino & Borges 2006; Lewis et al. 2012).
