Delimitation of supervision zones based on the soil property characteristics in a reclaimed opencast coal mine dump on the Loess Plateau, China

Yanjun Guan; Wei Zhou; Zhongke Bai; Yingui Cao; Juan Wang

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.145006

Delimitation of supervision zones based on the soil property characteristics in a reclaimed opencast coal mine dump on the Loess Plateau, China

Sci Total Environ. 2021 Jun 10:772:145006. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.145006. Epub 2021 Feb 1.

Authors

Yanjun Guan¹, Wei Zhou², Zhongke Bai³, Yingui Cao³, Juan Wang¹

Affiliations

¹ School of Land Science and Technology, China University of Geosciences Beijing, Beijing 100083, China.
² School of Land Science and Technology, China University of Geosciences Beijing, Beijing 100083, China; Key Laboratory of Land Consolidation and Rehabilitation, Ministry of Natural Resources, Beijing 100035, China; Technology Innovation Center for Ecological Restoration in Mining Areas, Ministry of Natural Resources, Beijing 100083, China. Electronic address: zhouw@cugb.edu.cn.
³ School of Land Science and Technology, China University of Geosciences Beijing, Beijing 100083, China; Key Laboratory of Land Consolidation and Rehabilitation, Ministry of Natural Resources, Beijing 100035, China; Technology Innovation Center for Ecological Restoration in Mining Areas, Ministry of Natural Resources, Beijing 100083, China.

PMID: 33581540
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.145006

Abstract

Supervision zones in a reclaimed coal mine refer to regions where soil properties are being slowly restored but further management is still urgently needed. The important roles of supervision zones in guiding the ecological restoration of degraded mining areas have been widely recognized, but the delimitation of supervision zones needs further examination. To delineate supervision zones for the restoration of poor soil properties, the soil available phosphorus (SAP), soil available potassium (SAK), soil total nitrogen (STN), soil organic matter (SOM), soil particle fractal dimension (SPD), soil electric conductivity (SEC), and soil pH (pH) at a depth of 0-20 cm were measured in a reclaimed dump in the Antaibao coal mine on the Loess Plateau of China. The spatial distribution of the soil properties was analyzed using geostatistical analysis, a fuzzy c-means clustering algorithm, and pedodiversity analysis. Then, the supervision zones were delimited based on the spatial characteristics of the reclaimed soil properties. The results revealed the following: (1) reclaimed soil in the study area was clustered into eight classes, and each soil class had one or more well-recovered soil properties, except for class I. Areas covered with only class I soil were delimited as poor-soil property regions. (2) The spatial distribution of the pedodiversity indexes of the reclaimed soil classes showed obvious aggregation characteristics, with extremely low values occurring mainly in the northeast and south of the study area. Two zones with low values of the Shannon index (H) were delimited as low-pedodiversity regions. (3) Four supervision zones with poor land reclamation effects were delimited based on the analysis of the poor-soil property regions and low-pedodiversity regions, and precise reclamation measures, including crop rotation, fertilization, neutralization, irrigation, and plowing, were proposed for each zone to improve the quality of the reclaimed soil.

Keywords: Land reclamation; Pedodiversity; Precise management; Soil properties; Spatial clustering; Supervision zones.