PLFA Profiling of Coal Mine Spoil: An Integrated Approach for the Assessment of Ecological Restoration

Coal mine overburden spoil created aftermath of mining activities represents disequilibrated geomorphic system. The pedodiversity including its link with biodiversity and landscape ecology describe the spatial diversity has emerged as functional determinants of ecosystem processes. Being the driving force mediating soil processes, ecosystem restoration through mine spoil genesis is monitored based on the shift in microbial community structure in different age series coal mine spoil. Phospholipid fatty acid analysis is culture-independent approach, which provides a set of molecular markers to determine microbial community composition and discriminate microbial communities of different origin. PLFAs are synthesized during microbial growth, rapidly degraded following cell death and reliably reflect living microbial communities. Relative distribution of 51 PLFAs revealed significant variation in microbial community structure across the sites with Shannon diversity index varies from 1.5265 (OB0) to 2.0139 (OB15) and Pielous evenness index from 0.4110 (OB0) to 0.5260 (OB15). Fungal to bacterial ratio exhibited an increasing trend from OB0 (0.055) to OB15 (0.348) over time, which revealed the sign of mine spoil genesis. The principal component analysis and redundancy analysis discriminate different age series coal mine spoil into independent clusters, which evaluated the broad scale patterns of microbial community structure influencing the pace and progress of mine spoil genesis.