Field comparison of the effectiveness of agricultural and nonagricultural organic wastes for aided phytostabilization of a Pb-Zn mine tailings pond in Hunan Province, China

Abstract

To date, very few attempts have been made to systematically compare the effectiveness of agricultural and nonagricultural organic wastes for aided phytostabilization of mine tailings under field conditions. In this study, we performed a field trial to compare the effectiveness of three agricultural organic wastes: chicken manure (CM), crop straw (CS), and spent mushroom compost (SMC), with that of three nonagricultural organic wastes, municipal sludge (MS), medicinal herb residues (MHR), and sweet sorghum vinasse (SSV) for aided phytostabilization of a Pb-Zn mine tailings pond in Hunan Province, China. Eight plant species naturally established in the vicinity of the mine were selected and seeded onto trial plots. It was found that the CM-amended plots had the highest (p < 0.05) vegetation cover (86%) and biomass production (881 g m⁻²), compared to other treatments. CM was also one of the best amendments in terms of improving soil nutrient status, increasing activities of soil enzymes, and immobilizing soil Pb. In addition, CM-amended plots were characterized by their higher microbial diversity and distinct microbial community structure as compared to the control plots. MS was the second best amendment in promoting vegetation cover (71%) and biomass production (461 g m⁻²), and it performed as well as CM for improving nutrient status, immobilizing heavy metals, and increasing the activities of enzymes in the mine tailings. Suggestions for further lines of research are made in order to develop future investigations.

Keywords:

• Heavy metal contamination
• industrial organic wastes
• microbial diversity and community structure
• phytoremediation
• remediation

Acknowledgments

We thank Prof. Alan Baker (The Universities of Melbourne and Queensland, Australia) for help in the initial preparation and improvement of this paper.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a research program from the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (No. 2017YFD0800900), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 41471257 and 41561076), Science and Technology Project of Hunan Province (2016SK2039), Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Plant Resources and Collaborative Innovation Center of Manganese–Zinc–Vanadium Industrial Technology (the 2011 Plan of Hunan Province)