Effect of vegetation blanket cover with different materials on soil microbial community structure in opencast coal mines in arid areas

：Vegetation blanket restoration techniques of different materials in mine drainage field provide different environments for plant growth, but effects of vegetation blanket cover on soil microbial community structure and their diversity characteristics were not well known， especially in arid areas. In this study, high-throughput sequencing was used on the study site, located at Dafeng Mine, the Helan Mountains, Ningxia, China. Soil microbial communities were analyzed under four different treatments: Straw, Straw-Coir, Coir vegetation blanket types, and a bare soil control. The results showed that the contents of soil total nitrogen, available potassium, urease, and catalase were significantly increased in different types of vegetation blankets. High-throughput sequencing showed that the straw vegetation blanket increased bacterial diversity while the coir vegetation blanket increased fungal diversity. The dominant bacterial phyla were Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Actinobacteria, and Chloroflexi, whose main influencing factors were total nitrogen, catalase, urease, and protease. The dominant fungal phylum was Ascomycota, whose main influencing factors were alkaline phosphatase, soil organic carbon, total nitrogen, and electrical conductance. These results indicate that vegetation blanket cover can improve the physicochemical properties of soil, increase the diversity and richness of soil microorganisms, and improve the structural composition of the community, thus improving the soil environment in the mining areas in arid regions, while laying a good foundation for further restoration measures.