Characteristics of plant communities in different industrial sites in Nandan Antimony Mining Area

It is of great significance to study the characteristics of vegetation communities and their influencing factors in different industrial sites in antimony mining areas for ecological restoration and vegetation reconstruction. The plant communities of various industrial sites of Wuyi antimony mine in Nandan County were taken as the research object, and the undamaged plant communities around the antimony mining area were selected as the control area, to explore the species composition and diversity of plant communities in different industrial sites (mining area, smelting area and tailings area) in the antimony mining area and their relationship with soil factors. The results showed that the community composition of each industrial site of antimony ore was dominated by Compositae and Poaceae, and the two families of plants were the community-building species and dominant species in the industrial site of the antimony mining area. There were significant differences in plant community composition between the control area and each industrial site (P<0.05), and the plant community composition in the smelting area was significantly different from that in the mining area and tailings area (P<0.05). The important values of dominant species, Margalef index and Shannon index of each industrial site were shown as control area > mining area> tailings area > smelting area (P<0.05), indicating that the smelting area had the lowest community complexity and the simplest community structure, and the ecological degradation situation was more serious. Plant diversity in the mining area was positively correlated with organic matter, soil moisture content, pH, total potassium and total nitrogen content, and negatively correlated with total phosphorus, and antimony and arsenic concentrations. Total antimony, total arsenic and soil moisture content were important limiting factors affecting the species diversity of various industrial sites in antimony mines. Heavy metal concentration had the strongest effect on plant community diversity in tailings area and mining area, and soil moisture content had the strongest effect on smelting area. The results show that the number of plant species in industrial sites is decreasing, the vegetation diversity index is decreasing, and industrial activities such as mining have caused great damage and interference to the ecological environment of mining areas. The type of mining site and key environmental variables should be considered in the vegetation restoration plan for mining areas.