Characteristics of prokaryotic and fungal communities emerged in eco-engineered waste rock - Eucalyptus open woodlands at Ranger uranium mine.

Abstract Diverse prokaryotic and fungal communities in soil and litters are the structural basis for driving tree litter decomposition and inherent nutrient cycling in infertile Eucalyptus open woodlands. The present investigation characterized the composition and co-occurrence network of prokaryotic and fungal communities in litter and surface soil layers in 9-year old revegetated trial landforms at Ranger uranium mine, Northern Territory, Australia. The revegetated landforms consisted of soil-subsystems engineered from waste rocks an plant-subsystems of young, novel and native Eucalyptus open woodlands. The analysis of litters and surface soil layer revealed highly diverse microbial communities in the young Eucalyptus open woodland systems, which were composed of an average 1155 prokaryotic and 236 fungal OTUs. In the microbial communities, abundant bacterial communities were affiliated to Actinobacteria (30.2%), Proteobacteria (25.3%) and Chloroflexi (16.9%); and fungal communities were highly dominated by Ascomycota (63.4%) and Basidiomycota (23.6%). These OTUs were highly connected, forming microbial modules with >50% of predicted genes associated with metabolism of organics in the open woodland. Soil microbial communities present in the wet season contained a relatively high abundance of ammonium oxidizing archaea, plant associated bacteria, and fungal groups adapted to higher N availability, particularly those from the laterite + waste rock site. The elevated microbial activities in the litters and surface soil of lateritic soil + waste rock landform were attributed to the improved water and nutrient availability by increased fine fraction of laterites. Our study provides evidence that the features of prokaryotic and fungal communities in this eco-engineered and young waste rock - open Eucalyptus woodland systems are consistent with characteristics of microbial communities of native Eucalyptus woodlands to drive the decomposition of low N tree litters.