Interplays between plants and environmental factors determine pullout resistance on different revegetated slopes in mining areas.

Plant roots play a crucial role in enhancing soil stability and protecting slopes during ecological restoration, particularly in mining areas where external-soil spray seeding is employed. However, the relationship between plant root pullout resistance and environmental factors on different types of slopes remains unclear. In this study, we investigated the interactions between the pullout resistance of a dominant species, Artemisia gmelinii, and environmental factors on three slope types (rocky, geotechnical, and soil) using multi-group structural equation modeling. Our findings reveal that the pullout resistance of plant roots was strongly influenced by various factors, including but not limited to biological factors such as plant height and biomass. It showed a positive correlation between soil silt content and soil nutrient levels. Notably, the pullout resistance on soil slopes was significantly higher than on rocky slopes. Furthermore, the impact of soil nutrients and texture on pullout resistance was more pronounced on geotechnical and soil slopes compared to rocky slopes. Multi-group structural equation modeling highlighted that among all environmental factors, slope gradient and underground biomass had the most significant influence on pullout resistance across all slope types. Specifically, slope gradient had a greater effect on soil slopes, whereas underground biomass played a more prominent role on rocky and geotechnical slopes. Overall, our study suggests that when implementing external-soil spray seeding in mining areas, it is crucial to consider the interplay between plant roots and environmental factors, including slope properties. This holistic approach is crucial for maximizing the effectiveness of plants in slope protection during eco-engineering projects.

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With three types of ecological slope protection projects of rock slope, soil slope and rock soil mixed slope (geotechnical slope) in Xishan mining area of Taiyuan as the object, CCA ranking was used to examine the relationship between environmental factors and species distribution of different types of slopes, and analyze the impacts of environmental factors such as soil and topography on plant diversity. The results showed that geotechnical slope was rich in vegetation composition (8 families, 17 genera, and 19 species), including Asteraceae, Gramineae, Fabaceae, Vitaceae, Lamiaceae, Simaroubaceae, etc. The species richness, Shannon index, Simpson index, and Pielou evenness index of the geotechnical slope were significantly higher than that of soil slope and rocky slope. The artificial soil nutrient contents of the three types of slopes were significantly higher than that of the control. The ave-rage contents of total nitrogen (1.24 g·kg-1), organic matter (21.28 g·kg-1), and available potassium (0.21 g·kg-1) of geotechnical slope were higher than that of rocky slope (1.02, 15.56 and 0.14 g·kg-1) and soil slope (0.80, 11.65 and 0.15 g·kg-1), respectively. Vegetation diversity was significantly related to soil factors, with organic matter and soil water content as the main limiting factors. Soil factors had greater impacts on vegetation restoration than topographical factors. Results of structural equation modeling showed that topographical factors, such as slope gradient, indirectly affected vegetation restoration by affecting soil moisture and nutrients.

Complete chloroplast genome of Eurycorymbus Cavaleriei (Sapindaceae), a tertiary relic rare tree.

The dioecious relic Eurycorymbus cavaleriei is a tertiary relict and only species of its genus within the family Sapindaceae. Using an Illumina platform, we sequenced its complete chloroplast (cp) genome. Our study reveals that E. cavaleriei has a typical cp genome of 158,537 bp in length, comprised of a large single-copy region (LSC) of 86,693 bp, a small single-copy region (SSC) of 18,012 bp, and two inverted repeat regions (IRs) of 26,916 bp, respectively. A total of 137 genes, 89 of which are protein-coding genes, 40 tRNA genes, 8 rRNA genes were identified. The overall GC content of the plastome is 38.0%. Phylogenetic analysis indicates that E. cavaleriei is closely related to the species of Dodonaea viscosa.