Home – Home – Jornals – Contemporary Problems of Ecology 2004 number 3

It was shown that the reclamation of industrial barren, resulting from the long-term heavy metal pollution of a zonal forest ecosystem by aerial wastes of Monchegorsk mining factory, led to the substantial increase in metabolic activity and shifts in the physiological profile of the bacterial community in the upper soil horizon, despite very high concentrations of nickel and copper. These changes were due to the input of readily available organic substrates with litter and rhizodeposition of the grass plant used to revegetate the barren site. However, the size of the bacterial community (numbers and biomass) was most likely negatively affected by the high soil concentrations of heavy metals. Thus the recovered metabolic diversity of the bacterial community under revegetation with azonal grass species, capable to sustain plant cover and primary production for several years on soil with very high heavy metals concentrations, is very important for the recovery of soil processes in particular and ecosystem as a whole.