Microbial community analysis of South African post coal mining rehabilitation soils: indicators of ecosystem recovery

At present, there is no comprehensive soil quality assessment practice for the coal mining industry in South Africa. Studies have shown that belowground soil biota are crucial to soil ecosystem functioning and are sensitive bioindicators for soil quality monitoring. Due to the limitations of some previously developed methods for analysing microbial community structure, a more robust approach involving high-throughput culture-independent molecular techniques was utilised to assess post-coal-mining reclamation soils for potential ecosystem recovery, support function and potential microbial bioindicators.