Vegetation succession and soil infiltration characteristics under different aged refuse dumps at the Heidaigou opencast coal mine

Vegetation succession and soil infiltration characteristics under five different restoration models of refuse dumps including different-aged revegetated sites (1995, 1998, 2003 and 2005) in the northern, eastern and western open-pit coal mine dump and a reference site with native vegetation, which had never been damaged by coal mining activities on the Heidaigou Open Cut Coal Mine were studied. Changes in the plant species, soil properties and infiltration rates were evaluated at the different refuse dumps. The results indicated that the number of herbaceous species, plant cover, biomass, fine particles, and total N, P and SOM increased significantly with increasing site age. However, the number of shrub species decreased since revegetation, its cover increased from 17% to 41% initially and subsequently decreased to the present level of 4%. The natural vegetation community and the northern refuse dump had the highest cumulative infiltration rates of 3.96 and 2.89 cm s−1 in contrast to the eastern and western refuse dumps and the abandoned land, where the highest cumulative infiltration rates were 1.26, 1.04 and 0.88 cm s−1, respectively. A multiple linear regression analysis indicated that the infiltration rate was primarily determined by the silt percentage, SOM, plant coverage and the variation in soil bulk density. Our results provide new ideas regarding future soil erosion controls and sustainable development at open-pit coal mine refuse dumps.