Using UAV and Field Measurement Technology to Monitor the Impact of Coal Gangue Pile Temperature on Vegetation Ecological Construction

Coal gangue is an inevitable product in coal mining and processing and is the most important source of pollution in mines. Vegetation restoration of coal gangue piles must consider its special site conditions. Therefore, we conducted unmanned air vehicle (UAV) temperature monitoring, field investigation and experimental analysis on spontaneous combustion coal gangue piles in Lu’an mining area. In the vegetation construction of coal gangue piles, high-temperature stress affects plant survival. The spontaneous combustion coal gangue piles have abnormal temperature, high surface temperature and few vegetation types. The plant community species diversity index (Shannon–Wiener index, Pielou’s index and Species abundance index) is small, the plant community is single and the plant diversity is low. Spontaneous combustion of coal gangue leads to soil acidification, reducing soil water content, soil organic carbon (SOM), available nitrogen (AN), available potassium (AK) and available phosphorus (AP). These factors are single or interactive in plants and have an impact on plant survival and growth. The research results are of great significance to the vegetation restoration of spontaneous combustion coal gangue piles, ecological reconstruction and the improvement of the ecological environment of coal mine areas.

Relationship between Diversity and Stability of a Karst Plant Community

The relationships among species diversity, functional diversity, functional redundancy, and community stability are central to community and ecosystem ecology. This paper examines plant communities at different stages of vegetation restoration in the Guizhou karst plateau to study the relationship among functional diversity, functional redundancy, and stability of plant communities. The most important results include the following. (1) Species diversity (SD), functional redundancy (FR), and stability (STB) gradually increased with restoration, and there were significant differences among the different stages; functional diversity (FD) increased at first and then decreased, and reached the highest level at the tree irrigation stage. (2) Plant height (PLH) and specific leaf area (SLA) were functional traits that affected the diversity and stability of the plant community, and PLH was positively correlated with plant community diversity and stability, while SLA was negatively correlated with plant community diversity and stability. (3) During the community recovery, FD and FR interacted to maintain stability. In the early and late stages of recovery, the effect of functional redundancy on stability was greater than that of functional diversity, but it was the opposite in the middle stages. (4) The tree irrigation stage is the likely point at which the species diversity of plant communities in karst areas reached saturation, and the growth rate of functional redundancy after species diversity saturation was greater than that before saturation.