Abstract
There is well-documented evidence that shows phytoremediation and restoration methods affect physical and chemical properties, enzyme activities, and microbial communities of soil. In this study, we investigated the response of soil microbial communities to restoration time. We found that arsenic content decreased gradually as restoration progressed. Total carbon (C) in shoots and total nitrogen (N) in roots of B. ischaemum both exhibited increasing trends with an increase in restoration time. The transfer factor of chromium was negatively correlated to C in shoots and positively correlated to sulfur in roots. Additionally, the transfer factor of lead had a remarkably positive correlation to the C/N ratio of roots. For soil enzymes, total N in soil was positively correlated to catalase and urease but negatively correlated to sucrose. Moreover, bulk soil bacterial composition was positively correlated to catalase, sucrase and phosphatase while fungal diversity was positively correlated to sucrose. This study found that restoration time plays the most significant role in bacterial and fungal composition and bacterial diversity, but it has no effect on fungal diversity in rhizosphere and non-rhizosphere soil. In addition, the driving factors of microbial composition and diversity varied in rhizosphere and non-rhizosphere soil among the different restoration time treatments.