DIVERSITY AND LOCATION OF PLANT SPECIES IN A MINING ENVIRONMENT: A NEW PERSPECTIVE FROM THE GEOCHEMISTRY OF THE SUBSTRATE

The plant soil relation in an extreme environment was studied with the aim of determining the physiological and/or ecological mechanisms involved in overcoming environmental constraints. In our work we have studied different aspects such as diversity, colonization strategies, dynamics, etc. of the vegetation that appears in a mining environment. The alteration of the soil in these places comes from very varied activities in addition to the chemical peculiarities of the extracted minerals. In short, we can consider these spaces as a mosaic of different substrates originating from the contribution of exogenous material, gangue deposits, mining tailings deposits, areas partially altered by the activity of machinery, etc. We distinguished 6 different substrates that respond to different degrees of alteration of the original soil, ranging from total degradation, due to replacement by exogenous materials, to partial degradation where the original soil is more or less altered by different processes. Each of these different substrates has its geochemical peculiarities and the vegetation that develops in each of these areas responds perfectly to the conditions derived from the geochemistry of the substrate on which they grow. If we add to this that we are in a Mediterranean continental climate, with little plubiometry and a severe summer of 5 months of high temperatures and drough, and the presence of high levels of heavy metals, the study of plant cover becomes very interesting.