Biodiversity and Biomass Production of Plant Communities on Coal Mine Dumps in the Central Russian Forest–Steppe (Tula Oblast)

The dumps of the Moscow coal basin represent a long-term spontaneous experiment that reflects self-revegetation of a potentially acid soils by herbaceous and woody vegetation. This study investigated the biodiversity of vascular plants and the productivity of plant communities formed on coal dumps in the Tula oblast and described on 32 plots of 10 × 10 m. It was established that plant communities on the surface of the leveled areas of dumps are lower than background and sub-background meadows in both the number of species and reserves of aboveground phytomass. Meanwhile, according to the same parameters, the artificially restored vegetation formed during the reclamation of dumps have higher species richness and yielding capacity the background and sub-background meadows located outside the zones of influence of acid mine drainage from coal dumps.