Ecology, Environment and Conservation Paper

KINETIC INDICES OF ENZYME ACTIVITY USED AS SENSITIVEBIOMARKERS TO MONITOR MINE SPOIL GENESIS INCHRONOSEQUENCE COAL MINE OVERBURDEN SPOIL

Payal Agrawal, Jitesh Kumar Maharana and Amiya Kumar Patel

Abstract

Mine spoil genesis mostly focuses on careful consideration of enzyme activities and kinetics parameters toelucidate microbial mediated biotransformation and nutrient cycling including their link with the variationin physicochemical properties, microbial community dynamics and landscape ecology as the functionaldeterminants of ecosystem function. The relative distribution of microbial populations exhibited progressiveincrease in different age series coal mine overburden spoil over time. The kinetic parameters of amylase,invertase, protease, urease, phosphates and dehydrogenase activities were determined to assess the metabolicresponse in different age series coal mine spoil. Gradual increase in Vmax and decline in Km of enzymeactivities representing the quality and affinity of enzymes correlated well with the shift in microbialcommunity composition over time. Besides, the shift in catalytic efficiency (Vmax/Km) has greatersignificance as early and sensitive indicators of the changes in soil properties influencing microbialcommunity dynamics across the sites. The enzyme activity and kinetic parameters correlated well the changesin physicochemical properties over time across the sites. PCA and RDA analysis can able to discriminatesix different age series coal mine overburden spoil and nearby NF soil into independent clusters based onthe variability in physicochemical properties, microbial community structure, enzyme activities and kineticparameters. The study suggested that the kinetic indices of enzyme activities can be used as reliable ecologicalbiomarkers to monitor the progress of mine spoil genesis.