Potential Use of Organic- and Hard-Rock Mine Wastes on Aided Phytostabilization of Large-Scale Mine Tailings under Semiarid Mediterranean Climatic Conditions: Short-Term Field Study

Table 7

Evolution of metabolic quotient (mean ± standard deviation, n = 3) in experimental substrates (0-20 cm) from the time of establishment of the field assay (year 1 or 2006) and after 2 years (year 3 or 2008). Codes of treatments follow Table 1. Values in the same column followed by the same letter are not significantly different at 𝑃<0.05 according to ANOVA.

Treatment	Metabolic quotient (μg C-CO2 mg Cbio^−1 h^−1)
	Y1	Y3
C	5.0 ± 0.75^a	4.0 ± 0.83^a
RM	3.0 ± 0.50^b	2.0 ± 0.62^b
RMS	3.0 ± 0.35^b	1.6 ± 0.71^b
B1	6.9 ± 0.68^c	0.6 ± 0.51^c
B2	7.5 ± 0.71^d	0.9 ± 0.77^c
G1	3.2 ± 0.51^b	2.8 ± 0.68^d
G2	3.4 ± 0.65^b	1.2 ± 0.80^bc
O1	7.1 ± 0.92^c	4.7 ± 1.03^a
O2	7.5 ± 1.09^d	4.8 ± 0.92^a
GB	3.9 ± 0.71^bc	1.6 ± 0.73^b
GM	3.7 ± 0.78^bc	1.2 ± 0.50^bc
OB	3.6 ± 0.80^b	1.8 ± 0.62^b
OM	4.7 ± 0.85^ab	2.9 ± 0.75^b

Y1: year 1; Y3: year 3; Cbio: microbial biomass C.