Soil Bacterial Communities Outperform Fungal Counterparts in Community Stability and Environmental Adaptation During Early‐Stage Vegetation Recovery in Mining Areas

ABSTRACT The initial stage of vegetation recovery in post‐mining ecosystem represents a critical window for ecological restoration. However, the adaptive mechanisms of soil microbial communities during this period remain largely unclear. In this study, soils from an early restoration process in a mining area (restoration for 0, 1, 2, 3 years, and a control of CK) were analyzed to investigate changes in soil microbial diversity, community composition, assembly processes, and co‐occurrence network structure. The results indicated that during early recovery, there were no significant changes in the diversity and structure of soil bacterial and fungal communities, and the key dominant microbial phyla remained consistent. Stochastic processes played an important role in microbial community assembly in the mining areas, with drift particularly crucial in shaping the soil fungal community. While fungal communities showed a stronger association with environmental changes, the soil bacterial community became more stable and the co‐occurrence network became more complex in the early recovery stage, demonstrating stronger buffering capacity in mining environments with greater environmental resistance, resilience, and functional redundancy. This study highlighted the importance of preserving bacterial diversity in mining areas for ecosystem reconstruction and proposed the potential application of Basidiomycota in controlling heavy metal pollution in such environments.