Our principal objective in this research is to manipulate unproductive lands(from unsustainable mining)to sustain life-or simply to form productive soils-hence reclamation of degraded landscapes.In brief,we amended tailing ponds from ore mineral mines in southeast Spain with industrial wastes [e.g.,marble wastes(MW)and pig manure(PM)] to increase pH and initialize the accumulation of organic matter,respectively and to initiate microbial litter decomposition.The amendments were added to accelerate soil formation in extremely harsh materials.