Ecological risk assessment for deep-sea mining

Guidelines for Ecological Risk Assessment

Ecological impacts of large-scale disposal of mining waste in the deep sea

Deep-Sea Tailings Placement (DSTP) from terrestrial mines is one of several large-scale industrial activities now taking place in the deep sea. The scale and persistence of its impacts on seabed biota are unknown. We sampled around the Lihir and Misima island mines in Papua New Guinea to measure the impacts of ongoing DSTP and assess the state of benthic infaunal communities after its conclusio...

Deep-sea Mining: An Emerging Marine Industry

Deep-sea mining is an emerging marine industry that presents particularly complex challenges due to its multi-faceted technological, scientific, environmental, social, industrial, political, economic and legal aspects, all of which must be addressed to achieve commercially viable results. These aspects are governed by the burgeoning regulatory regime promulgated by the International Seabed Auth...

A New Procedure for Deep Sea Mining Tailings Disposal

Deep sea mining tailings disposal is a new environmental challenge related to water pollution, mineral crust waste handling, and ocean biology. The objective of this paper is to propose a new tailings disposal procedure for the deep sea mining industry. Through comparisons of the tailings disposal methods which exist in on-land mining and the coastal mining fields, a new tailings disposal proce...

Data Support for Modelling of Deep-Sea Mining Impacts

The paper critically reviews the presently available experimental data from various tests and experiments connected with the deepsea mining issue with regard to their feasibility in supporting and validating the developed numerical models. Numerical modelling is applied mainly to predetermining the plume development and sea oor blanketing caused by various sediment discharges. The paper describ...