Potential Mitigation and Restoration Actions in Ecosystems Impacted by Seabed Mining

Cuvelier, Daphné; Gollner, Sabine; Jones, Daniel O. B.; Kaiser, Stefanie; Arbizu, Pedro Martínez; Menzel, L.; Mestre, Nélia C.; Morato, Telmo; Pham, Christopher K.; Pradillon, Florence; Purser, Autun; Raschka, Uwe; Sarrazin, Jozée; Simon-Lledó, Erik; Stewart, Ian; Stuckas, Heiko; Sweetman, Andrew K.; Colaço, Ana

doi:10.3389/fmars.2018.00467

Cited by 46 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 153 publications

(214 reference statements)

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“…These biological variables plus niche sorting within microhabitats that could accumulate over time (Diamond, 1988;Auster et al, 2005), as well as important stochastic effects (Quattrini et al, 2016), are likely to lead to highly dynamic and heterogeneous assemblages that have high diversity over fine spatial scales. Future human impacts need to be paired with mitigation techniques (e.g., Cuvelier et al, 2018) that preserve an offset of biodiversity that will be disturbed. This is an especially important step as ecosystem recovery is slow enough in the deep sea (Williams et al, 2010;Bennecke and Metaxas, 2017a;Baco et al, 2019) that most human impacts will be very long lasting.…”

Section: Conclusion and Management Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This translates into large areas of seamounts where any coral and sponge assemblages present, along with their associated communities of invertebrates and fishes, would have been damaged or removed by these fishing activities. Seamounts face even greater impacts from the push for mining of deep-sea substrates for semi-precious and precious metals (Halfar and Fujita, 2007;Mengerink et al, 2014;Cuvelier et al, 2018). Seamount slopes that occur from 800 to 2500 m in depth can accrue cobalt-rich manganese crusts, similar to the nodules that accrue on abyssal plains.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Fine Scale Assemblage Structure of Benthic Invertebrate Megafauna on the North Pacific Seamount Mokumanamana

et al. 2019

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Changes in benthic megafaunal assemblage structure have been found across gradients of environmental variables for many deep-sea habitats, but patterns remain under-investigated on seamounts. To assess the extent of variability in benthic communities at the scale of within a single seamount, and to assess environmental drivers of assemblage changes, Mokumanamana, also known as Necker Island, a seamount in the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument with no known history of human impacts, was surveyed. Replicate 1 km transects were conducted along depth contours at 50 m depth intervals from 200-700 m on three sides of Mokumanamana using the AUV Sentry. Megafaunal abundance and substrate parameters were obtained from 26,119 total images. The dominant megafaunal taxa were sponges, corallimorpharians, cup corals, and benthic ctenophores. Sea pens and alcyonacean octocorals were also abundant. Overall, abundance and diversity of megafauna increased with depth. Beta-diversity through species substitution with depth was very high. Beta-diversity was also high between the sides and likewise defined almost exclusively by species substitution. Crossed ANOSIM by depth and side showed community structure differed on Mokumanamana for both factors. NMDS and cluster analyses of Mokumanamana show nine assemblages that were defined by depth and reflect differences between sides of the seamount. Environmental modeling with DISTLM indicates sediment, oxygen, substrate variability and roughness, POC, and surface currents are correlated with these assemblage differences. These results suggest that microhabitats on seamounts can promote unique assemblages along depth gradients as well as on different sides of a feature, and this diversity may be easily overlooked without fine-scale sampling. These findings have implications for management and conservation of seamounts as well as future ecological studies of seamounts, as seamounts are generally sampled on much coarser spatial scales.

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Section: Conclusion and Management Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fine Scale Assemblage Structure of Benthic Invertebrate Megafauna on the North Pacific Seamount Mokumanamana

et al. 2019

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“…These factors may vary over time, relating to environmental conditions and stage of ecological succession (Fujii, 2015). Consequently, artificial structures have a potential role in restoring degraded marine ecosystems such as coral reefs (Rinkevich, 2014), mollusc reefs (Walles et al, 2016), algal forests (Gianni et al, 2013), and have been proposed for restoration of disturbed deep-sea habitats (Cuvelier et al, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ecological Role of an Offshore Industry Artificial Structure

et al. 2019

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“…4). The porosity data further shows that sediment compaction, potentially caused by the weight of the disturbance device (Cuvelier et al, 2018;Hauquier et al, under review) is insignificant at all disturbed sites.…”

Section: Depths Of Small-scale Disturbance Experimentsmentioning

confidence: 86%

“…Although a considerable number of environmental impact studies have been conducted in different nodule fields, the prediction of environmental consequences of potential future deepsea mining is still difficult (e.g., Ramirez-Llodra et al, 2011;Jones et al, 2017;Gollner et al, 2017;Cuvelier et al, 2018). In case of the CCZ, the evaluation of the environmental impact of deep-sea mining activities is challenging due to the fact that baseline data on the natural spatial heterogeneity and temporal variability of depositional conditions, benthic communities and the biogeochemical processes in the sediments are scarce (e.g., Mewes et al, 2014;Vanreusel et al, 2016;Mogollón et al, 2016;Juan et al, 2018;Volz et al, 2018;Menendez et al, 2018;Hauquier et al, under review).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of small-scale disturbances on geochemical conditions, biogeochemical processes and element fluxes in surface sediments of the eastern Clarion-Clipperton Zone, Pacific Ocean

Volz¹,

Haffert²,

Haeckel³

et al. 2019

Preprint

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<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> The thriving interest in harvesting deep-sea mineral resources, such as polymetallic nodules, calls for environmental impact studies, and ultimately, for regulations for environmental protection. Industrial-scale deep-sea mining of polymetallic nodules most likely has severe consequences for the natural environment. However, the effects of mining activities on deep-sea ecosystems, sediment geochemistry and element fluxes are still poorly conceived. Predicting the environmental impact is challenging due to the scarcity of environmental baseline studies as well as the lack of mining trials with industrial mining equipment in the deep sea. Thus, currently we have to rely on small-scale disturbances simulating deep-sea mining activities as a first-order approximation to study the expected impacts on the abyssal environment. Here, we investigate surface sediments in disturbance tracks of seven small-scale benthic impact experiments, which have been performed in four European contract areas for the exploration of polymetallic nodules in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ). These small-scale disturbance experiments were performed 1 day to 37 years prior to our sampling program in the German, Polish, Belgian and French contract areas using different disturbance devices. We show that the depth distribution of solid-phase Mn in the upper 20 cm of the sediments in the CCZ provides a reliable tool for the determination of the disturbance depth, which has been proposed in a previous study (Paul et al., 2018). We found that the upper 5&#8211;15 cm of the sediments were removed during various small-scale disturbance experiments in the different exploration contract areas. Transient transport-reaction modelling for the Polish and German contract areas reveals that the removal of the surface sediments is associated with the loss of reactive labile organic carbon. As a result, oxygen consumption rates decrease significantly after the removal of the surface sediments, and consequently, oxygen penetrates up to tenfold deeper into the sediments inhibiting denitrification and Mn(IV) reduction. Our model results show that the post-disturbance geochemical re-equilibration is controlled by diffusion until the reactive labile TOC fraction in the surface sediments is partly re-established and the biogeochemical processes commence. While the re-establishment of bioturbation is essential, the geochemical re-equilibration of the sediments is ultimately controlled by the burial rates of organic matter. Hence, under current depositional conditions, the new geochemical equilibrium in the sediments of the CCZ is reached only on a millennia scale even for these small-scale disturbances simulating deep-sea mining activities.</p>

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Potential Mitigation and Restoration Actions in Ecosystems Impacted by Seabed Mining

Cited by 46 publications

References 153 publications

Fine Scale Assemblage Structure of Benthic Invertebrate Megafauna on the North Pacific Seamount Mokumanamana

Fine Scale Assemblage Structure of Benthic Invertebrate Megafauna on the North Pacific Seamount Mokumanamana

Ecological Role of an Offshore Industry Artificial Structure

Impact of small-scale disturbances on geochemical conditions, biogeochemical processes and element fluxes in surface sediments of the eastern Clarion-Clipperton Zone, Pacific Ocean

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