WP4 will simulate the dispersal of plume particles generated by a possible mining operation to quantify the seabed area potentially affected by mining plumes.
One of the main environmental issues of deep-sea mining is the potential impact on the ecosystem of plume particles and toxic compounds released during mineral extraction. These effects are very poorly understood, since no real mining tests have ever been conducted in the area under consideration for seabed mining. Therefore, a valuable tool to increase our knowledge is numerical modelling of sediment plumes generated from hypothetical mining sites.
The research questions we aim to answer are:
- What is the spatial scale of dispersion of mining-generated sediment plumes?
- How does dispersion vary with physical properties of the sediment plume and the type of mining operation?
- To what extent can neighbouring benthic habitats not directly impacted by mining be affected?
- How can sediment plume impacts be mitigated?
The following approaches will be used:
- Collection of bottom current data series from several points along the Mohn’s Ridge
- Numerical modelling of simulated sediment plumes