Insights and future research into the impacts of deep sea mining

Spearman, J. and Lee, M. and Matthewson, T. and Newell, R. (2016) Insights and future research into the impacts of deep sea mining. In: WODCON XXI, 13-17 June 2016, Miami, US.

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Abstract

The pressure on resources of rare earth minerals and other resources like phosphate, together with improvements in technology, are leading to increased interest in the mining of deeper waters. This interest in turn has generated concern about the potential environmental consequences of large scale deep-sea mining (e.g. Wedding et al. 2015). A number of environmental impact assessments have recently been made for deep-sea mining projects with varying success in gaining consent. These projects range over water depths of 100-1600m and encompass typical dredging plant as well as the bespoke mining plant for very deep waters. This experience has highlighted several common issues which have arisen during the EIA studies and consent process and which can be expected to arise again in future mining proposals. This paper will discuss these issues and highlight management and modelling approaches which can be employed to address these issues, improve the reliability of impact assessment, and so improve the likelihood of consent. In addition this paper will briefly introduce the recently started UK/Brazil-funded MarineE-tech research project studying the formation and processing feasibility of Fe-Mn crusts on seamounts, and the likely environmental effects of mining these environments.

Item Type: Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Subjects: Maritime > General
Divisions: Maritime
Depositing User: Unnamed user with email i.services@hrwallingford.com
Date Deposited: 02 Apr 2020 09:52
Last Modified: 24 Apr 2020 14:54
URI: http://eprints.hrwallingford.com/id/eprint/1152

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