Seabed Mining And Resilience To EXperimental impact

中太平洋600多万平方公里的区域，在近5000米的深海深处，蕴藏着一种巨大的矿产资源，其形式是被称为多金属结核的小土豆大小的矿床。它们高度富含对工业非常重要的金属，包括开发新的可持续技术。尽管该地区位于国际水域，但各国目前已与联合国组织的国际监管机构签署了16份勘探合同，英国是其中两份合同的赞助商，面积比英格兰还大。监管机构和赞助国都要求确保避免对该地区的海洋生态系统造成严重损害--这是一片迄今未被触及的深海荒野。由于太平洋深海生态系统的性质和重要性以及生态系统应对采矿影响和从采矿影响中恢复的能力在很大程度上不得而知，制定可持续的多金属结核采矿方法是一项挑战。我们的项目旨在提供关键的科学理解和证据基础，以降低这一工业发展的风险，利用两个新的和独特的机会在单一计划中解决这些问题。首先，持有英国赞助的勘探合同的英国承包商(英国海底资源公司)计划在2023年进行采矿测试，这将使我们能够首次测试海底采矿车辆的直接影响。其次，作为1979年进行的第一次全面采矿试验的合作伙伴，他们已经能够发布关于一项已有40年历史的大规模采矿作业的位置和结果的新数据。我们的项目组已经获得了数据和测试计划，以便能够在十年尺度上对现实采矿干扰的影响和恢复进行详细的实验评估，这对了解深海采矿的长期可持续性至关重要。该项目旨在更好地了解太平洋深渊的生态系统以及不同组成部分如何相互作用和相互联系。我们将从评估水及其在时间和空间上的动态流动开始。这一复杂的物理环境将被监测一年，以捕捉其变化，特别是海床附近的“风暴事件”。我们将利用这一点来预测采矿产生的沉淀物羽流将被输送到哪里并沉入海底。然后，我们评估水、沉积物表面和次沉积物之间的联系，评估营养物质和金属的自然循环，这对维持生态系统健康非常重要。将对这些过程的采矿和回收的影响进行评估。采矿将导致海底结构、形状和沉积物物理性质的变化，这些变化将被绘制成地图并与生物模式联系起来。将通过详细描述现有生物的生活史和繁殖以及它们在远近地区之间的联系，然后确定它们在维持有组织的生命群落、高度生物多样性和正常运作的食物网方面的作用，来评估导致这些模式的生物过程。然后，我们将评估这些生物在生态系统中提供的功能，这些功能有助于维持一个健康的生态系统。将利用我们的试验区评估深海扰动的生物和功能后果，以确定开采和恢复所有这些模式和进程的影响。这些变化可能很复杂，因此将使用一系列数学模型来更好地理解和预测更大时间和空间尺度上的采矿活动的后果。这种预测能力，以及来自科学评估的证据，将提供对了解和减少未来采矿活动的环境风险至关重要的信息。

Over a 6 million square km region of the central Pacific ocean, at abyssal depths of almost five thousand metres, lies a vast mineral resource in the form of small potato-sized deposits called polymetallic nodules. They are highly-enriched in metals of importance for industry, including the development of new sustainable technologies. Although the region lies in international waters, countries have now signed 16 exploration contracts with a UN-organised international regulator and the United Kingdom is sponsor to two of these, covering an area more than the size of England. It is a requirement of both the regulator and the sponsoring state to ensure that serious harm is avoided to the marine ecosystem in this region - a hitherto untouched deep-sea wilderness. Developing a sustainable approach to polymetallic nodule mining is a challenge as the nature and importance of the Pacific abyssal ecosystem is largely unknown, as are the capacity of the ecosystem to cope with and recover from mining impacts. Our project aims to provide the critical scientific understanding and evidence-base to reduce the risks of this industrial development, taking advantage of two new and unique opportunities to solve these problems in a single programme.Firstly, the UK contractor that holds the UK-sponsored exploration contract (UK Seabed Resources) is planning a mining test in 2023, which will allow us to test the immediate impacts of a seabed mining vehicle for the first time. Secondly, as a partner in the first full-scale mining test done in 1979, they have been able to release new data on the location and results of a 40-year old large-scale mining operation. Our project team have secured access to data and test plans, to allow detailed experimental evaluation of impact and recovery from realistic mining disturbance on a decadal scale of vital relevance to understanding the long-term sustainability of deep-sea mining.The project aims to better understand the ecosystem in the Pacific abyss and how the different components interact and interconnect. We will start by assessing the water and its dynamic flows over time and space. This complex physical environment will be monitored for a year to capture its variabilities, particularly "storm events" near the seabed. We will use this to make predictions about where the sediment plume generated by mining will be transported and settle back to the seafloor. We then assess the linkages between the water, sediment surface and sub sediments, evaluating the natural cycling of nutrients and metals that is important to maintain ecosystem health. The impacts of mining and recovery of these processes will be assessed. Mining will lead to changes in the structure of the seabed, its shape and the physical nature of the sediments, which will be mapped and linked to biological patterns. The biological processes that lead to these patterns will be assessed by detailing the life histories and reproduction of the organisms present and their connectivity between areas near and far, and then determining their role in maintaining structured communities of life, a high biodiversity and a functioning food web. We will then evaluate the functions in the ecosystem that these organisms provide, which help maintain a healthy ecosystem. The impact of mining and recovery of all these patterns and processes will be determined using our experimental areas to assess the biological and functional consequences of disturbance in the deep sea. These changes are likely complex, so a range of mathematical models will be used to better understand and predict the consequences of mining activities at larger time and space scales. Such predictive power, along with the evidence from the scientific assessment, will provide information that is critical for understanding and reducing the environmental risk of future mining activities.