Impacts of deep-sea mining on microbial ecosystem services
| dc.contributor.author | Orcutt, Beth N. | |
| dc.contributor.author | Bradley, James A. | |
| dc.contributor.author | Brazelton, William J. | |
| dc.contributor.author | Estes, Emily R. | |
| dc.contributor.author | Goordial, Jacqueline M. | |
| dc.contributor.author | Huber, Julie A. | |
| dc.contributor.author | Jones, Rose M. | |
| dc.contributor.author | Mahmoudi, Nagissa | |
| dc.contributor.author | Marlow, Jeffrey J. | |
| dc.contributor.author | Murdock, Sheryl | |
| dc.contributor.author | Pachiadaki, Maria | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2020-07-16T21:18:35Z | |
| dc.date.copyright | 2020 | en_US |
| dc.date.issued | 2020 | |
| dc.description.abstract | Interest in extracting mineral resources from the seafloor through deep‐sea mining has accelerated in the past decade, driven by consumer demand for various metals like zinc, cobalt, and rare earth elements. While there are ongoing studies evaluating potential environmental impacts of deep‐sea mining activities, these focus primarily on impacts to animal biodiversity. The microscopic spectrum of seafloor life and the services that this life provides in the deep sea are rarely considered explicitly. In April 2018, scientists met to define the microbial ecosystem services that should be considered when assessing potential impacts of deep‐sea mining, and to provide recommendations for how to evaluate and safeguard these services. Here, we indicate that the potential impacts of mining on microbial ecosystem services in the deep sea vary substantially, from minimal expected impact to loss of services that cannot be remedied by protected area offsets. For example, we (1) describe potential major losses of microbial ecosystem services at active hydrothermal vent habitats impacted by mining, (2) speculate that there could be major ecosystem service degradation at inactive massive sulfide deposits without extensive mitigation efforts, (3) suggest minor impacts to carbon sequestration within manganese nodule fields coupled with potentially important impacts to primary production capacity, and (4) surmise that assessment of impacts to microbial ecosystem services at seamounts with ferromanganese crusts is too poorly understood to be definitive. We conclude by recommending that baseline assessments of microbial diversity, biomass, and, importantly, biogeochemical function need to be considered in environmental impact assessments of deep‐sea mining. | en_US |
| dc.description.embargo | 2021-01-13 | |
| dc.description.reviewstatus | Reviewed | en_US |
| dc.description.scholarlevel | Faculty | en_US |
| dc.description.sponsorship | We thank the other participants in the April 2018 workshop at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences for their contributions to the ideas summarized in this article: David Emerson, Kristina Gjerde, Susan Lang, Jennifer Le, James J. McManus, Ramunas Stepanaukas, Jason Sylvan, Margaret K. Tivey, and Geoff Wheat. We also thank Verena Tunnicliffe and Cindy Lee Van Dover for providing advice on this topic, Kim Juniper for providing input on early versions of the manuscript, James Hein for providing the shape file information used in Fig. 1, and Brandy Toner and Cara Santelli for providing photomicrographs used in Fig. 2. This is C‐DEBI publication number 481. Finally, we thank the anonymous reviewers of this article for their thoughtful recommendations, as well as the reviewers who provided comment on the earlier biorxive version of this article. The Center for Dark Energy Biosphere Investigations (C‐DEBI, funded by the US National Science Foundation award OIA‐0939564) and the Deep Carbon Observatory at the Carnegie Institution of Washington (funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, CIW subaward 10693‐03) are gratefully acknowledged for their funding support for the workshop and development and publication of this article. | en_US |
| dc.identifier.citation | Orcutt, B. N., Bradley, J. A., Brazelton, W. J., Estes, E. R., Goordial, J. M., Huber, J. A., Jones, R. M., Mahmoudi, N., Marlow, J. J., Murdock, S., & Pachiadaki, M.. (2020). Impacts of deep-sea mining on microbial ecosystem services. Limnology and Oceanography, 65(7), 1489-1510. https://doi.org/10.1002/lno.11403. | en_US |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://doi.org/10.1002/lno.11403 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/1828/11934 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | en_US |
| dc.publisher | Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography | en_US |
| dc.subject.department | School of Earth and Ocean Sciences | |
| dc.title | Impacts of deep-sea mining on microbial ecosystem services | en_US |
| dc.type | Article | en_US |