ArticleNature communications2025
Monitoring benthic plumes, sediment redeposition and seafloor imprints caused by deep-sea polymetallic nodule mining.
Article in Nature communications, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Improving rare-class detection in deep-sea imagery via generative augmentation with stable diffusion.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Assessing mining impacts in the deep sea.Nature ecology & evolution · 2026Article
- Thorium-234 as a tracer for deep-sea mining sediment plume deposition.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Ecological Impacts of Deep-Sea Mining Waste on Marine Algae and CopepodEnvironmental science & technology · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
13 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
A deep-sea (4500 m) trial of a pre-prototype polymetallic nodule collector with independent scientific monitoring revealed that a gravity current formed behind the collector channeled through steeper seafloor sections and traveled 500 m downslope. The prevailing bottom currents dominated sediment dispersion up to the end of the monitoring area at 4.5 km distance. The maximum suspended particle concentration recorded 50 m from mining lanes was up to four orders of magnitude higher than ambient values but decreased rapidly with increasing time, distance, and altitude. Most of the plume remained close to the seafloor, with the highest concentrations at 1 m monitoring altitude and reaching background concentrations at 50 m. Rapid particle flocculation was followed by fast and substantial sediment redeposition. A mm-scale photogrammetric seafloor reconstruction allowed quantitative estimates of the thickness of redeposited sediment next to mining lanes of ≈ 3 cm and a minimum erosional depth of 5 cm.
Identifiers
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.