Thomas Peacock Matthew Alford Jerome Smith Arnaud Le Boyer Chinmay Kulkarni Pierre Lermusiaux Patrick Haley C Mirabito Dayang Wang Eric Adams Raphael Ouillon Alexander Breugem Boudewijn Decrop Thijs Lanckreit Rohit Supekar Andrew Rzeznik Amy Gartman Se-Jong Ju Carlos Munoz-Royo 2021 <div id="Abs1-section" class="c-article-section"><div id="Abs1-content" class="c-article-section__content"><p>Deep-sea polymetallic nodule mining research activity has substantially increased in recent years, but the expected level of environmental impact is still being established. One environmental concern is the discharge of a sediment plume into the midwater column. We performed a dedicated field study using sediment from the Clarion Clipperton Fracture Zone. The plume was monitored and tracked using both&nbsp;established and novel instrumentation, including acoustic and turbulence measurements. Our field studies reveal that modeling can reliably predict the properties of a midwater plume in the vicinity of the&nbsp;discharge and that sediment aggregation effects are not significant. The plume model is used to drive a numerical simulation of a commercial-scale operation in the Clarion Clipperton Fracture Zone. Key takeaways are that the scale of&nbsp;impact of&nbsp;the plume is notably influenced by the values of environmentally acceptable threshold levels, the quantity of discharged sediment, and the turbulent diffusivity in the Clarion Clipperton Fracture Zone.</p></div></div> application/pdf 10.1038/s43247-021-00213-8 en Nature Extent of impact of deep-sea nodule mining midwater plumes is influenced by sediment loading, turbulence and thresholds article