standardization of environmental data and information - International ...

Deep-sea currents, one of the physical environmental factors, were
measured to develop the 3-D numerical model of sediment dispersion 9 .
During the artificial rapid deposition event, the sedimentation rate, which
was the other physical environmental factor, was measured to estimate the
quantities of sediment deposition. To understand the environmental
background of the experiment site, the sedimentation rate was also
measured for a year before the disturbance.
For the geological parameters, grain size and shear and penetration
strength were measured. From the grain-size data, the settling velocity was
estimated and used for the parameters of the simulation model. Other data
sets would contribute to the future design of the mining collector.
The abundance of sedimentary bacteria, meiobenthos,
macrobenthos and megabenthos were studied to evaluate the effect of the
artificial rapid deposition. Different responses to the disturbance were
observed within those faunal groups (table 3).
These results strongly demonstrate that the study of these biological factors
was quite important.
Figure 8
Location map for the field study of the benthic environment.
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