| dc.description.abstract | The global interest in exploiting deep-sea minerals has increased over the last couple of decades due to
the rising demand for valuable metals required for technological development. However, due to
significant scientific and technological knowledge gaps and uncertain economic risks, no commercial
exploitation of deep-sea resources has yet been initiated (Jak et al., 2014). To help develop appropriate
environmental management and monitoring plans and to assist in establishing necessary standards and
guidelines for future environmental impact assessments, this thesis provides a comprehensive list of
potential hazards of seafloor-massive-sulfide mining with risk-related and other environmental
management factors. It also includes evaluations of the importance and priority of the hazards for
inclusion in the ecological risk framework. From the list of identified hazards, the essential ones were
further elaborated in terms of consequences for the marine environment. The rest of the hazards were
grouped into scale-dependent and knowledge-dependent for future evaluations of importance, relevance,
and priority. It is, at present, difficult to predict the relevance and importance of scale-dependent and
knowledge-dependent hazards. Once more knowledge about the physical effects of particles and their
ecological and toxicological effects is gathered, the decision of whether these hazards should be included
in the environmental risk assessment framework may be made. | |
