Marine Georesources & Geotechnology

Marine Mining and Sediment-Related Geological Hazards

Seafloor sediments and bedrock form the fundamental geological foundation for marine mineral resource exploration, seafloor engineering, and marine mining operations. Marine mining—including the extraction of seafloor massive sulfides, polymetallic nodules, cobalt-rich ferromanganese crusts, phosphate deposits, and placer deposits—inevitably disturbs sedimentary environments, alters seabed topography, triggers sediment resuspension and plume diffusion, induces seabed instability, and elevates risks of submarine geological hazards. These processes threaten the safety of subsea structures, mining systems, pipelines, platforms, and coastal engineering facilities, while imposing long-term impacts on marine ecological and geological environments.

Traditional observation, modeling, and hazard-assessment approaches face challenges in capturing multiscale, heterogeneous, and dynamic seabed-sediment responses. Advanced analytical methods, numerical simulation, in-situ monitoring, remote sensing, and artificial intelligence (AI) techniques—including machine learning, physics-informed modeling, uncertainty quantification, and multi-modal data fusion—provide new capabilities to characterize sediment properties, predict plume behavior, evaluate seabed stability, and quantify geological-hazard risks induced by marine mining.

This Special Issue aims to collect cutting-edge interdisciplinary research that integrates marine mineral-resource geoscience, sediment dynamics, geological-hazard analysis, and engineering practice. It will highlight technical and methodological advances supporting safe, efficient, and environmentally sustainable marine-resource development.

Topics include, but are not limited to:

• Marine-mineral exploration, resource assessment, and mining technologies

• Seafloor sediment properties, mechanical behavior, and responses to static/dynamic loads

• Sediment plumes, resuspension, transport, and environmental impacts from marine mining
• Submarine landslides, seabed instability, and geological hazards related to mining disturbance
• AI, data fusion, and numerical modeling for sediment dynamics and hazard prediction
• Seafloor geomorphology, sedimentary processes, and engineering–environment interactions