海底微生物群落还未走出26年前的一场模拟深海采矿

Sediment samples,collected by a remotely operated vehicle off the coast of Peru(shown),reveal that seafloor microbe communities still haven’t recovered from an experiment 26 years ago that mimicked deep-sea mining.

由秘鲁海岸附近的一辆遥控汽车收集的沉积物样本表明，海底微生物群落仍未从26年前的模拟深海采矿的实验中恢复。

Microbe communities living in the seafloor off Peru haven’t bounced back from a deep-sea mining experiment 26 years ago.The populations are still reduced by 30 percent in this part of the South Pacific Ocean,researchers report April 29 in Science Advances.

生活在秘鲁海底的微生物群落还没有从26年前的深海采矿试验中恢复过来。研究人员在4月29日的《Science Advances》杂志上报告说，南太平洋这部分海域的微生物数量仍然减少了30%。

From 1989 to 1994,the DISturbance and reCOLonization,or DISCOL,experiment plowed grooves into the seafloor to mimic deep-sea mining for valuable metal-bearing rocks.The lumps of rock,known as polymetallic or manganese nodules,contain economically important metals such as copper,nickel and cobalt.

从1989年到1994年，DISCOL实验在海底开槽，模拟深海采矿，开采有价值的含金属的岩石。这些块状岩石(称为多金属结核或锰结核)包含经济上重要的金属，例如铜，镍和钴。

To recover the nodules,miners dredge the seafloor,scraping off much of the top layer of sediment along with the rocks.Researchers have long expressed concern about how this might affect deep-sea ecosystems(SN:2/19/14).But there is little data about the effects of deep-sea mining on the ocean environment—and particularly on the microbes at the base of the food web,which cycle the nutrient nitrogen between seafloor and bottom waters(SN:10/10/17).

为了找到这些多金属结核，矿工们在海底挖掘，刮掉岩石表层的大部分沉积物。长期以来，研究人员一直担心这可能会影响深海生态系统(SN：2/19/14).但是，几乎没有关于深海采矿对海洋环境的影响的数据，尤其是对食物网底部微生物的影响，这些微生物在海底和海底水域之间循环养分氮(SN:10/10/17).

Scientists last assessed DISCOL’s effects in 1996.So in 2015,microbial ecologist Tobias Vonnahme,now of The Arctic University of Norway in Troms?,and colleagues devised a new test,comparing the 26-year-old plough tracks with five-week-old tracks they dug into the seafloor.

科学家最后一次评估DISCOL对生态系统的影响是在1996年。所以在2015年，微生物生态学家Tobias Vonnahme和他的同事们设计了一项新的测试，将26年的犁沟和他们在海床上挖出的五周的犁沟进行比较。

Cell counts of microbes in the younger tracks were reduced by about 50 percent compared with undisturbed areas;in older tracks,cell numbers were reduced by about 30 percent.Due to slow accumulation of sediment in the deep sea,regions disturbed by mining could take more than 50 years to fully recover,the team says.

与未受干扰的地区相比，较年轻地区的微生物数量减少了约50%;在较老的受干扰地区中，微生物数量减少了约30%。研究小组说，由于深海中沉积物的缓慢堆积，受采矿干扰的地区可能需要超过50年的时间才能完全恢复。