Question

Choose an example of an energy, metal, mineral, or rock resource that humans take from the beach.

Describe the geological origin of the resource.

Describe the use and importance to humans of the resource you choose.

Your original post (of up to 250 words) and at least two comments (100 words or more) are graded as follows:

Answer 1

Ans. The mineral obtained by humans from the floor beaches or ocean floor is

Manganese nodules

These minerals have a mass of 75 kg per square metre and are lumps of modules ranging in size from a head of cabbage to that of a potato. These nodules are mainly composed manganese which gives them their name but also other substances like iron, silicates and hydroxides, and they grew around the crystalline nucleus at a very slow rate of 1 to 3 millimetres for every million years.

The chemical elements are precipitated from seawater or originate in the pore waters of the underlying sediments. The maximum densities of nodules occur in the Indian Ocean, in the Peru Basin, and in the west coast of Mexico at the Clarion Clipperton Zone.

In Mexico, these nodules are found lying in on the deep-sea sediments which cover about 9 million square kilometres which is almost equal to the size of Europe. The concentration of this mineral in this area is due to the increased input of manganese-rich minerals in the form of sediments which is released from the Earth’s interior at the East Pacific Rise due to the hydrothermal activity which is caused by warm water entering the seafloor which releases this material from the earth crust and the ocean current spreads them in large areas.

Application

These nodules also contain elements like cobalt, copper and nickel at very low concentration (3%) and sometimes traces of some very precious elements like platinum or tellurium that have high-tech uses. These elements are of various economic importance to humans in various ways.

Comment

Mining is not a major problem they can be easily collected from the floor. But the real problem lies in large scale mining of this mineral because the variability and density of the metal is still not known accurately. Moreover, the seafloor is not that easy to conduct mining activity as it is on dry land because it is not flat like land and volcanic elevations make it more complicated.

Moreover, mining in the sea bed will destroy the seafloor and the ecosystem due to the sediments rising from the mining activity which will cover a very big area and will destroy many habitats of the ocean ecosystem. This may have many harmful effect on long run. So, without estimating the risk due to such destruction of the ocean ecosystem the project should not be given a sanctioned.