Research on the metallogenic mechanism of deep sea sedimentary mineral resources: review and outlook

Cobalt, nickel, rare earth elements (REEs) and other critical metals are highly enriched in deep sea supergene mineral deposits such as cobalt-rich crusts, poly-metallic nodules and REEs-rich sediments, which are potential strategic mineral resources in the future. Crusts, nodules, and REEs-rich sediments are distributed on the surface of seamounts, seabed and deep sea sediments respectively, they have similar metallogenic elements, and sea water plays an important role in the mineralization process. The critical metals such as cobalt, nickel, copper and REEs haven’t formed independent mineral state. Previous studies mainly focus on the separate research on each minerals, which limited overall understanding of deep-sea mineralization processes. On the basis of reviewing the progress and existing problems of domestic and foreign scholars on the spatial distribution, occurrence status, enrichment mechanisms, and controlling factors of three deep-sea sedimentary minerals above, guided by the ideas of Earth system science, we focuse on ore-forming elements, to conduct the process of “source-migration-enrichment” of the critical metals under multi sphere interaction and the spatiotemporal coupling mechanism of sedimentary minerals in “sea mountain-basin system”. In addition, expected to guide the deep-sea mineral exploration