Research progress in seamount influence on depositional processes and evolution of deep-water bottom currents

Seamount is a kind of tectonic geomorphological features widely distributed in the deep sea around the world, where bottom currents persistently exist, thus the interactions between seamounts and bottom currents are very common and will bring about non-negligible influence on deep-water sedimentation and their evolution. This study summarized the global researches on the deep water sedimentation by bottom currents around seamounts, suggesting that deep-water bottom-current hydrodynamics would change under the direct or indirect influence of seamounts, including the changing in flow paths, generation of secondary bottom currents, and variation in ecosystems. Consequently, deep-water sedimentary morphologies and lithofacies would display special distribution patterns. With the evolution of bottom-current hydrodynamics and sedimentary morphologies, deep water sedimentation processes and associated responses would change as well. In summary, bottom currents are complex and special around seamounts, resulting in sedimentary morphologies and lithofacies features as well as distribution patterns differing from those on the open slope. Thus, the sedimentary morphologies and lithofacies formed under bottom currents around seamounts have very particular implications for basin structures and palaeoceanography evolution. However, there is still lack of study concerning the coupling relationship between seamounts and deep water sedimentation processes, greatly limiting deep-sea resource exploration and geo-hazard study, thus more attention is required to be paid to the relationships in the future research of deep-water sedimentology.