We may not know much about the deep sea, but do we care about mining it?

1. The way we value the environment affects how we treat it. While public awareness of human impacts on the ocean is increasing, industrial activities in the deep sea are accelerating rapidly and out of sight. 2. The underlying values we hold for the environment were increasingly recognised as an important factor in environmental decision-making, and it was thus important to evaluate public values towards deep-sea environments. 3. Here, we explored people's care for the deep sea and related this to the perceived risks of seafloor mining by comparing the deep sea to three other remote environments: Antarctica, remote terrestrial environments and the Moon. 4. We conducted an online survey to investigate symbolic values, which we define as the emotions, moods and meanings an environment evokes, as an element affecting people's care for the environment. In addition, we investigated the respondent's knowledge, worldviews and the perceived environmental and societal risk of mining in these four environments. 5. We found that symbolic values shape people's environmental care and that the overall symbolic value attributed to each of the environments differs. 6. People perceived it likely that mining will take place in the deep sea, and the majority of respondents (81%) stated to care a lot or very much about human activities harming the deep sea. 7. In comparison to the other remote environments, in a general sense people cared less about the deep sea, and their self-assessed knowledge of the deep sea was lower. 8. These results suggest that it was fundamental to account for the underlying values and emotions towards the environment when evaluating the risks of human activities in remote settings. 9. Our results further highlighted the need to improve public understanding and connection with the deep sea and its role within wider society to engender deep-sea stewardship.Peer reviewe

The Teggiolo zone: a key to the Helvetic-Penninic connection (stratigraphy and tectonics in the Val Bavona, Ticino, Central Alps)

The Teggiolo zone is the sedimentary cover of the Antigorio nappe, one of the lowest tectonic units of the Penninic Central Alps. Detailed mapping, stratigraphic and structural analyses, and comparisons with less metamorphic series in several well-studied domains of the Alps, provide a new stratigraphic interpretation. The Teggiolo zone is comprised of several sedimentary cycles, separated by erosive surfaces and large stratigraphic gaps, which cover the time span from Triassic to Eocene. At Mid-Jurassic times it appears as an uplifted, partially emergent block, marking the southern limit of the main Helvetic basin (the Limiting South-Helvetic Rise LSHR). The main mass of the Teggiolo calcschists, whose base truncates the Triassic-Jurassic cycles and can erode the Antigorio basement, consists of fine-grained clastic sediments analogous to the deep-water flyschoid deposits of Late Cretaceous to Eocene age in the North-Penninic (or Valais s.l.) basins. Thus the Antigorio-Teggiolo domain occupies a crucial paleogeographic position, on the boundary between the Helvetic and Penninic realms: from Triassic to Early Cretaceous its affinity is with the Helvetic; at the end of Cretaceous it is incorporated into the North-Penninic basins. An unexpected result is the discovery of the important role played by complex formations of wildflysch type at the top of the Teggiolo zone. They contain blocks of various sizes. According to their nature, three different associations are distinguished that have specific vertical and lateral distributions. These blocks give clues to the existence of territories that have disappeared from the present-day level of observation and impose constraints on the kinematics of early folding and embryonic nappe emplacement. Tectonics produced several phases of superimposed folds and schistosities, more in the metasediments than in the gneissic basement. Older deformations that predate the amplification of the frontal hinge of the nappe generated the dominant schistosity and the km-wide Vanzèla isoclinal fold