FRACTAL CHARACTER OF ACCUMULATIONS OF FERROMANGANESE NODULES AND THE PROBLEM OF THEIR TAXONOMY

Abstract

Investigation of areas where ferromanganese nodules occur on the sea floor identifies a characteristic property of their structure: the nodules are not uniformly distributed, but form regular clusters and sparse areas. For the question at issue here, it is significant that in many cases both relief and percolation clusters have fractal character. An illustrative geometric model of fractals is the Serpinskiy grid. Fractal dimensionalities were calculated from nodule accumulations of various scales.