Mine Water Discharge and Flooding: A Cause of Severe Earthquakes

Abstract

Severe earthquakes can be triggered by dewatering and flooding of mines, as these activities alter the loading of the Earth's crust and tectonic stresses in its interior. Worldwide, more than 200 studies have noted sites where human-induced stresses could have reactivated preexisting faults, triggering earthquakes with seismic moment magnitudes of up to M = 7 on the Richter scale. This can only occur where faults are already under high tectonic stresses that have built up over many years. Stable continental regions are seismically less active than unstable regions (e.g. California, Japan, and Turkey). Consequently, faults in stable continental regions can be more earthquaketrigger sensitive, since accumulated stresses have not reached failure conditions. This paper provides an overview of officially recognized mining-triggered earthquakes with magnitudes M ! 5.0. The article illuminates that these earthquakes can cause serious socio-economic losses with negative implications for the long-term sustainable development of countries abundant in natural resources and of mining regions, in particular. Historic data suggest that regional geological conditions (e.g. structural geology and tectonic in-situ stress states) are more important in forecasting the potential of earthquake triggering than the scale of the mining activities. Overall, such forecasts should be made to estimate and mitigate potential socio-economic earthquake risks associated with geoengineering operations of extractive industries such as mining.

HiQuake: The Human‐Induced Earthquake Database

“…The earliest entry in HiQuake, from 1868, is coal mining near Maitland, Australia (Klose, 2007a;2007b). Seismogenic projects are reported from ~70 countries (Fig.…”

Hydrogeological analysis and salvage of a deep coalmine after a groundwater inrush

“…The increasing depth of mines results in significant increase of groundwater inrush from the underlying aquifers through natural or mine-associated fractured zones or tunnels, which has also contributed to these accidents (Wanfang 1997a;Wu et al 2004;Yin and Zhang 2005;Zhang 2005;Klose 2007). Among the reported accidents in coalmines in China, more than 90% are related to limestone aquifers, including the Ordovician karst aquifers (Shi and Singh 2001).…”

An Index of Aquiclude Destabilization for Mining-Induced Roof Water Inrush Forecasting: A Case Study

“…For areas at risk of water inrush, blockage by grouting in working face, and dewatering the aquifer ahead of working face, could be used to lower the risk of water inrush. In addition, Wang and Park and Klose suggested that mining activities could cause a significant increase in groundwater inrushes into mines from aquifers, through natural or mining-related fractured zones [19,20]. Yin et al and Zhou et al found that mine water inrush was related to fault activation, caused by mining.…”