The Disappearance of Coal Seams Recorded in Associated Gangue Rocks in the SW Part of the Upper Silesian Coal Basin, Poland

Abstract

Coal seams in the Upper Silesian Coal Basin vanish within the Carboniferous Upper Silesian Sandstone Series and below an unconformity marking the Carboniferous top surface. Changes in the geochemical, mineralogical, petrological and palynological characteristics of gangue rocks associated with the vanished seams record what happened. The observed changes could have been caused by (1) coal-seam paleofire, (2) peat combustion, (3) igneous intrusion, (4) metasomatism and/or (5) weathering. Multifaceted research on samples collected at the Jas-Mos mining area, a part of the operating Jastrzębie-Bzie Coal Mine that are representative of different geological settings in the northern and southern parts of the mining area, point to intra-deposit paleofire as the most plausible reason for the disappearance. Biomarkers enabled recognition of differences in heating duration and oxygen access. Coal seams in the south burned quickly with abundant oxygen supply. Seams in the north pyrolyzed for an extended time under conditions of limited oxygen. Though other methods used proved less sensitive, all confirmed low (100–150 °C) paleotemperature heating. Overall, the reason for the local disappearance of the coal seams, making their exploitation difficult and unprofitable, can be assigned to a variety of different processes in a complex overlapping history of variable weathering, heating due to local endogenic fires and, probably, earlier peat combustion.

Chemostratigraphic Approach to the Study of Resources’ Deposit in the Upper Silesian Coal Basin (Poland)

“…The Upper Silesian Coal Basin (USCB) belongs to the Northwest European Carboniferous Basin (NWECB), which is a large sedimentary basin that extends from Ireland in the west to Poland in the east [27,[36][37][38].…”

“…Due to its economic importance, many authors have extensively studied the geology of the USCB, e.g., [27,[35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42]. The total area of the Polish part of the USCB is estimated to cover about 5600 km 2 , of which the area of documented deposits amounts to over 3045 km 2 .…”

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in two sedimentary environments of the Tertiary Krepoljin coal basin

“…PAHs in coal/sediments are affected not only by coal rank but also by their origin, including depositional environment, precursor material, formation history, and geological age. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7] PAHs are comprised of many carcinogenic substances and are ubiquitous in the environment. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulates 16 priority pollutant PAHs (16 EPA-PAH) spanning from 2-6 condensed aromatic rings, which are commonly analyzed.…”

Geochemia karbonu produktywnego i miocenu Górnośląskiego Zagłębia Węglowego – studium przypadku

“…Morga 2007;Strzałkowska 2021Strzałkowska , 2022Strzałkowska , 2023. Some data about the chemical composition of the Carboniferous coal-bearing series in the Sw Part of the Upper Silesian Coal Basin concerning disappearing coal seams in the Upper Silesian Sandstone Series (Ciesielczuk et al 2021) are presented in the paper. In recent years, geochemical research related to the Carboniferous coal-bearing series of the USCB geochemistry has also focused on the distribution of critical and toxic elements in sedimentary rocks (Krzeszowska et al 2022;Kokowska-Pawłowska and Krzeszowska 2023).…”