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Identification of Small Old Shafts Locations and a Proposal for Their Protection

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Abstract

The issues related to threats to human safety in post-mining areas are important. This article delineates such threats, focusing mainly on the problem of sinkholes emerging above small old shafts. Small shafts are understood as excavations, most often with a rectangular cross section and a side of 1–3 m and a depth ranging from several meters to several dozen meters. The difficulties with locating small shafts have often been associated with the lack of complete geological and mining documentation. Having gained access to the geological and mining documentation concerning mining activities conducted in the nineteenth century, field research was carried out. LIDAR technology has been proposed as a means of initial evaluation of an area together with a thermal imaging camera to assess if the sinkholes had been formed due to past mining activities. Preliminary results of the study suggest that infrared mapping could be used as a method that could to some extent limit the time-consuming and laborious geophysical studies. The work uses Bell’s formula and a numerical method to assess the degree of threat of sinkhole formation on the surface area. According to the results of the studies described in the literature as well as the author’s professional experience, the most common cause of the surface hazards in post-mining regions is the lowering of the backfilling material in shafts. Precipitation has a significant impact on such behaviour of backfill. Therefore, this paper proposes methods of isolating shaft’s backfilling column from precipitation water.

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Acknowledgements

The author thankfully acknowledges the Silesian University of Technology, Poland, for providing all the facilities to perform the research work.

Funding

The article has been written as a result of a research project 06/040BK_20/0102 financed by Silesian University of Technology, Faculty of Mining, Safety Engineering and Industrial Automation from the funds of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education.

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  1. Faculty of Mining, Safety Engineering and Industrial Automation, Silesian University of Technology, ul. Akademicka 2a, 44-100, Gliwice, Poland

    Piotr Strzałkowski

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I declare that I am the only author of the above article and all those who contributed to its creation have been credited in the text and references.

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Correspondence to Piotr Strzałkowski.

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Strzałkowski, P. Identification of Small Old Shafts Locations and a Proposal for Their Protection. Pure Appl. Geophys. 179, 2889–2904 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-022-03093-x

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