Abstract
Earth fissures are a geohazard in Jiangsu Province, China. They can be caused by earthquakes and active faults, underground mining, groundwater extraction and landslides. In order to establish a provincial rehabilitation plan in Jiangsu, a range of monitoring programs, surveys, geological investigations and modeling have been implemented or planned. One of the focuses of the project is the land subsidence and earth fissures caused by excessive groundwater withdrawal in Suzhou, Wuxi and Changzhou (Su-Xi-Chang) area, southern Jiangsu Province. Hetang earth fissure within the Su-Xi-Chang area was first reported in 1995 and a series of investigation has been conducted since then. The site investigations and geophysical survey in 1997 have recognized the causative factor as the excessive groundwater drawdown coupled by the underlying bedrock ridge. An open trench excavation in 2007 and a plane strain analysis suggest that Hetang earth fissures may have cracked from the bedrock ridge to ground surface. Geological drilling in 2007 has further confirmed the existence and configuration of the ridge and extracted soil samples for laboratory tests to obtain soil parameters for numerical analyses and modeling of land subsidence and earth fissures in the Su-Xi-Chang area, Jiangsu, China. The laboratory tests are currently in progress and the result of numerical analyses and modeling is expected to be presented in the near future.
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Acknowledgments
The geological investigation of Hetang Earth Fissure is supported by the cooperative fund––Geological Investigation and Monitoring of Jiangsu Province Environmental Ecosystem (Grant No. 200312300009)––between the Ministry of China National Land Resources and Jiangsu Provincial Government in the sub-project of “Three Dimensional Geological Modeling of Land Subsidence in Su-Xi-Chang Area”. The authors sincerely thank Geological Survey of Jiangsu Province for their support, anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and Talia Barrett of University of Ballarat for proof reading the manuscript.
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Wang, G.Y., You, G., Shi, B. et al. Earth fissures in Jiangsu Province, China and geological investigation of Hetang earth fissure. Environ Earth Sci 60, 35–43 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-009-0167-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-009-0167-5