Coal Bursting at the Elk Creek Mine: A Western United States Case Study

Details

• Journal Article:
  Mining, Metallurgy & Exploration
• Personal Author:
  Boltz, M. Shawn ; Chambers, Derek J. A. ; Larson, Mark K. ; Lawson, Heather E. ; Törnman, Wille
• Description:
  Coal bursts pose a substantial threat to operations and mine workers. The coal mines in the North Fork Valley (NFV) in the United States (US) have experienced many coal bursts, often with distinct characteristics from those of other US coal mining regions. Seismic monitoring in conjunction with other in-mine instrumentation was conducted at the Elk Creek Mine in the NFV during the mining of four longwall panels. Nearly one million seismic events with magnitudes ranging between - 2.0 and 3.1 were detected, of which approximately 200,000 located within the study region surrounding the extracted panels with 80 m location errors. Five events were coal bursts that resulted in injury or significant in-mine damage. This study examines the characteristics of the recorded seismicity, focusing on the largest magnitude coal burst. The moment tensor solution for the largest event corroborates the findings of other studies that faulting contributed to the damaging seismicity at the mine. Anomalous ground conditions, abnormal caving behavior, and the migration of seismic events characterized a latent seismic hazard that later resulted in a large coal burst. Moreover, the observed load transfer distance at the mine is significantly greater than what is suggested using common empirical design methods, which are largely based on coal mines in the Eastern US. This case study provides an example of the utility of seismic data at a burst-prone underground coal mine. The Elk Creek dataset, which is co-published with this study, is a valuable resource for future mine safety research.
• Subjects:
  Coal Coal Mining Mining Occupational Health Safety
• Keywords:
  Author Keywords: Coal Mining; Longwall Mining; Seismicity; Coal Burst; Mine Stability; Instrumentation Coal Mines; Seismic Monitoring; Longwall Mining; Seismic Activity; Ground Control; Mine Safety; Mine Disasters;
• Source:
  Min Metall Explor 2026 Mar; :[Epub ahead of print]
• ISSN:
  2524-3462
• Document Type:
  Text
• Genre:
  Journal Article
• Place as Subject:
  Washington ; San Francisco Region [OSHA]
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Division:
  SMRD - Spokane Mining Research Division
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  19 pdf pages
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20071315
• Contact Point Address:
  M Shawn Boltz, Spokane Mining Research Division, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Spokane, WA, USA
• Email:
  mboltz@cdc.gov
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2026
• Peer Reviewed:
  True
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:5c03b05c21f89f111feccf4fe354319c4ef3a1760fc9862b422d6eab42b734319b5b129fe176367abfc647e0478845b2eba8cfb2639650d1343cb0a2ba294ef2
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/258791/cdc_258791_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 7.25 MB ]