A study of the interaction among mining-induced seismic events in the Legnica-G?ogów Copper District,Poland

We applied the Coulomb stress transfer technique to investigate interactions among seismic events induced by mining works in the Rudna mine in the Legnica-Glogów Copper District in Poland. We considered events with energy greater than 10⁵ J from the period 1993–1999. We examined the influence of the cumulative static stress changes (ΔCFF) due to previous events on the generation of subsequent ones. The results indicate that in many cases strong mining tremors produce changes in the state of stress of a sufficient magnitude to influence subsequent events. The location of over 60% of events is consistent with stress-enhanced areas where the values of ΔCFF were above 0.01 MPa. For most of the events located inside areas of a calculated negative ΔCFF, their modelled rupture zone was partially located inside stress enhanced area, providing thus additional evidence for possible triggering at the nucleation point.