The role of static stress transfer in mining induced seismic events occurrence, a case study of the Rudna mine in the Legnica-Glogow Copper District in Poland

Seismicity accompanying mining exploitation results from changes in the stress field in the rock mass near the mining excavations caused by human activity. Many studies of the temporal and spatial distribution of mining induced seismicity have provided evidence for interrelations among events. Although a variety of techniques have been applied to quantify the interdependences of mining induced seismic events, the physical mechanism of interactions has not been unequivocally identified. Based on the premise that one possible cause of interactions among seismic events can be static stress transfer, we have verified statistically the role of Coulomb stress transfer in the generation process of mining induced seismicity using a series of seismic events that occurred in the Rudna mine in the Legnica-Glogow Copper District in Poland. We quantify the triggering and inhibiting effect by the proportion of events in the series, whose locations are consistent with the stress increased and stress decreased zones, respectively. We have found that more than 60 per cent of the analysed seismic events occurred in areas where stress was enhanced due to the occurrence of previous events. The statistical significance of these results is tested by comparing them with the same proportions obtained for 2000 random permutations of the original series of events. The test has indicated that the locations in positive stress changes areas are preferred statistically significantly when the stress changes exceed 0.05 bar. This result turns out to be robust to the errors of the nodal planes determination.