Multiple geophysical techniques have been applied to geothermal exploration within the Teshikaga area. The three-dimensional inversion of HeliFalcon® airborne gravity gradiometry (AGG) data has enabled a detailed interpretation of subsurface features. The vertically elongated high-density anomalies beneath lava domes located near Wakoto Peninsula and Mt. Atosanupuri are interpreted as subsurface intrusive

A new imaging method has been developed for elucidating the observed magnetic data gauged along profile. The method is based on the calculation of the correlation factor (the R-parameter) between the analytic signal of the measured magnetic anomaly and the analytic signal of the calculated response of some geometrically simple interpretive models in the confined category of sheets, cylinders, and spheres

The Bokanjac–Poličnik system, as a complex set of mutually interrelated Dinaric karst catchments and sub-catchments, is a highly vulnerable and limited groundwater source for the wider Zadar area in northern Dalmatia, Croatia. Based on hydrogeological, hydrochemical, and hydrological research, including the prediction of groundwater discharge by the end of the twenty-first century, a complex study

In the oil production industry, it is of significance to measure and predict the form of multi-phase flow and gas flow that are present within petroleum production and processing pipelines. One component which has received little attention is the characteristics of bubbly flow around production pipelines. Rising bubble behavior in a wellbore changes with various factors, of which temperature leading

Characterization of coal micro-structure and the associated rock mechanical properties are of key importance for coal seam exploration, coal bed methane development, enhanced coal bed methane production and CO2 storage in deep coal seams. Considerable knowledge exists about coal chemical properties, but less is known about the nanoscale to the micro-scale structure of coals and how they change with

Low permeability is the main constraint on the high-efficiency coalbed methane recovery in deep coal seams. Hydraulic slotting has been proved to be a favorable method to stimulate low-permeability coal seams. In this paper, the coal samples with various slot inclination angles and borehole-slot ratios were used to investigate the weakening effect of slot inclination angle and borehole-slot ratio on

Offshore oil and gas reservoirs comprise a significant portion of the world’s reserve base, and their development is expected to help close a potential gap in the supply of hydrocarbons in the near future. Continuous advances in technology have helped the oil and gas industry to extend the exploration and production activities to deep and ultra-deep waters in harsher environments. Field development

This article describes the impact of the global digital economy on the technological development of the mineral sector in the world. Due to the different specifics of the legislative bases of the investigated regions, such as the USA, China, EU, and Africa, the development of digital transformation is presented on the example of the Russian Federation in the context of world trends. The article presents

During the last few decades, open pit mines have been deepened to the remote depths of the ground such that removing great volumes of waste rocks may jeopardize their profitability. In such circumstances, an early transition from open pit to underground mining may prove more profitable. This is the case in many large-scale open pit mines, where considerable amount of mineral reserve remains beneath

The factors affecting permeability change under repeated mining of coal seams are important study aspects that need to be explored. This study combined various stress variation characteristics of protective seam mining and simplified the stress path of repeated mining in protective seam mines. Based on the results from the bespoke gas flow and displacement testing apparatus, seepage tests for simulated

In underground mining establishments and in all processes of underground coal mining from investigation activities to production activities, geodetic measurements and the plans, maps and profile information that are obtained after the survey are all needed. All geodetic works and transactions made for underground coal mines have major differences from other survey applications in terms of form and

Land suitability classification (LSC) is an approach of land evaluation, which measures the degree of appropriateness of land for a specific land use. LSC is governed by a myriad of factors at the local and regional level including physiographic, pedologic and a host of socioeconomic and infrastructural determinants. This has called for the application of different multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM)

Bituminous coal in the Xutuan Coal Mine of the Huaibei Mining Bureau (China) is the research object of this study. The influence of moisture content on the porosity of the bituminous coal was investigated from a microscopic perspective by using a high-solution 3D X-ray micro-analyzer. The threshold segmentation method was used to segment the scanning slices of the coal samples. The threshold values

Lack of water resources is a common issue in many countries, especially in the Middle East. Flood spreading project (FSP) is an artificial recharge technique, which is generally suggested for arid and semi-arid areas with two major aims including (1) flood mitigation and (2) artificial recharge of groundwater. This study implemented three state-of-the-art popular models including frequency ratio (FR)

Since most coalfields in China are commonly characterized by high gas content and low permeability, there is an urgent need to improve coal seam permeability and further enhance coal bed methane (CBM) extraction efficiency. As an emerging fracturing technology, the CO2 gas fracturing (CGF) technology has been widely used because of its advantages of low cost, environmental protection and high fragmentation

After living one of the most intense metal price cycles, several ongoing macroeconomic phenomena with the potential of structurally redefining the long-run supply and demand for metals, and raising divergency regarding where the metal prices are trending, it is suitable to evaluate the dynamics in the metal prices, especially focus on the long cyclical components. This article studies in detail the

The quality of a caprock is closely related to its thickness. Statistical data show that there is an obvious positive correlation between caprock thickness and hydrocarbon column height. This report established that the starting pressure gradient is the key factor in the relationship between caprock thickness and hydrocarbon column height by discussing the concepts and principles of breakthrough pressure

This paper identifies the drivers of the phenomenal growth in productivity in hydraulically fractured horizontal oil wells producing from the middle member of the Bakken Formation in North Dakota. The data show a strong underlying spatial component and somewhat weaker temporal component. Drivers of the spatial component are favorable reservoir conditions. The temporal component of well productivity

Assessing reservoir properties and knowing the relationship between different reservoir parameters can significantly help to plan for production from a reservoir. In this study, which was carried out on the gas reservoir of the Triassic Dahram Group at the South Pars Gas Field, in southern Iran, petrophysical parameters such as porosity, shale volume, saturation of water and hydrocarbon, as well as

This study assessed the groundwater productivity of the Dibdibba aquifer on the Karbala–Najaf Plateau, central Iraq, using three GIS-based tree machine learning classifiers, namely classification and regression trees (CART), rotation forest (rF), and random forest (RF). The geographical locations of groundwater wells with a specific well capacity and eight groundwater productivity conditioning factors

Coal mine methane (CMM) accumulation and permeability distribution characterization are the bases for a successful CMM drainage design. Before extending degassing activities, the prediction of the gas pressure and permeability distributions of the pre-drainage area is recommended. The effects of CMM geology on gas occurrence and coal permeability have drawn much attention and contributed to numerous

This paper presents a multi-level procedure for production and injection scheduling through a numerical model-based optimization of well control variables. To calculate the net present value (NPV), the objective function of optimization, this procedure uses a number of discretized systems for a reservoir model with different degrees of up-scaling prepared according to a multi-resolution wavelet technique

Borehole-controlled one-dimensional geo-electric data were integrated with water samples obtained from boreholes drilled near the vertical electrical sounding at 12 locations to assay the dynamic parameters of the water-bearing units in the Akwa Ibom State University and its environs. The study area, situated in the coastal fringe of littoral zones, lies within 4° 30′–4° 35′ N latitudes and 7° 30′–7°

In advanced exploration projects or operating mines, the process of allocating capital for infill drilling programs is a significant and recurrent challenge. Within a large company, the different mine sites and projects compete for the available funds for drilling. To maximize a project’s value to its company, a drillhole location optimizer can be used as an objective tool to compare drilling campaigns

The tri-smectite(S)–corrensite(Co)–chlorite(C) series minerals from two epithermal deposits show a discontinuous stepwise sequence of different mixed-layering of chlorite and smectite layers, and there are differences in the mode of occurrence of the two deposits. The Al/Si ratios and Fe/(Fe + Mg) ratios of the S–Co–C minerals vary closely related to mixed-layering and mode of occurrence. The S–Co–C

Blasting is an economical technique for rock breaking in hard rock excavation. One of its complex undesired environmental effects is flyrock, which may result in human injuries, fatalities and property damage. Because previously developed techniques for predicting flyrock are having less accuracy, this paper develops a new hybrid intelligent system of extreme learning machine (ELM) optimized by biogeography-based

Understanding the spatial–temporal dynamics of wetland land cover (LC) changes and their impacts on ecosystem services (ESs) is essential for wetland conservation and management. This study aimed at quantifying and predicting water provision and habitat quality ecosystem services and analyzing their response to LC changes using the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST) model

Organic matter enrichment in shale is one of the key factors that control shale oil resources; however, studies of the mechanism of organic matter enrichment in shale in saline lacustrine rift basins are still lacking. In this study, analyses of total organic content (TOC), stable isotopes of carbon and oxygen for carbonate, major and trace element, rare earth element, biomarker composition, and field

The physicochemical characteristics and concentrations of heavy metals from 14 groundwater and two wastewater samples were measured to evaluate the effects of various natural and anthropogenic pollutions on the Boroujen aquifer in southwestern Iran. Comparing the location of sampling stations and wastewater treatment plant of the industrial zone with the geochemical maps showed that there are no anomalies

Achieving the coordinated development of mineral exploitation and the water environment (the mine–water system, MWS) is an urgent difficulty in the construction of China’s ecological civilization. Based on the theory of synergy, a synergetic model was used to construct a network of the MWS, and then, social network analysis was applied to study the network characteristics for ten provinces of the Yangtze

Identification of geochemical anomalies from geological background is of great significance in the exploration of complex mineralization systems. For a 2D problem, the window-based local singularity mapping has been used widely to identify the distribution patterns of geochemical data. However, the optimal window parameters for calculating the singularity index are hard to determine. Previous studies

Supervised data-driven mineral prospectivity mapping (MPM) usually employs both positive and negative training datasets. Positive training datasets are typically created using the locations of known mineral deposits, whereas negative training datasets can be generated using the locations of random points. However, not all the negative points can be treated as true negative samples, which means that

We thank Zhang et al. (Nat Resour Res, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11053-019-09512-6) for investigating the accuracy of artificial intelligence techniques in the prediction of drought in China. In the paper by Zhang et al. (2019), two data-driven models, namely artificial neural network and support vector machine, and autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model were established to estimate

In this paper, blast-induced ground vibration (BIGV) was considered as the primary objective, and a new artificial intelligence system was proposed to predict BIGV with high accuracy based on the M5Rules and imperialist competitive algorithm (ICA), called ICA–M5Rules technique. Accordingly, the ICA was considered to optimize the M5Rules based on the rules of the M5 model, as well as the prune and smooth

Blast-induced flyrock is a hazardous and undesirable phenomenon that may occur in surface mines, especially when blasting takes place near residential areas. Therefore, accurate prediction of flyrock distance is of high significance in the determination of the statutory danger area. To this end, there is a practical need to propose an accurate model to predict flyrock. Aiming at this topic, this study

Auger mining (AM) is an effective and safe way to excavate an extremely thin protective layer. This method can relieve pressure and enhance the permeability of an ultra-contiguous coal layer with high gas capacity. However, there have been few studies on AM. Based on the conditions of a coal mine in Shanxi Province, China, theoretical analyses, laboratory tests and numerical simulations were used to

Integrated studies on pore fabric anisotropy have increased the general understanding of fluid flow patterns through reservoir rocks. In this study, pore anisotropy was studied based on measuring permeability and formation resistivity factors in vertical and horizontal directions for 130 plug samples from a total of 65 oriented block samples. These samples were representatively collected for the Nubia

Blasting is a useful technique for rocks fragmentation in open-pit mines, underground mines, as well as for civil engineering work. However, the negative impacts of blasting, especially ground vibration, on the surrounding environment are significant. Ground vibration spreads to rocky environment and is characterized by peak particle velocity (PPV). At high PPV intensity, structures can be damaged

Many arid regions in the world suffer from over-exploitation of local groundwater resources leading to the degradation of freshwater aquifer systems, drying of spring discharges, and other damage to land and infrastructure. The development of groundwater critical zone maps (GCZMs) using the best available data is one important method that can be used by decision makers to develop a justifiable regulatory

Blasting is the predominant rock fragmentation technique in civil constructions, underground and surface mines. Flyrock is the unwanted throw of rock fragments during blasting and is the major cause of considerable damage in and around the mines. The present research aimed to propose a new intelligence-based method to predict flyrock. In this regard, the recurrent fuzzy neural network (RFNN) combined

Abstract In this paper, we used artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to investigate the relation between the rock size distribution (RSD) and blasting parameters for rock fragmentation in quarries. Moreover, the ant colony optimization (ACO)–boosted regression tree (BRT) model, which is a novel AI technique for predicting RSD using the blasting parameters, is proposed based on the ACO and BRT algorithms

Abstract Geological structures introduce heterogeneity along deformed strata, which in turn exert a strong control on regional groundwater occurrences and water flow. We developed and applied procedures of structural, borehole and direct current resistivity (DCR) data to (1) figure out a reliable structural model of a fault-related dome, (2) visualize the relationship between structural complexity

Abstract Methane content in coal seam is an essential parameter for the assessment of coalbed gas reserves and is a threat to underground coal mining activities. Compared with the adsorption-isotherm-based indirect method, the direct method by sampling methane-bearing coal seams is apparently more accurate for predicting coalbed methane content. However, the traditional sampling method by using an