Temporal Analysis of Small, Long-period Ground Deformations within Selected Mining Areas in South Poland

In the paper the results of temporal analysis of small, long period ground deformations are presented. The analysis concerns mining areas of two coal mines located in Southern Poland. The first one is still working “Kazimierz-Juliusz” coal mine and the second is “Grodziec” coal mine where the coal exploitation was conducted up to 1998. The analysis of small, long period ground deformations was performed for time period between years 1993 and 2000 based on the set of PSInSAR (Permanent Scatterer Interferometry Synthetic Aperture Radar) data. The analysis performed for these coal mines confirm hypothesis that these trend changes can be related to coal exploitation. In “Kazimierz-Juliusz” coal mine the increase of subsidence velocity is characteristic for all analysed time period. For areas located near exploitation field in “Grodziec” coal mine the increase of subsidence velocity was found for period 1994-1995. In the mentioned time period the coal exploitation was carried on in “Grodziec” coal mine. For time period between March 1999 and April 2000 when it had finished exploitation the decrease of subsidence velocity was characteristic. Such a situation may indicate that the coal exploitation can affect the values of small, long period ground deformations.