Tag Archives: THGA

Mine water, risk management, monitoring – when mining ends, it leaves behind a variety of tasks. How to deal with them responsibly was the focus of the 21st Altbergbaukolloquium from 9th to 10th November 2023 on the grounds of the UNESCO World Heritage Site Zeche Zollverein in Essen/Germany. Around 500 experts from all over Germany came together at the site, ...

The “De Re Metallica Libri XI” from the pen of the polymath Georg Agricola is rightly called the “Bible” of the miners of Europe and America. Now this special literary-scientific synthesis of the arts of the 16th century has been translated into Ukrainian. The TH Georg Agricola University (THGA), Bochum/Germany, which itself bears the name of the Chemnitz native, who ...

North Rhine-Westphalia is a post-mining state: intensive raw material mining has left its mark especially in the Ruhr region and the Rhenish mining area. “When mining goes, what remains are challenges such as ground movements, large opencast mining lakes, disused sites of industrial culture or the so-called eternity tasks. At the same time, however, there are also many opportunities to ...

Drone pilot Bodo Bernsdorf sees the world through different eyes. When he lets his special copter soar high above the grounds of the Zollverein coking plant in Essen/Germany, he not only encounters the chimneys and pipelines at flying height – he also finds damaged areas that are not even visible to the naked eye (Figure 1). The drone’s high-resolution images ...

Resources are becoming scarcer, energy prices are rising. In addition, dependence on third countries has led to a global rethink when it comes to extracting raw materials. New ways must be found to extract valuable materials ecologically and economically. That these ways also follow unusual ideas is shown by a new project that has now started at the Research Center ...

Coldewey, W. G. (2022): Handbuch Hydrogeologie. Das Standardwerk für Lehre und Praxis. First edition. 713 pages, 104 tables, 178 figures and 42 appendices. Vulkan Verlag GmbH Essen (Figure 1). The importance of water as a geo-resource for the people and the environment has been emphatically brought to the attention of the public in recent years. The orderly handling of water ...

Mining leaves its mark – water in particular as a resource in the former mining regions is affected by the consequences of intensive raw material extraction, some of which has been ongoing for centuries. The key issues in this year’s “NACHBergbauzeit in NRW” conference (Figure 1) looked at the challenges involving the long-term management of water and the resulting effects ...

At the Research Center of Post-Mining (FZN) at TH Georg Agricola University (THGA), Bochum/Germany, Julia Tiganj (Figure 1) is studying the socio-economic aspects of post-mining. In times of raw material scarcity and the energy transition, the economics researcher’s attention is especially drawn to China. Will the world’s second-largest economy manage the transition to renewable energy? What are the greatest challenges ...

The Research Center of Post-Mining (FZN) at the TH Georg Agricola University (THGA), Bochum/Germany, has a broad field of focus. When it was established in October 2015, research focused initially on the perpetual tasks of the German coal mining industry: long-term mine water management, the management of polder areas and groundwater purification on former mine sites. In May 2019, the ...

Our underground is on the move. However, the shocks are often so small and spatially restricted that they are only detectable for very sensitive sensors. Even where mining was once conducted and people interfered with the natural geology and deposits, it may subsequently cause microseismic shocks. Paloma Primo, scientist at the Research Center of Post-Mining (FZN) at the TH Georg ...