Cycles in mining seismicity

Abstract

Stochastic models of self-organized criticality and intermittent criticality are used to describe the structure of seismic catalogs. The intermittent models introduce three phases of the seismic cycle: increase in seismic energy, seismic relaxation, and seismic quiescence after the final relaxation. In this paper, seismic mining catalogs from a deep copper mine are searched to find these three phases of the seismic cycle. In spite of the differences between the seismic records from earthquakes and the building of stresses in the mine, the cycles can be estimated in mining seismicity.