Kentucky Coal Education-Mining Geology

KGS proposes to construct a Core and Mining Geology website as part of their popular Coal Information website. The new material will contain educational information on exploratory coal core and the identification of geologic obstacles and potential roof hazards in coal mines. Currently there is not much web-based, easy-to-access educational material on these subjects. KGS coal research staff have many years of experience in these subject areas and many photos, slides, maps, publications, and presentations to draw material from in order to provide meaningful web content. Jerry Weisenfluh, the interim director of KGS, was co-author of the 3-digit coal core description method used by most Kentucky coal mines for core description. The proposed Coal Exploration Core pages will explain what core are, what information is gained from coring, and how to describe core using the 3-digit system. Photographs of cores will be used as examples to teach the methodology. The KGS core facility is one of the largest public core libraries, and houses many coal and coalbed-methane exploratory cores. These provide an excellent resource for teaching core description and the importance of coring. The second part of the new web content will be a section on Geologic Obstacles and Roof-Control Issues. A large number of obstacles to mining (coal thinning, splitting, etc.), and roof-control issues (falls along sandstone-shale contacts, lateral stress, etc.) are related to geology. Changes in the vertical and lateral stacking of different rock types and rock bedding are related to the manner in which the rock was deposited, and in some cases, deformed after burial. KGS proposes to add new content pages to its website that will contain information that aids in the identification of geologic obstacles and potential roof hazards in Kentucky mines. KGS will combine images and graphics of a variety of important geologic conditions at the surface with images and diagrams from mines to show the lateral and vertical changes in rock bedding which are characteristic of specific obstacles and roof-control issues underground.