La tomografía eléctrica: una herramienta para la detección de huecos mineros (concesión de Arrayanes, Linares-Jaén)

Abstract

Electrical resistivity tomography is well suited to find and map subsurface cavities because of its ability to detect resistive features and discriminating subtle resistivity variations. The Linares area (Jaén, Spain), where an important mining activity on metallic sulphides ores was developed, has been selected for this study. This activity has produced a large volume of mining voids. Electrical resistivity tomography is a geophysical tool well suited to the detection and mapping of known and unknown mining voids. The technique is capable of discriminating between the developing cavities, where the target is primarily conductive weathered material, and the empty voids comprising resistive air-filled cavities. Such cavities may be water-filled, in which case they are likely to yield conductive anomalies as the water would be significantly more conductive than the surrounding material (unweathered granite in this case). The survey results suggest that electrical resistivity tomography is an ideal geophysical tool to aid in the detection and monitoring of mining voids and other subsurface cavities