APPLICATION OF GPR IN CANADIAN MINES

To be competitive on the international market, the Canadian mining ind ustry must reduce its costs, increase its productivity and maintain a high standard of safety. There is a great need today for improved meth ods that would allow the detection of geological structures in advance of mining to reduce dilution and the monitoring of underground struct ures to increase safety. This will facilitate planning for optimum exp loitation of the mine and to increase production at lower costs. This paper discusses two examples of more efficient mine planning using new technologies such as Ground Probing Radar (GPR). In Kidd Creek mine, GPR technology was used at the 2500 and 2600 levels to (1) monitor the stability of the sill pillar; (2) locale the presence of disseminated sulphide pockets in the sill pillar for extracting the mineral conten t; (3) monitor the stope backs and wall structures to evaluate the eff ect of on-time filling sequences; and (4) assess rockfill quality in t erms of the presence of voids and fractures within the rockfilled area s. In the New Brunswick coal mine in Minto, GPR was used along with co re log data to map and construct a 3D block of a section of the bench showing the relative position of different layers overlying the coal s eam.