Classification of fires in coal waste dumps based on Landsat, Aster thermal bands and thermal camera in Polish and Ukrainian mining regions

Abstract

A self-heating intensity index (SHII) based on the highest (pixel max.) and lowest (pixel min.) values taken from satellite thermal maps of burning coal waste dumps are proposed. The index enables the classification of such fires in Ukrainian- and Polish coal waste dumps. Both in Ukraine and in Poland, varying thermal intensities during 1985–2019 are revealed, using the SHII and following thermal intensity threshold values, namely, extreme thermal activity (> 7), advanced (3–7), moderate (3–1.5), initial (1.5–1), no activity (< 1). The SHII shows decreasing thermal activity in the selected Ukrainian coal waste dumps during 2017–2019. It aids in reconstructing the thermal history of the dumps. Analysis of satellite images revealed a large number of burning coal waste dumps in the Donetsk Coal Basin (Ukraine) with high thermal activity. Such burning likely reflects large amounts of organic matter and sulphides in the dumped material subjected to self-heating and self-burning processes, lack of compaction of the coal waste and/or high methane contents. Comparison of SHII values calculated from satellite- and drone thermal-camera images were compared to show that SHII from drone thermal images have much higher values than those from satellite images; the former have better resolution. Thus, SHII from Landsat- and drone images should be used separately in dump heating studies.

Self-Heating Coal Waste Fire Monitoring and Related Environmental Problems: Case Studies from Poland and Ukraine

“…Several authors have successfully applied Landsat, ASTER nighttime and winter-time images for localising such coal-or coal-seam fires worldwide (e.g., Voigt et al, 2004;Gangopadhyay et al, 2005;Chatterjee, 2006;Zhang and Kuenzer, 2007;Prakash et al, 2011;Guha and Kumar, 2012). Therefore, to monitoring such coal waste fires, only night-time and/or daylight snow-covered images should be used (Nádudvari et al, 2021a). The most effective sensor for hot spot detection is Landsat 7 ETM+ as the TIRS band has 60 m resolution compared with Landsat 4-5 TM (120 m) or Landsat 8 OLI (100 m) because ETM+ can detect properly smaller hot spots which Landsat 8 OLI, or TM cannot.…”

“…Lower temperature phenomena, such as small ground thermal anomalies, must be studied in the thermal infrared (TIR) window (8-14 µm) (Bonneville et al, 1985;Bonneville and Kerr 1987). Self-heating can also be classified using the self-heating intensity index (SHII) introduced by Nádudvari et al (2021a). It can be calculated from the highest (pixel max), and lowest (pixel min) values based on the area of a coal waste dump taken from Landsat, ASTER (TIRS) bands.…”

Molecular and Stable Isotope Composition of Pollutants Emitted during Thermal Processes within the Rymer Coal Waste Dump (Upper Silesia, Poland)

“…Reclamation treatments proved ineffective, resulting in continued emissions of gaseous, water-soluble, and solid (tars/bitumen) pollutants [2,[5][6][7]. Remote sensing techniques using available satellite images combined with thermal maps and field temperature measurements help in recognising the developing self-heating processes on coal waste dumps, also in the past [8,9]. Due to the ongoing thermal processes, the dump has been under environmental monitoring (A. Tabor, personal communication).…”

Assessment on Environmental Quality Management of Coal Stockpile for Environmental Sustainability

“…Air pollution is also one of the most signi cant environmental problems, which are encountered by communities living in and around mining areas [23]. Similarly, the impact of CO 2 emissions as air pollutants from coal-red power plants, contributed to environmental problems [21,[24][25][26]. Meanwhile, other potential impact emerged from the use of fossil fuels in large quantities, which is likely to result in health deterioration of living things [18, 19,[27][28][29], such as noise kebisingan [2,30], spontaneous combustion [9,10,31-34] and a decrease in soil quality [35][36][37][38][39][40].…”