LAUSR

Tailings dams are massive structures designed to contain the waste slurry remaining after processing ore at open pit and underground mines. These structures fail far more regularly than normal water-storage dams. In recent years, catastrophic tailings dam failures have occurred, causing significant damage to the environment and even loss of life. To mitigate these catastrophic events in the future, there is an urgent need to develop cost-effective methods to monitor the structural stability of these constructions over time. The lack of current cost-effective monitoring methods prompted us to investigate whether ambient seismic noise can be used to detect internal changes in a tailings dam wall during a period of heavy rainfall. We recorded three weeks of continuous seismic data with 10 short-period geophones at a tailings dam in Tasmania, Australia. Seismic interferometry was used on ambient noise to create virtual seismic sources. With these virtual source signals, small changes in seismic velocity were ...