ISMAASMA
Instruments for the sustainable management of active and ancient salt mining areas
Project outline
The aims of the joint project are to develop tools that allow the representation of 3D geological and hydrogeological information in active or abandoned salt mining areas. The tools will form the basis for process models that are able to evaluate different scenarios to face problems related to land subsidence and aquifer contamination and to develop future strategies for mining areas.There are similar environmental problems related to active and natural subsurface salt dissolution in both Romania and Switzerland. The Ocna Mures mining area is ideally suited to serve as an example for our approach. The Ocna Mures salt mines in Transylvania, where rock salt has been explored since the Roman ages in open excavations and galleries until the 70's, and is still extracted up to this date within solution mining wells.
Expected results
• New strategies in hazard evaluation of land subsidence and groundwater modeling.• Environment as central theme in this research. A reliable supply of high quality drinking water is of major concern for test sites.
• New insights into the causes and time scales of subrosion processes.
• Development of mining areas.
Partnership aspects
The project aims to start collaboration between the Department of Geological Engineering at the University of Bucharest and the Applied and Environmental Geology at Basel University. The project offers the possibility of knowledge exchange between complementary research groups, which have gained substantial experience in hazards evaluation due to salt exploitation.The Romanian partner benefits from the experience of the Basel group on data management, field data assessment such as hydraulic aquifer testing, developing of 3D geological models (GOCAD), and hydrogeological models in 2D and 3D.
The Swiss partner benefits from the Romanian expertise in assessing geotechnical hazards, application of geophysical methods, and the evaluation of the feasibility of technical solutions.
About the programme
Switzerland is supporting the efforts to reduce economic and social disparities within the enlarged EU. The supported countries include Romania, one of the most recent EU members. One of the selected fields of cooperation with Romania is scientific research and a specific Programme, the Romanian-Swiss Research Programme (RSRP), was therefore set up.
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