For more information please visit the ITC Coal Fire Home Page . If you would like to learn a bit more about the use of GIS in coal mining then you can find a good example at the home page of the GIS Laboratory of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, Office of Mines and Minerals. The problem of coal fires attracted a worldwide attention in the last few months. It is widely recognized that these fires emit poisonous and green house gases, which pollute the atmosphere considerably. Mr Ma Jianwei, our Chinese geologist colleague greets you standing in front of a collapsed burning wall of an open cast mine in the Ningxia Autonomous Region, China.
Fire fighters try to remove the burning coal by excavating it and carrying away on trucks.
To zoom in click on the image. Entrance to the fieldwork photo gallery. We completed the project successfully. The results were presented to a committee formed by the representatives of the Chinese Government and the Academy of Sciences. In their evaluation they suggested to use the results all around China in the coal industry.