Microseismic temporal-spatial precursory characteristics and early warning method of rockburst in steeply inclined and extremely thick coal seam

Early warning of a potential rockburst risk and its area of occurrence helps to take effective and targeted measures to mitigate rockburst hazards. This study investigates the microseismic (MS) spatial-temporal precursory characteristic parameters in a typical steeply inclined and extremely thick coal seam (SIETCS) with high rockburst risk and proposes three spatial/temporal quantification parameters and a spatial-temporal early warning method. Analysis results of temporal parameters show that the sharp-rise-sharp-drop variation in total daily energy and event count can be regarded as a precursor for high energy tremor. The appearance of peak values of both energy deviation (≥20) and event count deviation (≥1) can be regarded as precursors that indicate imminent rockburst danger. A laboratory acoustic emission (AE) experiment reveals that precursor characteristics obtained from the study can be feasibly used to warn the rockburst risk. The spatial evolution laws of spatial parameters show that the high energy density index of MS (EDIM), velocity, velocity anomaly regions correlate well with stress concentration and rockburst risk areas. The field application verifies that the temporal-spatial early warning method can identify the potential rockburst risk in a temporal sequence and rockburst risk areas during the temporal early warning period.