Editorial: Mine engineering geological disaster forecasting, monitoring, and prevention

Due to the gradual depletion of shallow resources and the deepening of resource extraction depth, the engineering geological conditions are more complex. High ground stress, high temperature, high osmotic pressure, strong mining disturbance, and complex geological structure have led to a more frequent occurrence of geological disasters in mines. The common geological disasters mainly include mine water inrush, rock and coal burst (as shown in Figure 1), roof accident, coal and gas protrusion, surface subsidence, fault activation, high steep slope instability, water pollution, and so on. Given the increasing prominence of mine engineering geological hazards and the serious threat to mine safety production, the research on the prediction, monitoring, and prevention of mine geological hazards has become urgent. To this end, Research Topic researched on regional geological characteristics, state of ground stress, nature of surrounding rocks, and support strategies. Furhermore, the disaster-causing mechanism of mine geological hazards, monitoring approaches, and prevention and control techniques were studied and provide an important guarantee for the safe development of mine resources and economic development. The study of the disaster-causing mechanism of mine geological hazards will help to understand the causes and processes of disaster occurrence in essence and to provide theoretical support for disaster prevention and control. The mechanical property and deformation law of surrounding rock are always the important research content in disaster-causing mechanism of mine geological hazards, and also the focuses of Research Topic. To reveal the causes of dynamic hazards in rock engineering, Wei et al. analyzed the uniaxial damage mechanics and energy evolution law of sandstone using the DIC technique, explored the uncoordinated evolution of the deformation displacement field of rock mass, and revealed the fracture development and failure mode of sandstone specimens under uniaxial compression conditions. Wei et al. investigated the effect of loading rate on the mechanical and fracture properties of shale and found that the peak OPEN ACCESS