The carbonates of the Malm are the main reservoir rocks for hydrothermal heat and power generation in southern Germany. To better understand these buried rocks, the carbonates exposed in northern Bavaria are often investigated. As the petrophysical properties of carbonates strongly depend on their subsidence history and maximum burial depth, we will investigate this issue by analyzing mudstones, which indirectly store this type of information and are found just below the Malm carbonates.

The paper presents an alternative technique for estimating the Biot coefficient, which governs the partitioning of stresses between a porous skeleton and the saturating pore fluid of a fluid-saturated rock.

In projects based on enhanced geothermal system (EGS) technology, knowledge of the in situ stress state is of central importance to predict the response of the rock mass to different stimulation programs. We propose a characterization of the in situ stress state from the analysis of ultrasonic borehole imager (UBI) data acquired at different key moments of the reservoir. We discuss a significant stress rotation at depth and the absence of a significant change in the stress magnitude.

Sinkholes are round depression features in the ground that can cause high economic and life loss. On the Dead Sea shoreline, hundreds of sinkholes form each year driven by the fall of the water level and subsequent out-washing and dissolution of loose sediments. This study investigates the mechanical formation of sinkholes by numerical modelling. It highlights the role of material strength in the formation of dangerous collapse sinkholes and compares it to findings from a field site in Jordan.