Research news and awards
Latest news about our research. Project progress and collaboration. Awards and achievements.
The Understanding Our World awards honoured exceptional and innovative projects with Esri GIS.
Patrick Bell, representing the BGS smartphone development team, was awarded ‘Best Conference Presentation’ for his talk in the mobile track entitled ‘Geology apps, maps and augmented reality’.
The presentation discussed how BGS are developing smartphone apps, underpinned by web services, to provide access to mapping and other geological information in the field. iGeology (available for iPhone and Android), iGeology 3D, its augmented reality companion product, and mySoil were demonstrated.
BGS photographer Paul Witney has snapped up another BIPP (British Institute of Professional Photographers) award for an image of the James Hutton Building interior. This follows on from his wins in previous years in the Science and the PR categories.
Paul said, 'It helps having the best equipment in high resolution cameras and printers. It's great to continue to keep winning awards and I think we ll need a bigger mantelpiece at home soon'.
Summer ice melt affects the stability of Antarctic ice shelves and glaciers. The research, which includes Carol Arrowsmith as a co-author from the British Geological Survey went online this week in the journal Nature Geoscience, adds new knowledge to the international effort that is required to understand the causes of environmental change in Antarctica and to make more accurate projections about the direct and indirect contribution of Antarctica's ice shelves and glaciers to global sea-level rise.
More about Acceleration of snow melt in an Antarctic Peninsula ice core during the twentieth century.
Amongst lots of different activities to support this work, the BGS was recently involved in an industry focused event at the BCA Academy in Singapore from 16-18 April 2013.
Dr Kathryn Goodenough and Dr Andrew Newell from the BGS gave presentations and led workshops for over 100 participants over three days. They covered topics including 3D geological modelling, digital field data capture, interpretation and map production and geological core logging. A one-day seminar was followed by two days of hands-on, practical core-logging of Singapore's rocks.
The seminar and workshop aimed to enhance knowledge exchange and build expertise and best practice for the characterisation and 3D visualisation of the ground beneath Singapore.
For further information contact Dr Kathryn Goodenough
During the study, Leicester University agreed to allow the NERC Isotope Geosciences Laboratory (NIGL) to take small samples of bone and teeth from the skeleton in order to further investigate the King's diet, movements and exposure to pollution.
Scientists at the NIGL are currently putting the pieces of bone and teeth, collected from Richard III, through various chemical extraction procedures. This will purify the elements in which they are interested so that they can examine the King's diet over his lifetime, where he resided and may have travelled, and enable them to look at the environment in which a medieval king was raised.
More at GeoBlogy or for further information contact enquiries@bgs.ac.uk
BGS/BUFI-funded PhD student Jonathan Stone has won I'm a scientist, get me out of here!
Jon, a volcanologist studying at the University of East Anglia, won the Technetium Zone of the March 2013 competition.
I'm a scientist, get me out of here! is a free online event where school students get to meet and interact with scientists. It's a free X Factor-style competition between scientists, where the students are the judges.
Jon's research explores the potential role of citizen science around volcanoes, and how it may contribute towards risk reduction. Working on the Caribbean Island of Montserrat, his study used the example of lahar activity and flooding whilst collaborating with the Montserrat Volcanic Observatory (MVO). He gets volunteers involved in monitoring, often using innovative (and interesting) methods such as kite-based mapping.
With the prize money, Jon is going to buy a quadcopter, so that he can take aerial images around volcanoes, as a means of engagement with young people.
The Infiltration SuDS Map, developed by BGS, can be used to indicate the suitability of the subsurface for sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) such as soakaways, permeable pavements and infiltration basins.
The national map comprises information about the properties of the ground including those relevant to drainage, ground stability and groundwater protection.
The judges were impressed with the Infiltration SuDS Map and said, 'it could have a wide and major impact on the whole country as it improves on best practice having ensured a single product that can be used at all stages of planning, approval and suds design'.
The project leader and NERC Knowledge Exchange Fellow, Dr Rachel Dearden, collected the award on behalf of the team who developed the product.
More about the 2013 Water Industry Achievement Awards or Infiltration SuDS Map.
Three new projects will help improve the understanding and prediction of earth movements to protect major infrastructure provide greater confidence in the durability of composite materials for use in civil engineering industries and develop new self-healing materials for construction.
The projects are:
- ISMART led by Newcastle University; partnered by NERC British Geological Survey, Durham University, University of Southampton, Loughborough University, Queen's University of Belfast.
- Providing Confidence in Durable Composites (DURACOMP) led by the University of Warwick
- Materials for Life (M4L): Biomimetic multi-scale damage immunity for construction materials led by Cardiff University
The International Association of Limnogeology organises an international conference every four years. The fifth International Limnogeology Congress, ILIC V, was held in Konstanz, Germany, from 31 August to 3 September 2011.
During this congress we identified several papers where isotope methodologies were used in a particularly novel way, or provided an 'added value' data set.
Many of these are brought together in this volume as a series of state-of-the-art papers dealing with various aspects of isotopes in lake sediment archives. These papers are themed under isotopes in contemporary processes, isotopes in diatom silica from lake sediments, isotopes in organic materials in lake sediments, and isotopes in carbonates from lake sediments.
The journal editors of Quaternary Science Reviews: Isotopes and Lakes are Prof. Melanie Leng (British Geological Survey and University of Leicester), Prof. Phillip Barker (Lancaster University) and Prof. Antje Schwalb (Universität Braunschweig,Germany).
The University of Birmingham, in collaboration with the British Geological Survey and others, has been awarded a £5.9 million research grant to improve the management of underground assets such as buried pipes and cables. The project will study how street works are carried out and will aim to transform how survey data and information are collected, processed and visualised, by using and integrating a number of innovative technologies such as shallow-surface geophysics and 3D visualisation.
The grant was awarded to Professor Chris Rogers, University of Birmingham, for the project titled: Assessing the Underworld – an integrated model of city infrastructures. Other collaborators include academics from the universities of Bath, Leeds, Sheffield, Southampton and Newcastle.
This multi-million pound project is also supported by institutions in Australia, Brazil, New Zealand and the US among its 63 partners. Key players in utilities, construction, sensing and mapping have pledged an additional £17 million in-kind to support the project.
Read the full University of Birmingham Press Release
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