Browsing the BGS News Archive - News Releases

OneGeology-Europe, the first ever multilingual and digital geological map of Europe, is on-line.

The new portal provides a comprehensive overview of Europe's subsurface. It improves land use planning at a European level and lets citizens discover their own country's geology, and that of their European neighbours too.

Recent news reports which suggest that the world is running out of certain essential metals are just scaremongering say scientists from the British Geological Survey (BGS). The basis for these stories is the idea that we have reached peak metal - that we have used more than is now available to mine - but they ignore some very basic facts about the science and economics of mineral deposits within the Earth s crust.

2010 marks the 175th birthday of the British Geological Survey. To mark this event, the BGS Edinburgh office at Murchison House is opening its doors to the public from 10am to 5pm to showcase its science as part of this year's Scottish Geology Festival and Edinburgh's Doors Open Day. Amongst the exhibits, demonstrations and experiments there will be highlights from the work BGS carried out on the Eyjafjallajökull Volcano in Iceland.

Sandstone rocks deep beneath the Moray Firth are being examined for the storage of carbon dioxide emissions. This is the first time a consortium of the Scottish Government and industry has funded (£290k) a study to test the suitability of a specific site for carbon storage.

The following preliminary information is available for this earthquake:
DATE : 13 April 2010
ORIGIN TIME : 23:49 37s UTC
LAT/LONG : 33.271° North / 96.629° East
DEPTH : 10 km
MAGNITUDE : 6.9 Mw
LOCALITY : Southern Qinghai, China
COMMENTS : 240 km NNW of Qamdo, Xiang (Tibet)

Initial reports indicate that at least 300 people have been killed, thousands injured and many buildings damaged. This earthquake locates approximately 690 km WNW of the magnitude 7.9 Eastern Sichuan earthquake that occurred on 12 May 2008 that killed over 87,500 people.
View further information, seismograms of the event and a seismicity map of the area.