Other news

Accelerating snow melt on the Antarctic Peninsula

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 16:00:00 GMT

A new 1000-year Antarctic Peninsula climate reconstruction shows that summer ice melting has intensified almost ten-fold, and mostly since the mid 20th century.

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.

Going underground in Singapore

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 12:00:00 GMT

A new initiative to visualise the subsurface of Singapore is underway at the British Geological Survey (BGS). The BGS is working with the Singapore Building and Construction Authority (BCA) to build a 3D geological model of Singapore to help make the best future use of underground space.

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

Richard III's teeth analysed by the NIGL

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 10:00:00 GMT

On 4 February 2013 the University of Leicester announced that the human remains uncovered beneath a Leicester car park in August 2012 are 'beyond reasonable doubt' those of King Richard III.

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

BUFI student wins I'm a scientist, get me out of here!

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 09:00:00 GMT

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.

BGS SuDS Map wins a Water Industry Achievement Award

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 13:00:00 GMT

The British Geological Survey's Infiltration SuDS Map won the 2013 Sustainable Drainage and Flood Management Initiative of the Year category at the Water Industry Achievement Awards; as announced at the awards ceremony held on 21 March in Birmingham.

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.

£4.7 m for ground and structural engineering projects

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 13:00:00 GMT

A three-year programme of engagement and collaboration between the academic community, engineering industries and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), has borne fruit with the announcement of £4.7 million funding for new engineering research.

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

Quaternary Science Reviews: Isotopes and lakes

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 11:00:00 GMT

Isotope geochemistry is increasingly an essential part of environmental and climate change research and now routinely contributes to our understanding of many critical environmental problems, which span the whole of Earth system science and not least in palaeolimnology and limnogeology.

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).

Assessing the underworld £5.9 million grant

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 11:00:00 GMT

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

Map search: volcanic eruptions

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 08:00:00 GMT

The VOGRIPA project is an international collaboration led by the University of Bristol with partners including the BGS, the Smithsonian Institution and the Geological Survey of Japan. VOGRIPA aims to develop accessible, searchable global volcanic hazards databases.

You can now search the database: Large Magnitude Explosive Volcanic Eruptions (LaMEVE).

The international effort to collate the data, and the creation of the spatially enabled relational database and web system, is described in an accompanying paper by Crosweller et al. (2012) published in the open-access Journal of Applied Volcanology.

It is hoped that the volcanological community will contribute updates to the database so that it is a continually evolving and sustainable resource with revised versions released annually.

VOGRIPA is an integral part of the Global Volcano Model network an international partnership currently led by the BGS and the University of Bristol, which will create a sustainable, accessible information platform on volcanic hazard and risk.

Preparing for extreme space weather

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 08:00:00 GMT

Space weather, which includes high geomagnetic activity, is a risk to modern technology, such as power grids, satellites, communications, global positioning and aircraft avionics.

In a new report by the Royal Academy of Engineering into space weather and its potential impact, UK science and industry experts have analysed the likely impact of the most extreme space weather on technology.

Alan Thomson, head of Geomagnetism at the BGS, contributed to the report by following up an earlier published study he led with BGS colleagues into extreme geomagnetic activity in Europe. This was used to assess where damaging geomagnetically induced currents (GIC) might flow in the UK electrical transmission system.

From our estimates of the magnitude and location of GIC within the grid, the National Grid company were then able to determine that around a dozen high voltage transformers across Great Britain could be damaged to the extent that they would need replaced. In addition local and intermittent electricity blackouts lasting a few hours at a time could be expected for the duration of the super-storm .

More about Extreme Space Weather: Impacts on engineered systems and infrastructure.