Key information
Scale:
N/ACoverage:
Great Britain and Northern IrelandAvailability:
Free / LicensedFormat:
Ascii grid data (500m cell size). Printable maps in png format. Database tables for survey points.Price:
Gridded data free for commercial, research and public use under the Open Government Licence.
Underpinning survey point data available under licence on request.
Uses:
Local-level to Regional-level useGet Data
Free access
Our free data is available under the Open Government Licence. Please acknowledge reproduced BGS materials.
View Onshore GeoIndexStream sediment grids and mapsPaid access
To access the underpinning geochemical baseline (G-BASE) data, a BGS data licence is required.
Licence this data Download sample dataSupporting documents
The BGS Geochemical Baseline Survey of the Environment (G-BASE) and the Geological Survey of Northern Ireland’s TellusNI projects set out to map and establish the geochemical baseline of the UK surface environment by collecting stream sediment, stream water and soil samples.
The baseline stream sediment maps for the UK present data compiled from the G-BASE and TellusNI geochemical projects. The maps are based on analyses of the <150 μm size fraction of up to 110 794 sediment samples collected from first- and second-order (i.e. small) streams across the UK, which have been analysed for up to 52 major and trace elements (e.g. calcium, magnesium, cobalt, nickel etc). An atlas of the element stream sediment concentrations for the UK is available to download. Similarly, a guide to the stream sediment dataset of Northern Ireland is available online for viewing as an ebook download.
For the rest of the UK, more detailed information on the G-BASE stream sediment dataset, including a series of regional geochemical atlases, is also available to download.
UK stream sediment geochemical data information
The underpinning stream sediment sample data from the G-BASE project is available under licence; please contact BGS Enquiries. An example extract of this data is available to download. Search the geochemistry section of the BGS Onshore GeoIndex to view the availability of G-BASE stream sediment, stream water and soil data in Great Britain.
The equivalent data from the TellusNI geochemical survey is available from the GSNI’s Tellus website.
Map downloads
The data for 18 elements presented in the UK stream sediment atlas, which can be downloaded as a set of PNG interpolated concentration maps (37.4 MB) and as Ascii raster files on a 500 m grid across the UK.
Stream sediment grids and maps available for download
| Element | Units | Ascii grid (incl. standard deviation) | PNG (classified and inferno colour schemes) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Arsenic (As) | mg/kg | As_grid.zip | As_png.zip |
| Barium (Ba) | mg/kg | Ba_grid.zip | Ba_png.zip |
| Calcium (CaO) | weight % | CaO_grid.zip | CaO_png.zip |
| Chromium (Cr) | mg/kg | Cr_grid.zip | Cr_png.zip |
| Cobalt (Co) | mg/kg | Co_grid.zip | Co_png.zip |
| Copper (Cu) | mg/kg | Cu_grid.zip | Cu_png.zip |
| Iron (Fe2O3) | weight % | Fe2O3_grid.zip | Fe2O3_png.zip |
| Lanthanum (La) | mg/kg | La_grid.zip | La_png.zip |
| Lead (Pb) | mg/kg | Pb_grid.zip | Pb_png.zip |
| Magnesium (MgO) | weight % | MgO_grid.zip | MgO_png.zip |
| Manganese (MnO) | weight % | MnO_grid.zip | MnO_png.zip |
| Nickel (Ni) | mg/kg | Ni_grid.zip | Ni_png.zip |
| Potassium (K2O) | weight % | K2O_grid.zip | K2O_png.zip |
| Rubidium (Rb) | mg/kg | Rb_grid.zip | Rb_png.zip |
| Uranium (U) | mg/kg | U_grid.zip | U_png.zip |
| Vanadium (V) | mg/kg | V_grid.zip | V_png.zip |
| Zinc (Zn) | mg/kg | Zn_grid.zip | Zn_png.zip |
| Zirconium (Zr) | mg/kg | Zr_grid.zip | Zr_png.zip |
Download BGS sample data
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