Abbreviation | BGS |
---|---|
Formation | 1835 |
Legal status | Government organisation |
Purpose | Geoscience |
Location |
|
Region served | United Kingdom |
Karen Hanghøj | |
Parent organisation | UK Research and Innovation (via NERC) [1] |
Budget | £57m around 50% from the Science Budget |
Website | www |
The British Geological Survey (BGS) is a partly publicly funded body which aims to advance geoscientific knowledge of the United Kingdom landmass and its continental shelf by means of systematic surveying, monitoring and research.
The BGS headquarters are in Keyworth, Nottinghamshire, England. Its other centres are located in Edinburgh, Wallingford, Cardiff and London. The current tagline of the BGS is: Understanding our Earth. [2]
The Geological Survey was founded in 1835 by the Board of Ordnance as the Geological Survey of Great Britain, under directorship of Henry De la Beche. This was the world's first national geological survey. It remained a branch of the Ordnance Survey for many years. In 1965, it was merged with the Geological Museum and Overseas Geological Surveys, under the name of Institute of Geological Sciences. [3] On 1 January 1984, the institute was renamed the British Geological Survey (and often referred to as the BGS), a name still carried today. [4] Since 1835, there have been 20 directors of the survey. In 2019, Karen Hanghøj was the first woman appointed to lead the survey. [5]
From the 1860s, the survey in Scotland operated under the identity of the Geological Survey of Scotland. [6]
Starting in 1975, female officers of the survey no longer had to resign upon getting married. [7]
The BGS advises the British government on all aspects of geoscience, as well as providing impartial advice on geological matters to the public, academics and industry. BGS is a component body of UK Research and Innovation which "works in partnership with universities, research organisations, businesses, charities, and government to create the best possible environment for research and innovation to flourish". The core outputs of the BGS include geological, geophysical, geochemical and hydrogeological maps, descriptions and related digital databases. Scientists at the BGS produced the first comprehensive map of African groundwater reserves. [8] One of the key strategic aims for the next decade is to complete the transition from 2-D mapping to a 3-D modelling, to understand the 'architecture' of the subsurface. The current five-year strategy identifies four key priorities for the BGS: 'maps and models for the 21st century; a more secure energy transition; improved water security; and living with geological hazards'. [9] The BGS has an annual budget of £57 million, about half of which comes from the government's science budget, with the remainder coming from commissioned research from the public and private sectors.
The Geological Survey of Northern Ireland (GSNI) is part of Northern Ireland's Department for the Economy (DfE). The British Geological Survey provides staff, under contract to DfE, for the GSNI. [10]
Sir Kingsley Charles Dunham was one of the leading British geologists and mineralogists of the 20th century. He was a Professor of Geology at the University of Durham from 1950–71. He was later Professor Emeritus from 1967–2001. He was director of the British Geological Survey from 1967–75.
Geoscience Australia is an agency of the Australian Government. It carries out geoscientific research. The agency is the government's technical adviser on all aspects of geoscience, and custodian of the geographic and geological data and knowledge of the nation.
The Geological Museum was a museum of geology in London. It started in 1835, making it one of the oldest public single science collections in the world. It transferred from Jermyn Street to Exhibition Road, South Kensington in 1935, moving into a building designed by Sir Richard Allison and John Hatton Markham of the Office of Works next door to the Natural History Museum - it now forms part of that museum.
Research Councils UK, sometimes known as RCUK, was a non-departmental public body that coordinated science policy in the United Kingdom from 2002 to 2018. It was an umbrella organisation that coordinated the seven separate research councils that were responsible for funding and coordinating academic research for the arts, humanities, science and engineering. In 2018 Research Councils transitioned into UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).
The Ordnance Survey (OS) is the national mapping agency for Great Britain. The agency's name indicates its original military purpose, which was to map Scotland in the wake of the Jacobite rising of 1745. There was also a more general and nationwide need in light of the potential threat of invasion during the Napoleonic Wars. Since 1 April 2015, the Ordnance Survey has operated as Ordnance Survey Ltd, a government-owned company, 100% in public ownership. The Ordnance Survey Board remains accountable to the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology. It was also a member of the Public Data Group.
Digimap is a web mapping and online data delivery service developed by the EDINA national data centre for UK academia. It offers a range of on-line mapping and data download facilities which provide maps and spatial data from Ordnance Survey, British Geological Survey, Landmark Information Group and OceanWise Ltd Ltd.,, Getmapping Ltd, the Environment Agency, OpenStreetMap, CollinsBartholomew Ltd, and various other sources.
The Bronnant Fault is a geological fault affecting the lower Palaeozoic rocks of the counties of Ceredigion and Pembrokeshire in West Wales. The feature is mapped over part of its length as the Bronnant Fault Zone and is closely associated with the Glandyfi Lineament, a similarly aligned zone of faulting and folding. The rocks of the Aberystwyth Grits Group dating from the Llandovery epoch of the Silurian period thicken markedly to the west of the fault suggesting it was active at the time of their deposition. North of Lledrod its alignment is affected by cross-cutting east–west faults, including the Ystwyth Fault Zone. Its alignment is sub-parallel to the coast of Cardigan Bay thus curving from a north–south alignment in the north through a northeast–southwest alignment until it merges with broadly east–west aligned faults in northeast Pembrokeshire.
The Durham Coalfield is a coalfield in north-east England. It is continuous with the Northumberland Coalfield to its north. It extends from Bishop Auckland in the south to the boundary with the county of Northumberland along the River Tyne in the north, beyond which is the Northumberland Coalfield.
The Machrihanish Coalfield is a coalfield on the Kintyre peninsula in southwest Scotland. It is one of the smallest British coalfields. With the exception of a thin coal beneath the Lyoncross Limestone in the overlying Upper Limestone Formation, all of the coal-bearing strata are found within the Limestone Coal Formation, a subdivision of the Clackmannan Group; all being strata of Namurian age. There are numerous seams of which the Main Coal is the principal one, being some 3 to 4m thick. A further, higher seam known as the Kilkivan Coal has also been worked. The full sequence is:
The Coal Measures Group is a lithostratigraphical term coined to refer to the coal-bearing succession of rock strata which occur in the United Kingdom within the Westphalian Stage of the Carboniferous Period. The succession was previously referred to as the 'Productive Coal Measures'. Other than in Northern Ireland the term is now obsolete in formal use and is replaced by the Pennine Coal Measures Group, Scottish Coal Measures Group and the South Wales Coal Measures Group for the three distinct depositional provinces of the British mainland.
The Cleveland Dyke is an igneous intrusion which extends from Galloway in southern Scotland through Cumbria and County Durham in northern England to the North York Moors in North Yorkshire.
The Exmoor Group is a late Devonian to early Carboniferous lithostratigraphic group in southwest England whose outcrop extends from Croyde in north Devon east across Exmoor to Minehead in west Somerset. The group comprises the following formations :
This article describes the geology of the Broads, an area of East Anglia in eastern England characterised by rivers, marshes and shallow lakes ('broads'). The Broads is designated as a protected landscape with 'status equivalent to a national park'.
Karen Hanghøj is a Danish geologist with expertise in the sustainable management of natural mineral resources. In 2019 she was appointed director of the British Geological Survey. She was the first woman to take on this role since the survey was founded in 1835.
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