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The National Seismological Archive (NSA) is the United Kingdom national repository for seismological material. It was created principally to preserve data from seismological observatories in the UK that have now closed. In many cases in the past records have been lost or destroyed when there is no longer anyone to look after them; the NSA provides a permanent home for these historical scientific documents, to preserve them for posterity. The principal collection consists of the seismograms stores from defunct observatories; also bulletins and reports from all over the world dating from the 1890s onwards, held in a variety of media, including earthquake-related newspaper cuttings, glass slides, microfilm, and comprehensive UK earthquake research material collected over a 30 year period. The archive has a public access room available for researchers and welcomes visiting scientists who wish to study material held in it. If it is impractical to visit, we may be able to supply data from it, subject to staff availability. One of the major projects of the archive has been the presentation of current knowledge of UK historical earthquake seismology material in a short series of reports, easily accessible to researchers. These are available for download as Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format files (.pdf) from the NSA download page.
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Magnetograms are used to record variations in the strength and direction of the Earth’s magnetic field. In the UK measurements were made at eight long-running observatories; Abinger, Eskdalemuir, Falmouth, Greenwich, Hartland, Kew and Lerwick. Original paper magnetograms were recorded using photographic techniques at Kew, Greenwich, Abinger, Hartland, Eskdalemuir and Lerwick Observatories. The magnetogram collection, one of the longest running geomagnetic series in the world, provides a continuous record of more than 160 years of UK measurements. These magnetograms start in the 1840s and end in 1986 at which time digital recording of the magnetic field took over and magnetograms can be produced by computer graphic. The plots show variation in the Earth's magnetic field, typically over a 24-hour period. The collection is a valuable, partly untapped data resource for studying geomagnetic storms, space weather and the evolution of the Earth’s magnetic field. The magnetograms provide insight into: • the Earth’s outer core: long-term change (years to centuries) in the dynamo that sustains our magnetic field • space weather: short-term changes (seconds to days) in near-Earth space and on the ground • space climate: long-term change (decades to centuries) in solar activity and consequences for Earth’s environment All the above have an impact on human activities. For example, bad space weather affects technologies that we increasingly rely on, such as electrical power and GPS networks. In January 2009, the BGS began a project to capture high-quality digital images of the magnetogram collection to provide a back up to the photographic paper originals. The images captured so far are available to search online. Scientists and the general public around the world can now gain easy access to this historical dataset.The programme of work to complete the magnetogram digitisation is ongoing and more will be added, observatory by observatory.
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The full title of this project is" Studies into metal speciation and bioavailability to assist risk assessment and remediation of brownfield sites in urban areas" and is funded by NERC under the URGENT thematic programme form 1998-2001. The project is being undertaken by a consortium of workers from the Imperial College, University of Nottingham, and the British Geological Survey. Innovative collaborative and multi-disciplinary research will be applied to the interpretation of urban geochemical maps and associated meta-datasets to assist decision making by local authorities in the redevelopment of brownfield sites. Source apportionment, speciation and bioavailability of potentially toxic heavy metals will be studied at representative conurbations in the UK Midlands region. Scanning electron microscopy, chemical extractions and soil solution and vegetable analysis, will be integrated with high precision isotopic analyses of Pb and other potential toxic metals in this study. The results will be available as maps in GIS format to provide a generic decision support system for quantitative health risk assessment.
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Index to the statutory notifications of the intention to drill any boreholes, shafts or wells under the Mining Industry Act 1926 or the Water Resources Act 1991 for Great Britain. Index complete for all notifications since 1952, but record data will vary. Complete and current entries generally accurate to 10 metres . Earlier entries to map sheet level only. Digital capture from October 1988.
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Registers of macrofossils in 127 volumes, covers the whole of the UK. Within each volume, data is arranged sequentially usually by collectors no. The data set began with the first Palaeontologist in the Geological Survey of Great Britain.
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Archive of reports, correspondence, records of tunnel and dam site examinations, borehole records relating to the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board's schemes in the Scottish Highlands c.1945-1970. Arranged by hydro-electric scheme.
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The dataset is a subset of the BGS borehole material database, created on August 1st 2015 covering only the Bowland-Hodder geological unit (as defined and mapped by Andrews et al., 2013). It shows all boreholes (name, location and registration details) for which BGS hold borehole material (drillcore, cuttings, samples and their depth ranges). This data will add value to existing NERC (Natural Environment Research Council) data by allowing a simple route for users to identify borehole material from the Bowland-Hodder interval.
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Reports of work carried out worldwide by the BGS and its precursors. These reports cover a wide range of scientific and technical disciplines and were produced for a variety of purposes. Reports date from about 1950 although there are only a comparatively small number of reports pre 1960. The reports are not published but copies can be provided on demand, in hard copy or pdf format ,subject to any restrictions.
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Data identifying landscape areas (shown as polygons) attributed with geological names. The scale of the data is 1:10 000 scale. Onshore coverage is partial with approximately 30% of England, Scotland and Wales available in this version 2 data release. BGS intend to continue developing coverage at this scale; current focus is to include all large priority urban areas, along with road and rail transport corridors. Data are supplied as five themes: bedrock, superficial deposits, mass movement, artificial ground and linear features. Bedrock geology describes the main mass of solid rocks forming the earth's crust. Bedrock is present everywhere, whether exposed at surface in outcrops or concealed beneath superficial deposits or water bodies. Geological names are based on the lithostratigraphic or lithodemic hierarchy. The lithostratigraphic scheme arranges rock bodies into units based on rock-type and geological time of formation. Where rock-types do not fit into the lithostratigraphic scheme, for example intrusive, deformed rocks subjected to heat and pressure resulting in new or changed rock types; then their classification is based on their rock type or lithological composition. This assesses visible features such as texture, structure, mineralogy. Superficial deposits are younger geological deposits formed during the most recent geological time; the Quaternary. These deposits rest on older rocks or deposits referred to as bedrock. The superficial deposits theme defines landscape areas (shown as polygons) attributed with a geological name and their deposit type or lithological composition. Mass movement describes areas where deposits have moved down slope under gravity to form landslips. These landslips can affect bedrock, superficial or artificial ground. Mass movement deposits are described in the BGS Rock Classification Scheme Volume 4. However the data also includes foundered strata, where ground has collapsed due to subsidence (this is not described in the Rock Classification Scheme). Caution should be exercised with this data; whilst mass movement events are recorded in this layer, due to the dynamic nature of occurrence significant changes may have occurred since the data was released, as such it should be viewed as a snapshot in time (data should be regarded as at 2008). Artificial (man-made) theme (shown as polygons) indicates areas where the ground surface has been significantly modified by human activity. Whilst artificial ground may not be considered as part of the 'real geology' of bedrock and superficial deposits it does affect them. Artificial ground impacts on the near surface ground conditions which are important to human activities and economic development. Due to the constantly changing nature of land use and re-use/redevelopment, caution must be exercised when using this data as it represents a snapshot in time rather than an evolving picture hence the data may become dated very rapidly. Linear features (shown as polylines) represent geological structural features e.g. faults, folds or landforms e.g. buried channels, glacial drainage channels at the ground or bedrock surface (beneath superficial deposits). Linear features are associated most closely with the bedrock theme either as an intrinsic part of it for example marine bands or affecting it in the case of faults. However landform elements are associated with both bedrock and superficial deposits. All five data themes are available in vector format (containing the geometry of each feature linked to a database record describing their attributes) as ESRI shapefiles and are available under BGS data licence.
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5 volumes of macrofossils illustrated in the Quaterly Journal Of The Geological Society are given identifications and locality details together with the bibliographic reference. A few are foreign, but most are from the UK. The first date given is QJGS volume 12 for 1856. Last date mentioned is 1912. Numbers used: GS1-7886; GSA1-5000; GSB1-5000; GSC1-5000;GSD1-6415. The data set is closed, but occasional modification to the registers are infrequently made to update or correct certain specimens.