Introducing the British Geological Survey’s Environmental Science Centre

The British Geological Survey has existed for more than 175 years and has been based in numerous locations around the UK.  Its head office moved out of London in the 1970s and relocated to Keyworth in Nottinghamshire, about six miles south-east of Nottingham.  It occupied a teachers training college, the Mary Ward College, that was due to be closed down.  Initially the site stayed pretty much as it was, but throughout the 1990s BGS built additional laboratory facilities and warehouses for the national collections.  It wasn't until 2005 that BGS began to remove the old college residences and teaching facilities; by 2009 the William Smith Building was completed and was opened by HRH The Princess Royal.

The William Smith Building at the BGS Headquarters in Keyworth

We have now completely renovated the site and this week we will open the British Geological Survey, Environmental Science Centre. This is our flagshipsite with the new James Hutton Building being the centrepiece, paying homage to James Hutton.  It has a representation of the famous unconformity at Siccar Point at its entrance, which gave Hutton the proof that the present is the key to the past.  In addition we have renovated the reception area in the Kingsley Dunham Building which houses the De la Beche lecture theatre and Library and created state of the art conference suite and modern exhibition centre.

The National Geological Repository has been extended and will hold several hundred km of core from the UK mainland and continental shelf. This repository is a world-class facility open to all for teaching, research and optimising commercial development of the UK landmass and continental shelf.  


Most excitingly, along the spine of the campus we have created the BGS Geological Walk which celebrates the more than three billion year geological history of the United Kingdom with examples of igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks.  The walk is arranged as a geological timeline and has rocks representing England, Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland.  There are some interesting features such as the homage to Stonehenge, the Hutton unconformity at Siccar Point and the 39 types of flagstones from all across the UK.

The BGS Geological Walk and James Hutton Building

This latest phase of construction cost 17.2 million pounds and this, along with the William Smith Building, brings the investment made by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), UK to 25 million pounds in the Keyworth site over the past ten years. I thank the NERC for this underpinning confidence in the British Geological Survey. 


We are extending the use of the Environmental Science Centre and have started the development of an innovation hub by creating BGS International  and also in welcoming PANalytical, a subsidiary of Spectris plc, onto the site.  We will be opening the site to other private sector companies and government agencies.  

The new BGS Environmental Science Centre will be opened by Sir John Beddington, the government’s chief scientist who will be introduced by the NERC's Chief Executive Duncan Wingham.

It is a new beginning for BGS and I would like to thank all of those involved in the construction, in particular, the BGS staff on site for their patience while the building phases have been completed.  The site will be open to visitors during BGS office hours and we invite you to browse the BGS shop, the modern exhibition centre, have a bite and a drink in our canteen and walk the BGS Geological Walk more than three billion years of geological history.

BGS Global Geoscience

The BGS works around the world on geoscience projects. These projects involve the application of BGS geological and environmental expertise in developing countries to help create a geological information system of maps and databases that will underpin the future economic development of a country's resources in water, soil, mineral or energy supply. 

Recent BGS Global Geoscience projects include geological mapping in the United Arab Emirates, a national programme of geochemical mapping in Nigeria and a research project with an international team involving plate tectonics and volcanism in the Afar Rift.

These are funded by sources such as the World Bank, foreign governments and private sector, European funding and research funding from the UK, including baseline funding from the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).

To facilitate our global reach and increase our flexibility in working with clients, BGS has recently created a company which trades as BGS International Ltd. The BGS and other scientists will work in this company in the service sectors of geology.

BGS Global Geoscience will also develop research projects as an added value in association with BGS International when appropriate.

Geological Survey of India (GSI)

The BGS has not in recent years had a sustained collaborative agreement with the Geological Survey of India (GSI)  and in a recent visit I met with the GSI to discuss future roles for BGS Global Geoscience and that of BGS International.

The GSI rightly argues that India must have large undiscovered resource reserves and compares itself to resource-rich countries such as Canada, South Africa and Australia where resources make up close to 8 per cent of GDP; in India they are less than 2 per cent.

New investments in geological survey should provide the basis for industry to identify target areas of future investment. At the same time any exploitation needs to be completed using state-of-the-art technology and environmental protection.

As a result of my visit, BGS has since sent staff to the GSI to initiate a dialogue on the latest technologies in data management.  

The future for GSI, and all geological surveys, will require us increasingly to be linked and networked into large data management systems across the world.

Indian National Centre for Antarctic & Ocean Research
I also visited India through the National Centre for Antarctic & Ocean Research (NCAOR)   India will be renewing its involvement  in the international scientific drilling research community through the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP).

The BGS plays a lead role in Europe in provision of drilling capability for the European arm of the IODP and with the involvement of India we will focus on key targets related to the future hydrocarbon resources in the Indian marine shelf and also in the Indian Ocean in general. 

We will also try and solve some fundamental questions related to transport of sediments from the Himalayas to the Indian Ocean and the rate of uplift and erosion of the Himalayan Mountains providing us with clues to how the mountain range was formed.

The BGS through its Global Geoscience  programme will develop new initiatives in India, which still has, hidden in its landmass, enormous potential in natural resources and also geological discovery in general.

Looking back a year



The new James Hutton Building, BGS Keyworth,
that includes a number of energy saving features:
photovoltaic cells on the roof, rainwater harvesting for the toilets
and a Micro-CHP (Combined Heat + Power) plant.
The building has an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) 'A'
rating and a BREEAM'excellent' rating.



Reading the last issue of Nature for 2011 I was reminded of the number of events in which a detailed knowledge of the Earth system and decisions based on geological science were essential:



 The world's population reached seven billion, reflecting the ever increasing need for resources to house, feed and transport humankind.

Food reached a record cost early in the year and in March the planet was struck by one of the largest earthquakes in recent times.

At the same time there was only limited progress on improvements in our ability to manage the planet into the future through agreements such as those that came out of the climate summit in Durban in December.

In May the British Geological Survey led a discussion at the Geological Society of London on the 'Anthropocene' and  asked the question about the human influence on the planet:

'is our imprint on the planet no longer reversible and if so, should we declare a new geological epoch?'

Declaration of an epoch of course also implies that this time period will have an end in which humans no longer affect the planet: we may have become extinct; we may have fled and colonised other worlds and I leave this to the reader's imagination!

Food production requires careful management of water resources, much of which comes from groundwater, and fertilisers that are mined and for which important regulation of impurities is a health factor to be considered. Desertification, deforestation and pollution of the surface and subsurface through intensive agriculture all must be carefully monitored by geologists and ecologists.

Fuel for thought
The Tohoku earthquake, Japan was much larger than had been modelled as being probable in the region; the 'big-one' was expected to hit further south of Tokyo (and we must be mindful  that this risk is still very real). This event was offshore in a known zone of tectonic plate collision, but its intensity indicates that we have much to learn about the physics of the planet.

Also we should not forget that large earthquakes (although they may be some 200 times smaller than the Japanese one) can cause incredible damage and loss of life in the interiors of continental regions and are in fact more damaging and less understood.

Although the earthquake, and the associated tsunami, killed thousands of people, the focus of attention of the world's press was on the Fukushima nuclear plant. Thankfully Fukushima is now safe, but it will take decades to clean up the site.

Many countries, including the UK, have since reviewed their nuclear power generation schemes.  Nuclear technology will continue to provide a significant source of energy as we move further into the 21st century. Moving away from nuclear sources towards coal, oil and gas, the only short- medium-term replacement, only exacerbates the greenhouse gas emissions unless these are captured and sequestered.

Storage of nuclear waste, extracting hydrocarbons, and Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) require a very thorough understanding of the subsurface of our planet and this is the overarching role of the geologist. Further geological research and survey is essential for making the right decisions on our energy future.

Recover and recycle
In 2012, as we wait for the world's economy to recover, there will be increased demand for resources to feed, house and transport our people. While we will need new resources in strategic metals, hydrocarbons and building materials, we must focus on:

• recycling
• better insulation
• more effective transport
• renewable energy
• better water/soil/forest management etc.

For example let's think seriously about more efficient magnets in high-tech and energy applications, before we rush to mine metals from the sea-floor without a thorough understanding of the consequences.

On behalf of the staff of the British Geological Survey, I wish all of our partners and users of our geological information a very prosperous 2012.

The British Geological Survey Shale Gas project

BGS has this week released new web pages and videos which include an abundance of information on shale gas.

Shale gas is considered to be a potentially important resource that is tightly bound in sediments which geologists call “black shale”. The shale of interest to gas producers was formed hundreds of million years ago in marine basins that were filled with sand and silt and organic-rich material deposited in the marine environment or transported from the adjacent landmass. These basins were deformed through tectonic compression and the gas is preserved in rocks buried 2km or more deep, where the gas has not yet escaped.

Currently gas consumed in the UK comes from conventional resources that are concentrated and trapped after gas has moved out of its source rock, for example in the North Sea gas fields. Black shale is essentially a source rock in which the gas is tightly bound to silt and sand grains and needs to be pushed out by injection in a process that is called fracking. There are large shale gas resources in the UK and elsewhere in Europe, in particular in Poland, the Ukraine and Baltic states. The potential of the shale gas resource has been known for some time and has been exploited in the USA, where some estimates indicate a potential reserve that would satisfy the US gas supply for hundreds of years. The recent interest in exploiting shale gas in Europe is due to increased gas prices and concerns over ensuring a secure supply of gas, but it is also due to improvements in drilling technology which allow efficient and safe extraction of gas if regulated properly.

National energy security must be considered and the economics of importing gas over exploitation of national resources must be assessed. Furthermore gas has advantages over coal in producing energy in power stations, as during the burning process it emits about 50% less carbon dioxide. In both cases however, the CO₂ should be captured and stored underground (see the BGS website on carbon capture and storage); capturing and burying the CO₂ will be required by international regulation in the future in order to control CO₂ emissions into the atmosphere.
 

The newly released shale gas information on the BGS web site is, by necessity, quite technical in places, but is still a very useful source of information for the less technically minded and for those who want to understand its potential as an energy resource of the future. BGS, like government, must tread a delicate line between encouraging industrial exploitation of resources through full and open exchange of our data on resources and reserves, both in the UK and world-wide, and ensuring that we maintain an assessment of the security of supply of a number of key resources,  whilst ensuring environmentally acceptable resource exploitation. An important aspect of this is establishing environmental baselines for groundwater, such as for methane in groundwater and the state of local ecosystems.

If you would like to know more, there is a lot of important information on the website, but please feel free to contact the BGS scientists who are experts in various aspects of shale gas resources, reserves and their potential exploitation.