I have just met with our G-BASE (Geochemical Baseline Survey
of the Environment) team before they go off for a 12 weeks sampling campaign. This will be the last
concerted sampling effort and then the stream sediment coverage for the United
Kingdom will be complete. The process has been on-going for several decades
with BGS sampling the whole of the UK which started in Northern Scotland in the
late 1960s.
Much of the work underpins environmental assessment in the UK and also
across Europe. Regulation and policy around land utilisation and development requires
knowledge of the concentrations of chemical elements in soils – for example for
Arsenic, Cadmium, Lead. Geochemists know that these values are variable and
depend on the composition of the parent material that the soil came from; for
example soils formed on granites are very different from those formed on limestone
and policy must take this regional variability into account. At the same time
there are natural processes that can concentrate elements such as arsenic in
soils and water that may mean that the concentrations exceed what one would
recommend as an environmental standard and so the natural background must be
known and taken into account. On top of this, the levels of some elements e.g. Lead,
Chromium, Mercury etc. may be elevated due to industrial activity.
The final samples will be taken on the Isle of Wight in mid September
this year at which point we will have a small workshop and reception and will
have a lot of data to bring together to make full UK coverage products.
