BGS Annual Review 2017-2018

I am pleased to be able to present the BGS Annual Review for the last financial year 2017-2018.

Although not exhaustive, the review highlights activities within BGS. As a world-leading, global geological survey, we have an extensive programme of geoscience research, survey and monitoring, data management and dissemination. This helps us to focus on public-good science and to understand and predict the geological processes that matter to people’s lives.

Increasingly, our work is being carried out internationally and is directed towards issues such as helping developing countries realise sustainable benefits from their natural resources. Most recently we have been using geoscience to help provide solutions to the major challenges recognised in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are critical to underpinning global economic development. Many of these challenges, including food and water security, urbanisation, energy poverty, resilience to natural hazards and climate change, span the interface between the Earth and human systems.

On an administrative level we have created a BGS Board, chaired by Sir Keith O’Nions and comprised of highly influential individuals .   BGS has also created a new Science Advisory Committee chaired by Professor Frances Wall and comprising a cross section of scientist from government industry and academia. The board and the committee will allow us to realise our full potential going forwards and help us deliver the new BGS Science Strategy which will be launched in June this year.

BGS reported a financial surplus from commercial income in 2017-18 which will invested by NERC UKRI for future year’s activities. Our staff numbers increased to 640 people at the end of the financial year in 2018 and our consolidated budget was £62.6 million for the period.

In addition to ensuring high-quality geoscience data is openly available to stakeholders across the UK, as outlined in the review, BGS made significant investments in Official Development Assistance funding in three global platforms all linked to the UN sustainability goals. BGS also started planning for its investment of £38.5 million in UKGEOS, a unique set of subsurface boreholes and associate geo-science aimed at future energy systems, which will help provide important information for UK and global decarbonisation initiatives.

I do hope this Annual Science Review provides you with a flavour of the Public Science Role of BGS and our research and commercial activities, all three of which contribute to our success as a world-leading geoscience institution.

Where is Geoscience going anyway? An opinion.

At the HORIZON GEOSCIENCE policy dinner debate.
The high level panel debate with (L-R) the host Jonathan Bamber,
EGU President, John Ludden, BGS Director, Lieve Wierinck, MEP,
Jean-Eric Pacquet, DH Research and Innovation and
Vitor Correa, EFG President.

As Chief Executive of the British Geological Survey I am often invited to talk about the Survey or more often what Earth scientists do in general. These reflections were part of presentations at the Resourcing Future Generations Conference in Vancouver, Canada in June 2018 and will be presented at the Korea Institute of Geology and Minerals (KIGAM) centenary at the end of October 2018 in Busan, Korea. More specifically they were used to prepare a round-table organised by the European Geosciences Union (EGU) and the European Federation of Geologists (EFG) on the role of geoscience in Europe. It provides my view and not necessarily one that is shared by the organisation I run or the earth science community in general.

1. Introduction

I feel it is necessary to start with a definition to set the boundaries of this discussion paper so I turn to Wikipedia:

Earth science or geoscience is a widely embraced term for the fields of science related to the planet Earth. It is the branch of science dealing with the physical constitution of the earth and its atmosphere. Earth science is the study of our planet’s physical characteristics, from earthquakes to raindrops, and floods to fossils. Earth science is a branch of planetary science, but with a much older history. “Earth science” is a broad term that encompasses four main branches of study, each of which is further broken down into more specialized fields

 

In fact much of what I state in this paper is focussed on the “Solid Earth and it’s interfaces” as I am unqualified to discuss the more fluid Earth. However, I suspect that the basic tenets of this discussion: “that scientists need to move to solving problems related to the future of the Earth and the species that live on it (including humans), rather than simply identification of the problems”, is true across the geosciences.

 

It is time to move towards provision of environmental and Earth-science solutions that require interdisciplinary science involving engineers and physical scientists as well as the social and economic sciences.

 

2. What are some of the fundamental tenets of geoscience?

In producing documents to underline the importance of Earth sciences in Europe specifically
https://www.bgs.ac.uk/EarthScienceEurope/?src=topNav, some of us have produced a simple definition of what we think geoscience is all about.

 

• Understanding the dynamic Earth: The internal motor of our planet has built the continents and created a habitat for life. It shapes the Earth’s surface and affects our society on human timescales.
• Creating a safe and healthy planet: Minimize the impact of unavoidable natural hazards and build a cleaner, sustainable environment.
• Living sustainably on planet Earth: Provide the foundation of the exploration and responsible use of global natural resources, now and in the future.
• Driving growth: Find the resources that build economic prosperity, support industry and promote innovative technologies.
• Reducing global inequities: Support science, education and industry in developing nations.

3. The big questions are still there and they require discovery science

 

Earth scientists specifically those in university departments, should still pursue the big academic questions with will allow us to discover more about the planet. Although there are many, some of the “big” questions are listed here.

• How do planets form?
• Where did Earth’s water come from?
• What causes ice ages?
• What causes mass extinctions?
• What causes reversals in Earth's magnetic field?
• Are there volcanic and earthquake precursors that can lead to useful predictions?

4. There are new drivers for applied geoscience research

 

There are significant problems facing the Earth and the people living on it. A significant effort in research has been in defining the extent of challenges that we are facing, not only with changing climate dynamics but also with population growth and associated urbanisation and resource demand. Solving these challenges require the basic knowledge and public understanding of how the Earth may change in their lifetime or in future generations. Underlying this is the need for data on the Earth system, which will be open to all stakeholders and the public and used to define realistic base lines and models of the Earth (climate, resources, health etc.). This shall form a universal knowledge base on which society, economy and business can define options on how to mitigate or respond to change.  

Notwithstanding this Earth and environmental scientist need to focus efforts more on the solution and not the problem, our research should be increasingly goal directed and should be aimed at achieving practical objectives and outcomes.

This shift in emphasis will be enabled by a technological revolution, some examples being the increased use of underground sensors, high-resolution visualisation tools such as the European Plate Observing System (EPOS) and ExtremeEarth, all associated with super-computers. Additionally the proliferation of low-tech citizen-derived data (smart sensors carried by people, urban sensors etc.) will require curation, analysis and sorting for valuable information that is of use.

We are in the process of moving away from fossil fuels and essentially decarbonising the planet. The rate at which we achieve this will be driven by economic factors, but many of the low-carbon solutions are geological and they require us to work across the science, engineering and socio-economic spheres. Examples are shale gas extraction, carbon capture and subsurface storage, geothermal energy and energy storage and some forms of waste storage, and all require a more invasive use of the subsurface. The technology to achieve this decarbonisation requires the application of high-resolution geophysical, geochemical and geo-biological processes to engineered solutions.

We need to make a more effective shift from global geological hazard research to risk-related research. This requires us to effect a shift from identification of hazard from an earthquake, volcano or landslide, to modelling and prediction and communication of geological risk – that is where the hazard affects people’s lives directly.

Global population management and urban growth require geoscience research in provision of water, food, health services and energy where most needed. Resources will continue to be needed provide wealth to developing nations. Increasingly an integrated approach to resource development (corridors) will require modelling the geology, subsurface use such as groundwater and aggregate availability and associated infrastructure. This is no different to the approach of geological surveys in developed countries, but this needs to be translated globally. I fully anticipate that the rate of digital development in parts of Africa and other developing regions to leap-frog the western-world’s reliance on adapted legacy data-systems.

Driven most probably by industry, we will explore and inhabit the Moon and other planetary bodies. This will require us to innovate on Earth with remote sensing new quantum sensors and novel construction techniques (eg 3D printing) to be translated to the moon and planets.  At the same time we will require new sources of minerals, both on Earth and as we explore our planetary system. This will also lead to a surge in fundamental Earth sciences in domains such as lunar and planetary petrology; it is thus essential that the basic disciplines of earth sciences be maintained.

Earth scientists have the experience and knowhow to deal with global data sets. They should take the lead in the creation of, and innovation with, multi-disciplinary Earth data sets. This requires us to establish a generic strategy to reconstruct and simulate the multi-level organisation of the Earth for different domains (energy, climate, biodiversity, resources etc.). To calibrate and reinitialize whole Earth system models for the “satellite era” the past ~30 years, including uncertainties on these models. 
 
We need a platform operated as a community resource that will generate a  3D and time scalable model/representation of the Earth’s environment in time sequences into the future and in parallel, develop a cyber-infrastructure built to meet the current and future needs of Earth and environmental scientists. Including high-resolution environmental modelling from newly acquired observation platforms and networks.
 

5. Is our science too parochial and can we undertake some “extreme geoscience”?

Drilling the ocean-floor via what is currently the Integrated Ocean Discovery programme (IODP) is about as adventurous as we get in the earth sciences. IODP and similar drilling programmes have produced some good discovery science, but with limited applied science; although industry has used the geological models to refine their strategies. The Planetary science and astronomy community have no qualms with multiple hundreds of millions of dollar missions and infrastructure; we struggle when an operation exceeds ~$20-30 million.

Let’s get into some geo-engineering – in fact let’s appropriate the geo in geoengineering!

Can we drill into a magma body and control the magma/fluid system. Both in terms of geothermal energy and magma-engineering to control eruption of magma? Can we seal faults using imaginative mineralogy perhaps mediated through bio-geochemical engineering? Let’s undertake a fully researched hydrofrack, which covers both the optimisation of resource use and assessment of environmental impacts and has full open data release.

In the UK we do now have UK Geoenergy Observatories which is a significant investment (£31 million capital from BEIS-funded via NERC £7.5 million from BGS. resource to manage UKGEOS and a series of UKRI-funded research programmes) all taking our science in the direction I propose.

In the marine realm, can we significantly modify coral reef growth rates and enhance CO2 removal using a geo-engineering approach. How can we better manage the ocean floor using robotic technology?

6. The challenge

This opinion piece essentially  proposes that Earth scientists need to reconnect discovery science, applied science and translation of science.

I would state that academics are too focussed on Earth’s history rather than its future and that we as earth scientists should be solving environmental problems rather than simply identifying them?
I also suggest that we need to propose some BIG Earth Science projects that match or exceed those of the planetary scientists and astronomers – even if these are aimed at geo-engineering of the planet they will have significant fundamental research associated with them.

University research and teaching on oil and gas (and minerals) is decreasing and the concept of leave it (training and research) to the companies is beginning to creep in, as some universities see divestment as a means of attracting students. There may well therefore be a skills shortage in the basic earth sciences (the geo-subject and petro-subjects) developing and the associated industries will struggle to achieve their hiring targets. We thus need to provide new career paths (non-academic) for Earth science students.

Communication with government and the public will remain a major concern. Fighting public perception on what are perceived as environmentally unacceptable industries, but that provide essential resource remains a problem. We will be required to train students and be prepared as professional geologists to dealing with tougher environmental regulations, greater public scrutiny and will need better links with socio-economic research.

The BGS Board, its Terms of Reference and Minutes of the first meeting (April 2018)

I blogged previously about the creation of the BGS Board and the quality of non-executive members that we managed to attract. It is a truly dynamic group of people which will help nurture and challenge BGS and if you have not yet checked out who is on the Board, I encourage you to do so here.

We will be releasing summary minutes of the BGS Board meetings and activities in which they are involved. You can find the summary of the first meeting, along with the Terms of Reference for the Board.

As would be expected, the Board will have oversight of both the operational and strategic activities of BGS. Our Chair of the Board, Sir Keith O’Nions, will report to the Executive Chair of NERC-UKRI, thus assuring governance relationships are appropriate.

We have already strengthened our Health and Safety activities and the Board congratulated BGS on being one of the first science institutes in the UK in receiving ISO 45001 Accreditation. 

BGS has adjusted its financial reporting to ensure full understanding by the Board, moving towards an accounting presentation that is more suited to the BGS mixed financial culture, with its Public Role and Research and Private sector sources of funding and spending.

As you will know, BGS is refreshing its strategy and will develop a new Business Plan in the coming months. We are also creating a new science governance structure which will involve the creation of an external Science Advisory Committee (SAC). The advertisement for the roles on the committee can be found at here. We would encourage staff to share the advert with senior science/data leaders from our stakeholders and partners.

As part of their induction, our Board members participated in a seminar looking at our Public Role and how we define and refine this for the future. I enclose a slide pack that I used to outline this to the Board.

John Ludden

BGS enters a new era

BGS is about to enter a new era. It is moving from NERC as its legal owner to the newly created UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), and has created a BGS board that will function as if BGS is an arms length GovCo. The intention of this is to put BGS into the most appropriate governance structure so that it will flourish. 

Following the nomination of Sir Keith O’Nions as Board chair, BGS now has a board whose membership covers the spectrum from survey, academia, government and industry. The board will engage with the BGS executive in deciding how best to place BGS in the mix from government advice underpinned by research, innovation and also niche commercial activities. 

BGS will work closely with NERC still, although its public good activities will be overseen by the Board and independent review. We will operate the Earth sector facilities for NERC and will continue to engage with key partnerships with university departments in the earth and environment sector. 

The opportunity to operate in the new UKRI environment will allow synergies with other research council agendas and also with InnovateUK and play a role in the UK industrial strategy and global programmes led from UKRI. 

BGS finished the past financial year with a planned surplus and an increase in staff numbers to ~ 640. Here is the summary corporate PowerPoint that I presented to the first BGS Board meeting on Friday 27th April.

The BGS Annual Review

Dear Friend of BGS 

I enclose here our Annual Review for 2016-2017 

BGS is healthy as you will realise when you read the report. We are a diverse organisation working at the cutting edge of solving research problems in earth and environmental sciences.  

We are about to embark on a new era with the creation of a BGS board, which will be chaired by Sir Keith O'Nions and will be starting the search procedure to fill the posts on the BGS Board. Please apply if you feel you can contribute to BGS at this level.

 The report is organised around our regional impacts including global science.

 I hope you enjoy the read and I wish you all the best for the season and 2018. 

The BGS core science programme

Royal assent has allowed the passage into law of the Higher Education and Research Act (2017). It is expected that UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) will be properly established in April 2018, following an implementation period. A UKRI Executive Committee comprising the CEOs of the research councils has been created that will ensure overall strategic coherence and maximise effective working across the entirety of UKRI. Through this transition, the BGS will seek the freedoms to allow it to flourish as a survey and, as you will see, we have already made significant progress in this.

We are in a period where BGS funding is relatively secure (Figure 1), although the funding we receive from government, currently via the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), is increasingly targeted (Figure 2). This does mean that we will have to suspend some activities or reduce them, while increasing others. This is of course an ongoing activity, but is more acute this year than in the past.

The BGS has agreed with NERC that our core budget will be ring fenced and clearly directed to national and public good (NPG) activities, including the research lines that underpin these activities and ensure that we retain our excellence as a geological survey. This explicit recognition of our NPG role is powerful for us. We will continue to compete for research council grants and will have a strong industrial and innovation portfolio in addition to having our own commercial interests. To oversee the core budget spending and activities in general, NERC will create a BGS board and will be appointing the members in the coming months.

Our projected annual expenditure is forecast at £47.6 million in 2017–18, together with capital investment of £10 million. Our staff levels have been managed down to about 580 in recent years, although associated with the development of a major infrastructure activity (see UKGEOS) we will be increasing our headcount this coming year for the first time in a decade.

Official Development Assistance (ODA)

The budget for the UK research councils was inflated in the current comprehensive spending review (CSR) settlement by a significant amount for Official Development Assistance (ODA). Some of this has been earmarked for NERC, and an amount that corresponds to about 15 per cent of the BGS core NERC budget has been identified for us to spend over the current CSR period. This means that we will need to reassign some UK national activities to overseas activities.

We are developing three platforms to respond to this: one around east African geoscience and resilience, one on south-east Asian megacities and their hinterland catchments, and one on global geological risk. These will allow us to position the BGS for additional competitive funding streams in the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) where the majority of these ODA funds reside inside UKRI.

UK GeoEnergy Observatories (UKGEOS)

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) has now approved this capital project and £31 million will be invested over two years to create world-class, subsurface energy-research test centres operated by the BGS.

UKGEOS will provide scientific energy-related test beds in two geologically different locations in the UK. Each site will comprise a network of deep and shallow boreholes, enabling geoscientists to undertake long-term observation of the subsurface for the first time and in unprecedented detail. They will deliver new information for the interpretation, modelling and monitoring of the environment from the surface down to more than 1500 m.

The BGS will target about 15 per cent of its core funding to operate these sites.

Innovation funding

The BGS is an institution that sits in an applied-science space between fundamental research, innovation and commercialisation. In the future, we will explicitly map our innovation funding to science directorates with clear key-performance indicators and evaluation of outcomes. We will provide internal, flexible funding to respond to opportunities, developing our innovation pipeline in a timely way. At the same time, we will invest in an innovation hub that will include machine-technology capabilities. We expect this strategy to align with future UKRI industrial strategy and regional development. The yearly investment corresponds to approximately another 15 per cent of the core budget for the coming three years.

EU funding

About five per cent of BGS funding comes from the EU and a significant part of this is associated with infrastructure development (field laboratories and data) and in some cases we lead the core services in these infrastructures. We are hopeful that the UK will continue to invest in EU infrastructure, especially as some of these facilities are key to UK international competitiveness.

BGS staff and programme reorganisation

The overall budget for the BGS is shown in the pie charts Figures 1, 2 and 3. It is evident that once the costs of information development and management are taken into account, the balance of core budget that can be assigned to other NPG tasks is limited.

To be more effective, the BGS will restructure its directorates. We will reassign staff in the geology and regional geophysics and land, soils and coast directorates and embed them in key directorates, thus bringing our activities closer to partners, users and markets.

Across the BGS there will be focus on three challenges:

1. decarbonisation of power production, heat, transport and industry
2. environmental change adaptation
3. natural geological hazard and risk

Our major science effort will be in harnessing our new infrastructure including UKGEOS; our activities in sub-seafloor science; catchment observatories, and global hazard observatories.

In general, there will be a reduced focus on rocks and sediments as indicators of past events and a corresponding increase in focus on rocks as conduits for processes that affect lives and livelihoods. Improved methods of storing and delivering information within the BGS will allow greater efficiency and an ability to do "more with less". We will also seek new ways of funding our activities through interaction with government and the private sector.

At the same time, we will enhance our regional delivery for England, in addition to that which is already specific for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. We have created a Wales and south-west England focus from the Cardiff office, which has recently relocated to the Cardiff University campus. Moving our Edinburgh office to the Lyell Centre on the Heriot-Watt campus, along with our marine infrastructure facility, has brought a new focus to BGS Scotland. From England we will deliver a south and south-east England regional geology hub; a Midlands (including East Anglia) hub, and a northern England hub. All of these regional and devolved administration activities will have a presence in regional partnerships.

Most importantly, the BGS will continue to have geologists with feet on the ground to ensure that we develop a more dynamic geological map, including real-time data acquisition. We will thus enhance our training and continuous professional development for field geologists.

Overall, the BGS is about to undertake its biggest transformation since joining NERC in 1965. It will gain more independence than it has had in 50 years. Technological development in sensors, high-volume computing, and visualisation and modelling are driving us to a new form of geological survey, and we are leading the world's surveys in many of these activities. At the same time, international opportunities are growing through GCRF funding, an expanding DfID programme, and more global impact in general.

The BGS will greatly benefit from the new freedoms and flexibilities afforded to it in a new governance structure. We will continue to forge partnerships in the UK and globally with institutes, universities and industry, while maintaining our independence and social responsibility.

Prof John Ludden
Executive Director

©

BGS Annual Science Review

I am pleased to present the BGS Annual Science Review for 2015/16.

In the review we have chosen to focus on the BGS working with nations; the devolved administrations of the UK and nations globally.  Our strategy is focused on state of-the-art geological modelling and technology for monitoring the subsurface with our aim for people to feel confident that we know what is below their feet and how this will be managed and may change during their lifetimes.

We have activities in all parts of the UK and worked in 79 countries globally. Environmental monitoring and modelling were a strong focus in all of our UK activities this year: working on baseline monitoring for potential future shale gas extraction in northern England; monitoring heat from abandoned mine waters in South Wales and Glasgow, and subsidence monitoring of abandoned mines in Northern Ireland with the Geological Survey of Northern Ireland (GSNI).

On the energy front, we worked as part of a national effort on carbon capture and storage (CCS) in Wales and looked at the sub-Irish sea floor CO2 storage potential. We are also part of the UK CCS group in Edinburgh, and are still helping out South Africa in CCS and shale gas development.

Infrastructure and data to support infrastructure development remain key parts of the BGS and we released software packages that allow better definition of borehole data and visualisation of geological cross-sections via ‘Groundhog’. In response to a recommendation by a Parliamentary report on unconventional gas, we released a database on the regional stress field that will be of use in subsurface activities including ‘fracking’, geothermal and energy storage.

Our public-good-facing activities are underpinned by state-of-the-art applied research, and our outputs in publications have almost doubled in five years with a marked shift towards high-impact outputs in highly rated science journals; in 2015-16 we wrote ~300 papers of which ~30% were in Impact Factor 5 or above publications. 

We moved our science base in Scotland to a new home, the Lyell Centre, at Heriot-Watt University (HWU), Edinburgh. Our staff are in a fully open and modern building shared with HWU and we also moved our marine operations onsite.

The Lyell Centre, BGS's new home in Scotland

This significantly strengthens our visibility and presence in Scotland. In 2017, we will move into the Cardiff University campus and hope to achieve the same for GSNI with Queen’s University of Belfast, thus creating strong academic links in all parts of the UK.

Looking forward to 2016/17 we are starting with a balanced budget, significant capital infrastructure investment in the energy sector and a growing overseas development programme as part of the new Research Councils UK Global Challenges programme.

BGS welcomes the Keyworth and District Footpath Association (KADFA)

The BGS headquarters is located in Keyworth on the outskirts of Nottingham. We are a somewhat enigmatic place that the locals view as a positive asset to a small dormitory town to Nottingham. We know that they wonder what goes on behind the hedges and they have no idea how far back the site reaches. It is thus a pleasure that we welcomed the Keyworth Walking Club on site as part of this year’s walking programme.

They were met by me and then received an amusing and factual account of how the geological walkway was put together from Steve Parry of BGS.

Dr Steve Parry introduces the BGS Geological Walkway

The tour ended in the Core Store (National Geological Repository) which is an impressive thing to have on your door step, whilst not knowing it. It allowed me to pass on a message about energy security and answer questions on geohazards and reassure the locals that we are doing a good job for the UK and globally.

Me introducing the impressive Core Store on site at Keyworth

Trevor Lax of KADFA said "We had a tremendous morning being shown around BGS. Steve, who took us on the Geological Walk was "top class". His talk was very informative and good humoured. John Ludden was so knowledgable and enthusiastic about the most valuable work BGS carries out. It was a great community event. Thank you to all who made it happen." 

Photos courtesy of Trevor Lax, KADFA.

BGS and the EU referendum

BGS employs the best people for the job regardless of their nationality and we will always do this.  I sincerely hope that the UK government will make it as easy as possible for us to maintain a free flow of talented staff in the future.

I have been very impressed while talking to staff recently of the degree of commitment to BGS and the firm belief that it is  a great organisation to work for.  I realise that inside BGS there are staff who will have voted Remain and Brexit and we absolutely respect the democratic decision of the UK public.

I fully expect that we will develop strong EU partnerships in the future but the way these are developed may well have to change. Irrespective of funding developments, I am sure BGS will be remain a highly effective organisation and currently we are in a very strong position in all of our science and data areas.

I invited all non-UK European colleagues to write to me with their concerns and I offered to send their letter to Jo Johnston the Universities and Science minister. You can read the letter that we have sent to him here.

BGS getting down to business

The British Geological Survey released its Business Plan (BP) for the three year period starting April 2016. This plan underpins the BGS strategy “Gateway to the Earth”.

BGS is constantly reviewing its science priorities and these have largely moved towards a programme of harnessing new technology to instrument the Earth so that we understand geological processes in real time. This will help society to:

•          Use its natural resources responsibly
•          Manage environmental change
•          Be resilient to environmental hazards

As part of our business planning we will be implementing the £31 million Energy Security and Innovation Observing System (ESIOS) to underpin new developments in subsurface energy management. This will be supported by BGS being part of a Midlands regional capital investment in partnership with Midlands Innovation “Energy Research Accelerator (ERA)" of £60 million, plus a twice this amount in supporting funding from industry. BGS will be required to resource both of these capital investments in providing technological development and operation and undertaking new research with partners.

At the same time the new BGS Business Plan sees a significant upscaling of our overseas activities, largely in response to targeted funding on Overseas development for UK government as part of the Global Challenges Research fund and also the Newton fund. We anticipate that as much as 30% of BGS activities may be redirected overseas in support of development, but at the same time underpinning UK government policy.

BGS will enhance its position in the UK devolved governments; in Scotland at the Lyell Centre which we will be developing with Heriot-Watt University and in Cardiff and Belfast in co-locating with Cardiff University and Queens Belfast. We will further enhance our activities with the University of Nottingham and other partner universities through key joint ventures.

Within the period of the Business Plan BGS hopes to have moved from its current position within the NaturalEnvironmental Research Council (NERC) UK to a Government corporation alongside similar bodies to ourselves (such as the Met office, Ordnance Survey and the National Physical Laboratory) which advise government and work at the cusp of academic research industry and government.

John Ludden

How is the BGS responding to the urgent challenge set out by the Paris accord?

The Paris climate summit proposed some stringent targets for global warming and emissions. These can only be reached if we manage to engineer a reduction in greenhouse gas output and currently the main means of achieving this are switching to gas away from coal and deploying renewable energy and increased nuclear sourced energy. 

BGS was asked by Friends of the Earth how we were responding to the Paris decisions and the BGS Director of Science and Technology has produced a reply which is copied below.

BGS provides scientific evidence on subsurface processes that are relevant to the economy of the UK, and may be used by government in support of policy.

Response to Friends of the Earth

Introduction

BGS is an internationally recognised centre in several sciences that contribute to lower emissions, including carbon capture and storage, geothermal and the siting of offshore wind farms.

Carbon capture and storage

Predictions like those of the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) New Policies Scenario suggest that coal will continue to be used heavily in the future, and will probably remain the backbone of global electricity generation for many years to come. This underlines the need for a switch away from coal, and for the coal that is to be burnt to be used in power stations that are fitted with carbon capture and storage facilities. A look at three large countries with big coal resources, China, India and South Africa, illustrates the problem. China is by far the largest coal consumer in the world, accounting for almost half of global coal use in 2010. In the IEA New Policies Scenario, China’s coal demand will increase to over 2850 million tonnes per year by 2020, and stabilise above 2800 million tonnes until 2035. Coal will continue to provide more than half of China’s electricity until 2035. Similarly in the New Policies Scenario, South African coal production, which is mainly for electricity, will peak around 2020 but continue to be high into the future. India is struggling to electrify its rural economy and it is likely that much of this electricity will come from coal.

In Europe for 2020, the EU has committed to cutting its greenhouse gas emissions to 20% below 1990 levels, and further cuts are being decided for 2050. This commitment is one of the headline targets of the Europe 2020 growth strategy and is being implemented through binding legislation. Power generation will have to take a particularly large part in emissions reductions, mainly by focussing on increasing surface renewables (wind, tidal and solar), nuclear and geothermal power, but it is likely that carbon capture and storage on fossil fuel power plants will be important.

Carbon capture and storage may be particularly important for the 2°C limit set at COP 21, in Paris in December. Most of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) scenarios limiting global temperature increases to 2 °C include some form of ‘negative emissions’ or permanent removal of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the atmosphere. Of the 400 IPCC climate scenarios that have a 50% or better chance of less than 2 °C warming, more than 300 assume the successful and large-scale uptake of negative-emission technologies. The most popular of these is Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS). BECCS involves growing energy crops for power stations for electricity and scrubbing out the CO2 in the flue gas for permanent sequestration in the subsurface.

The main constraints on BECCS are how much land and resource can be devoted to biofuel crops, and how much subsurface storage space for carbon dioxide there is. The first is a difficult problem and not within BGS’ remit. Given the weight that the IPCC gives to BECCS there is an urgent need to explore the potential ecological limits to, and environmental impacts of, implementation of BECCS at a scale relevant to climate change mitigation.

BGS main research in CCS involves questions over the feasibility of large scale geological storage of carbon dioxide. Though in Norway two deep subsurface sites 20 million tonnes of carbon dioxide have been safely stored, other geological environments must be tested and it is vital that more demonstration and full scale schemes are started, like the Aquistore scheme in south-eastern Saskatchewan where 40000 tonnes of carbon dioxide has been safely stored, and where 1100 tonnes of CO2 are injected per day.

Geothermal

BGS is researching the feasibility of geothermal heat for residential and civic use including the use of disused mine workings as a geothermal resource in urban areas, geothermal from deep sedimentary rocks, and ground source heat pumps. Geothermal could be an important way for the UK to achieve its goals in emissions reduction.

Although the UK is not actively volcanic, there is still a substantial resource of geothermal energy at shallow depths but it is exploited in different ways. The upper 10–15 m of the ground is heated by solar radiation and acts a heat store. This heat can be utilised by ground source heat pumps that can substantially reduce heating bills and reduce emissions. The heat from the sun is conducted downwards into the ground. At a depth of about 15 metres, ground temperatures are not influenced by seasonal air temperature changes and tend to remain stable all year around at about the mean annual air temperature (9–13°C in the UK). Hence, the ground at this depth is cooler than the air in summer and warmer than the air in winter. This temperature difference is exploited by ground source heat pumps that are used for heating and/or cooling of homes and office buildings. There are different types of systems which can be broadly grouped into closed-loop systems and open-loop systems.

With increasing depth, the ground temperatures are also affected by the heat conducted upwards from the Earth's core and mantle, known as the geothermal heat flow. When combined with the thermal conductivities of the rocks this allows the prediction of subsurface temperatures. The UK's geothermal gradient, the rate at which the Earth's temperature increases with depth, has an average value of 26°C per km. Some rocks contain free flowing water (groundwater) and so at depth this water will be warm and can be extracted for use in district heating schemes or for industrial uses such as heating green houses.

There are also regions in the UK where the rocks at depth are hotter than expected. This occurs in granite areas because some granite generates internal heat through the radioactive decay of the naturally occurring elements potassium, uranium and thorium. Granites have very little free flowing water, but it is possible to engineer the fracture system such that water can be made to flow from one borehole to another through the granite. The extracted hot water is at a sufficiently high temperature to drive an electricity generating turbine. Parts of Cornwall have geothermal gradients that are significantly higher than the UK average due to the presence of granite and have potential for geothermal power generation.

Offshore wind turbines

The Marine Environmental Mapping Programme (MAREMAP) and the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA), both of which BGS is a part, are coordinated efforts to improve seafloor and shallow geological mapping to establish the ground and geotechnical conditions for many offshore wind turbines. The shallow geology can produce impacts and constraints on design, installation and operation of seabed structures and sub-seabed foundations. Some of these constraints relate to the variability in the composition and distribution of Quaternary sediments (at the seabed and in the subsurface) and bedrock within the first 50 m below the seafloor. Additionally, other constraints relate to the geological processes that have occurred in the past or are active today.

As well as these sciences aimed at direct emissions reduction, BGS is working intensively on the effects of coming climate change, including on groundwater levels (in the UK and in Africa), landscape and erosion, and sea level. We are working with a whole range of partners on how these changes can be forecasted and planned for so that society is more resilient to change.

BGS is, of course, interested in all other areas of research into emissions reduction and climate change science and welcomes discussions on its science strategy.

Best wishes,

Prof Mike Stephenson

Director of Science and Technology, BGS

The British Geological Survey in 2016

BGS is continually refreshing itself, ensuring that it is relevant and provides up to date geological science solutions for the UK and globally.

I have used this presentation at various events to outline the British Geological Survey (BGS), what it does and who it works with. The presentation also includes information on our discussions with government and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), on the best place to house BGS in the future to give us the flexibility to provide impact that will help the UK economy.

On numerous recent occasions with stakeholders, we have concluded that BGS should move from NERC ownership to a Government owned public corporation. BGS has welcomed visits from international geoscience agencies and surveys, many of whom view BGS as a model geological survey. We have had discussions with universities who are interested in partnerships and especially combining our applied science and theirs in creating joint research initiatives that will yield impact. BGS has worked hard on developing links with other research centres and government departments.

Please browse through the slides ... not only do they show how BGS geological mapping science has changed over time, who we partner with, how we deliver world-class infrastructure but they underline the importance of a dynamic workforce. 

John Ludden

March 2016

BGS and the Comprehensive Spending Review 2015

The Chancellor released his Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) this week.  It is fair to say that our worst fear of a cut to research funding was not realised and, to his credit, the Chancellor has kept the research baseline funding at real costs - this means in line with inflation and better than the cash settlement we were expecting as a "best case" scenario. Nonetheless we should expect all of the extra funding from real cost to be targeted on specific projects most probably involving global development.

Nonetheless, the CSR does place a significant part of the research budget in a global challenges fund and as yet it is not clear how this will be managed; it could be top sliced or accounted for in the different parts of the new Research UK structure, which is likely to become a reality. Thus the various parts of the research base will report into a director of Research UK in line with the recommendations of the Nurse review, which recommends keeping the research councils, but strengthening their overall leadership.

BGS should be able to exploit the interface with a number of the research areas of Research UK and it is good that this is now an explicit opportunity, rather than something to be encouraged. However, the way research and innovation funding is awarded and evaluated will change in the next few years and BGS needs to be prepared to defend with quantitative based metrics, both its research and its public good value.  I also note that the research council has yet to decide its different allocations to individual councils and then internally within NERC.

The Midlands Energy Research Accelerator (ERA) was allocated a £60 million and the Energy Test Bed in Chester were cited. Thus we are well positioned in the geoenergy area, with investment in gas, new nuclear and energy storage.  Notwithstanding this, the decision to remove the funding from the Carbon Capture and Storage pilot projects is perplexing and we will need to evaluate where best BGS should be positioning itself.

Major infrastructure and capital investments were also outlined and BGS will need to provide the underpinning geological models.

Although the result is positive for science, both in research (discovery and applied) and innovation, this does not affect the restructuring plan that we have announced. The significant pay cost pressures on our budget from 2016/17 mean that BGS must create budgetary headroom and restructuring will enable it to position itself for new opportunities in the geoenergy, data and natural hazards areas. 

Repositioning BGS in the science landscape will be a priority in the coming months as the Research UK budget develops.

Finally, I commend the 2014-15 BGS Annual Review in which we intentionally focussed on the Public Good values of BGS, please read it: the science it outlines is excellent (sorry we cannot put all of it in a short report) and the format and presentation superb. 

Baseline Monitoring in Lancashire

BGS is about to begin an enhanced baseline monitoring programme across the UK at locations with a potential for shale gas and oil. This will take place at sites where an operator's licence is held and planning permission has been approved for testing shale gas extraction. BGS plans to start field work in the north-west where the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) has approved the Lancashire Monitoring Programme as Public Good research.

We intend to monitor

1. Groundwater – including baseline and ongoing groundwater monitoring for chemistry, dissolved gases (such as methane), stable isotopes, organics, residence time indicators, and naturally occurring radionuclides (NORM) 
2. Induced seismicity related to fracking 
3. Baseline for operational fugitive emissions and air quality assessment 
4. Ground motion (subsidence and uplift) - through iSBAS ground motion inSAR 
5. Fluid flowback from the fracking process 

All data and interpretations will be made available through new webpages on the BGS website which are currently being developed.

Initially, two operators, Centrica and Cuadrilla, have agreed to provide access to their data and operations for the science-based monitoring programme, from baseline measurements through to hydraulic fracturing (‘fracking’) and production tests to post operation (abandonment). We will do this with a consortium involving the universities of Birmingham, Bristol, Liverpool, Loughborough and Manchester and the Facility for Airborne Atmospheric Measurements (FAAM) operated by the National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS).

Our scientists and those of our partners have already started planning field activities and will be intensifying actions in the region in February 2015.

We consider that this programme will:

• Help regulators refine their protocols for the UK shale industry 
• Inform the public, concerned groups and operators on baseline levels in the immediate area of a shale gas extraction site 
• Provide the public with information and understanding on the effects of shale gas extraction 
• Improve scientific understanding of the UK sub-surface environment for unconventional hydrocarbons which is significantly different to that of the USA and Canada 
• Facilitate new sensor technology development for environmental monitoring 
• Help establish good practice for industries involved in the development of unconventional hydrocarbons
• Establish world-leading expertise

Geochemical data for the south-west

BGS with a suite of partners including CEH, BAS and universities ran Tellus south-west in 2013. This was the first such survey which involved the traditional Tellus geophysical suite of acquisition and also high resolution lidar and also multispectral analysis. These were complemented by the G-BASE programme of systematic sampling and the determination of chemical elements in samples of stream sediment, stream water and soil in the region.  

The Tellus approach is state of the art in terms of provision of baseline information and underpins the BGS core role in survey which is to provide a marker of the current state of the environment for the measurement and monitoring of future change.

In particular the G-BASE data allows us to assess the condition and health of soils and sediments for agricultural and ecosystem functions and quantify human impact on the environment, indicating elevated concentrations of potential harmful elements. Furthermore it permits the identification of new opportunities for the responsible use of natural resources.

I am pleased to announce the publication of the G-BASE data set for the south-west that will complement Tellus. Our staff have collected and analysed data from 3779 stream sediment, and 1154 soil samples in Cornwall and parts of Devon and Somerset. Analytical data are available for Ag, Al, As, Ba, Bi, Br, Ca, Cd, Ce, Cl, Co, Cr, Cs, Cu, Fe, Ga, Ge, Hf, I, In, K, La, Mg, Mn, Mo, Na, Nb, Nd, Ni, P, Pb, Rb, S, Sb, Sc, Se, Si, Sm, Sn, Sr, Ta, Te, Th, Ti, Tl, U, V, W, Y, Yb, Zn, and Zr and are part of another world class data set from the BGS.

The European dimension

BGS is involved in Europe in a number of ways, the most lucrative being through EC funded projects, but also through multi-lateral and bi-lateral collaboration that have developed over the years.

Our current funding from Europe is about £1 million and is down on recent highs which approached £2 million. As with many competitive funding sources there are phases of funding and from time to time the phases coincide thus creating a dip or artificial high. We are currently in a dip with respect to EC funding that we had managed to build to about 5% of our total income.

Prognoses for the future indicate that we may be able to increase this income, but it is doubtful that the total will exceed ~10% of our funding. This is about the amount for funding that the EC puts into research as national governments fund the rest.

Should we put such an effort into this funding source as the overheads to win the funding is high and the EC funders do not pay anywhere near the full cost of the research? I have spent a lot of time recently trying to shore up our longer term funding from Europe and ask myself this very question.

I feel that the answer is “yes”, as this work establishes us as international experts and we can then use this credibility to win more lucrative contracts. Nonetheless, the work we do for Europe must be work we would normally do internally. Thus developing new data infrastructure that can also be used in BGS projects in general, getting the EC to fund the construction of laboratories that serve additional purposes or funding data products that we can integrate into national or international data bases that add value to BGS as a whole are the sorts of endeavours we need to undertake. In general these fall in the infrastructure development domain.

I think we are positioning ourselves as leaders in European data delivery for the geosciences and this should be our major goal with Europe. Our partners are not necessarily the other national surveys and as some of you know I am somewhat cynical about an approach that includes all the surveys as partners. Our preferred partners are institutes and entities that we may not intuitively work with, but that need our resources in data processing and also from whom we can learn to build new data products. Why not reposition and reskill to achieve the “the Ultimate Earth model” that is something of the scale of the “human brain project”.  

Understanding the shallow and deep Earth will bring benefits in understanding how we use it for Energy and storage, but also how we remain resilient to geological hazards, like earthquakes, landslides and volcanoes. For the first time computing technology brings this understanding within our grasp but it will involve a joint effort to collect and process data across Europe and the globe.

BGS - Looking back and looking forwards......

BGS ran its biennial stakeholders event at the Royal Society last month. The event was attended by about 100 stakeholders from across the spectrum of government, academia and industry. The presentations given by myself, Mike Stephenson and Mike Patterson can be viewed here.

I gave a summary of activities since the last stakeholder event which was of course selective, but underlined our workforce plan, budget and some key science activities, including partnerships. We look strong across the board with a refreshed workforce, near rebuilt estate and some leading science activities for all stakeholders. We were particularly active in the DECC commissioned unconventional hydrocarbons work, in informing government for flooding and also in surveying SW England. We deployed some pretty hefty infrastructure in the Baltic ocean for the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) and offshore Japan with our BGS rock drilling capability. We are participating in the SWARM mission and continuing to instrument Iceland as a volcano super-site.

Mike Stephenson (pictured right) presented a video of the highlights of our strategy displayed in Geovisionary and clearly underlining our move towards more instrumentation of the subsurface of Earth to underpin resource development and forecast GeoHazards on "scales that matter to people". 

Mike Patterson summarised where we are with ownership and governance options and made it clear that our preference is for a GovCo public corporation but the status quo would still be on the table as might other governance and ownership options. The ownership outline was well received with the audience asking the same sorts of questions that we are about handling assets and ensuring we can deliver a national geological survey role. Our preferred option was not contested.

With respect to the BGS science strategy, there was support, but also questions about how we will represent our uncertainty in models or more open databases in general. We explained that we were also working on this problem as part of our rapidly developing National Geological Model which will be increasingly open, fed in part through open-sourced information and delivered by smart web services.


All in all 2013 -14 was a good year for BGS and I thank our staff for their excellent contributions.