Delivery and impact of subsurface data in the absence of a comprehensive legislative framework : shared issues and difficulties in Odense and Glasgow

Rationale: BGS and VCS Odense proposed this STSM based on ongoing work in both cities to improve the delivery and impact of subsurface data within the cities. Shared difficulties in improving the delivery and impact of subsurface data were highlighted between the cities at the NAG-CITY workshop discussions in Odense (January 2013). In both cities, the lack of standardised data reporting formats, and the selective legislation requirements for reporting subsurface data to national or city authorities, strongly limits the amount and accessibility of subsurface data which is available to inform decision making. Purpose: The purpose of the STSM was to facilitate knowledge exchange between specialists in VCS Odense, GEUS, Odense City Municipality and BGS to compare key issues of the subsurface data management within the cities of Glasgow and Odense, in the absence of a comprehensive legislative framework in the UK or Denmark which ensures all borehole data are submitted to national or local public authorities. The STSM also aimed to discuss methods which could be used to improve the delivery and impact of subsurface data within the cities, and which could be transferred as a best practice to other cities within the COST Action with similar legislation. Improving access to standardised subsurface data, which can be readily available to inform policy and decision making within the public and private sectors, is increasingly required in all COST cities to meet key current urban redevelopment and groundwater management demands. The lessons learnt from the STSM are, therefore, of benefit to all COST-participants, particularly those within countries of similar data legislation

BRO : establishment of a national register and database for subsurface data in the Netherlands - lessons learnt

The establishment of national register for all subsurface data (BRO) within the Netherlands by TNO is a hugely significant body of work andforms a benchmark case study to the COSTsubsurface action in data management and use. lncreased standardisation of subsurface data is required in nearly all COST cities and countries to increase the accessibility and re-use of subsurface data, and to maximise the collective potential value and past investment in these data. The urban subsurface is being increasingly utilised for infrastructure as well as energy and water abstraction, and there is growing recognition of the need for urban planning to be three-dimensional with guidelines for the subsurface. In tandem with this, uncertainty in ground conditions due to limited accessibility of ground information, remains one of the biggest sources of project overspends to the construction industry and overly conservative design in many countries. Poor data accessibility is also a significant constraint to development of 3Dsubsurface models to improve site investigation design and inform urban development. This STSM will allow knowledge exchange between key personnel in BGS and TNO to evaluate the key lessons learnt from the implementation of BRO, and their applicability to other countries to achieve increased standardisation of data and better data capture. The discussions and lessons learnt from implementing BRO in the Netherlands are directly relevant to the current GSPEC pilot by the BGS in the UK to try and enforce submission of all subsurface data to a national BGS data repository, using a standardised digital data formatting format, to improve subsurface data accessibility and re-use in the UK. The STSM outputs will also be of immediate benefit to the Working Group 2 sub-group reviewing and identifying best practice in subsurface data management across Europe, but the evaluations and outputs of the STSM are highly relevant to the wider COST SUBURBAN Action as a whole

Developments to GRASP 2012/13. GRASP: a GIS tool to assess pollutant threats to shallow groundwater in the Glasgow area

The British Geological Survey (BGS) is developing a geographic information system (GIS)- based prioritisation tool known as GRASP (GRoundwater And Soil Pollutants). GRASP identifies and prioritises threats to shallow groundwater quality from the leaching and downward movement of metal pollutants in the soil and shallow sub-surface environment. Whilst developed for Glasgow, ultimately, its application should be wider. The GRASP tool is being developed as part of the Clyde and Glasgow Urban Super-Project (CUSP) and aims to aid urban planning and sustainable development by providing a broad-scale assessment of threats to groundwater quality across the Glasgow conurbation. This report describes the developments to GRASP in 2012 and 2013. It should be read in conjunction with the BGS internal reports IR/08/057 (Graham et al., 2008), IR/09/026 (Ó Dochartaigh et al., 2009) and IR/10/034 (Fordyce and Ó Dochartaigh, 2011), which describe in detail the initial creation and development of GRASP. The following developments to GRASP were made in 2012/13: Refined GRASP methodology, to improve the way that soil leaching potential is combined with soil metal concentrations within the prioritisation too

Unlocking the subsurface for new spatial planning : developing standardised digital data for the UK on the subsurface

Uncertainty in ground conditions is the biggest factor to UK construction delays; it inhibits local authorities being able to de-risk brownfield redevelopment; and the lack of awareness of available data on the subsurface means it is largely overlooked within local development planning. Greater re-use of the large amount of high quality ground investigation data which exists in the UK, would reduce this uncertainty. The BGS and the National Geoscience Data Centre (NGDC) are working to roll-out a new UK portal of standardised digital surface data, which will collate and provide access to validated AGS digital data in the UK. Desk studies, project design, ground investigations and construction can all be based on wider data and knowledge of the subsurface – lowering project costs and financial risk, with increased certainty in ground conditions, and enabling more effective design. This presentation will detail the work being undertaken, engaging with Local Authorities to assess how SI data can be used more effectively in planning processes – so that there is more effective zoning of land for different types of development, and ensuring there is greater realisation of available subsurface resources and conditions earlier in planning processes. As part of this, the work will be assisting Glasgow City Council to write the UK’s first Subsurface Supplementary Planning guidance over the next 3 years

Asteroid Belts in Debris Disk Twins: VEGA and FOMALHAUT

Vega and Fomalhaut, are similar in terms of mass, ages, and global debris disk properties; therefore, they are often referred as "debris disk twins". We present Spitzer 10-35 um spectroscopic data centered at both stars, and identify warm, unresolved excess emission in the close vicinity of Vega for the first time. The properties of the warm excess in Vega are further characterized with ancillary photometry in the mid infrared and resolved images in the far-infrared and submillimeter wavelengths. The Vega warm excess shares many similar properties with the one found around Fomalhaut. The emission shortward of ~30 um from both warm components is well described as a blackbody emission of ~170 K. Interestingly, two other systems, eps Eri and HR 8799, also show such an unresolved warm dust using the same approach. These warm components may be analogous to the solar system's zodiacal dust cloud, but of far greater. The dust temperature and tentative detections in the submillimeter suggest the warm excess arises from dust associated with a planetesimal ring located near the water-frost line and presumably created by processes occurring at similar locations in other debris systems as well. We also review the properties of the 2 um hot excess around Vega and Fomalhaut, showing that the dust responsible for the hot excess is not spatially associated with the dust we detected in the warm belt. We suggest it may arise from hot nano grains trapped in the magnetic field of the star. Finally, the separation between the warm and cold belt is rather large with an orbital ratio >~10 in all four systems. In light of the current upper limits on the masses of planetary objects and the large gap, we discuss the possible implications for their underlying planetary architecture, and suggest that multiple, low-mass planets likely reside between the two belts in Vega and Fomalhaut.Comment: 14 pages, accepted for publication in Ap

Sedimentology a Grenvillian Neoproterozoic foreland basin succession in northern Scotland: a new combined interpretation

The early Neoproterozoic Moine and Torridonian rocks, which occupy much of the Northern Highlands in Scotland, have traditionally been interpreted as separate entities, deposited in distinct early Neoproterozoic rift basins. The rocks are now divided across the later Caledonian Moine thrust structure: the Torridonian rocks (>6 km thick) occur in the Caledonian foreland, and the Moine rocks (>3km thick) in the hanging wall of the Moine thrust. New work, based on structural geology, sedimentology and detrital mineral dating presents evidence for these successions to be now correlated, and to have formed in a single foreland basin in front of the Grenville Orogen. As such the deposits provide arguably the largest preserved and most accessible record of the Grenvillian foreland basin. This paper presents the sedimentological data collected over the last 10 years across the Neoproterozoic succession in northern Scotland, to present a new combined stratigraphic interpretation of these rocks. Taken collectively, the early Neoproterozoic sequence is ca. 9km thick and displays alternating fluvial, and tidally-influenced shoreface lithofacies, within several cycles of progradation and retrogradation. Five main phases of sedimentological evolution are interpreted: (1) A progradational sucession from tidally-influenced shoreface facies to fluvial facies at the base of the succession (Sleat Group). (2) An abrupt but (near|)conformable switch to large-scale progradation with rapid and sustained high-energy braided river deposition (Applecross Fm and lower Morar group). (3) These high-energy fluvial lithofacies gradually are replaced upwards by lower-energy braidplain fluvial facies, or tidally-influenced braidplan and shoreface facies further east within a gradual large-scale (ca. 3km thick) retrogradational succession (Aultbea Fm and middle Morar Group). (4) This retrogradational phase is indicated to have culminated in a relatively rapid transgression and marine deposition (upper Morar Group). (5) A further progradation and retrogradation succession sequence is preserved in the uppermost Morar Group. The lithofacies suggest overall lower-energy depositional conditions in this phase - from with shallow-marine to tidally-influenced distal braidplain depositional settings. The final retrograding succession is followed by a second transgression to shallow marine conditions resulting in deposition of pelite. This represents the last phase of deposition preserved in upper most parts of the early Neoproterozoic rocks in Northern Scotland. These five main phases of sedimentological evolution provide insight to the development of the depositional environments within the Grenville foreland basin, resulting from changes in the basin form, accommodation space and sediment flux

Debris Disks: Probing Planet Formation

Debris disks are the dust disks found around ~20% of nearby main sequence stars in far-IR surveys. They can be considered as descendants of protoplanetary disks or components of planetary systems, providing valuable information on circumstellar disk evolution and the outcome of planet formation. The debris disk population can be explained by the steady collisional erosion of planetesimal belts; population models constrain where (10-100au) and in what quantity (>1Mearth) planetesimals (>10km in size) typically form in protoplanetary disks. Gas is now seen long into the debris disk phase. Some of this is secondary implying planetesimals have a Solar System comet-like composition, but some systems may retain primordial gas. Ongoing planet formation processes are invoked for some debris disks, such as the continued growth of dwarf planets in an unstirred disk, or the growth of terrestrial planets through giant impacts. Planets imprint structure on debris disks in many ways; images of gaps, clumps, warps, eccentricities and other disk asymmetries, are readily explained by planets at >>5au. Hot dust in the region planets are commonly found (<5au) is seen for a growing number of stars. This dust usually originates in an outer belt (e.g., from exocomets), although an asteroid belt or recent collision is sometimes inferred.Comment: Invited review, accepted for publication in the 'Handbook of Exoplanets', eds. H.J. Deeg and J.A. Belmonte, Springer (2018

Transiting Disintegrating Planetary Debris around WD 1145+017

More than a decade after astronomers realized that disrupted planetary material likely pollutes the surfaces of many white dwarf stars, the discovery of transiting debris orbiting the white dwarf WD 1145+017 has opened the door to new explorations of this process. We describe the observational evidence for transiting planetary material and the current theoretical understanding (and in some cases lack thereof) of the phenomenon.Comment: Invited review chapter. Accepted March 23, 2017 and published October 7, 2017 in the Handbook of Exoplanets. 15 pages, 10 figure