380 research outputs found
The development and implementation of mineral safeguarding policies at national and local levels in the United Kingdom
Mineral extraction makes an essential contribution to national development and prosperity. However, unlike many other land uses, the location of sites where mineral extraction can take place is limited. The underlying geology dictates where mineral resources occur and other factors, such as economics, environmental considerations, surface land use or technology can limit access. To ensure a continued, steady and adequate supply of the raw materials needed by society, it is important that mineral resources are not needlessly sterilised by new, non-mineral related, development. Although this principle has been part of the UK planning process since the Town and Country Planning Act was introduced in 1947, the mechanisms and policies in place to support it were, until recently, largely ineffective. A more robust mechanism was, therefore, required.
In recent years, mineral policy has been revised by the UK government and a process known as ‘mineral safeguarding’ has been introduced and applied through the UK planning system within the devolved jurisdictions. Efforts undertaken so far focus on the safeguarding of onshore construction minerals, industrial minerals and coal largely because of the importance of their indigenous production. However, more recently the concept of mineral safeguarding is being applied to offshore aggregates. This paper describes how mineral safeguarding has been implemented in the UK. A number of case studies highlight different aspects of the mineral safeguarding process which, when applied and enforced, enables mineral resources to be appropriately considered within the land use planning process
GeoSocial: ‘Social Sensing’ within the applied natural geohazard sciences
Information and knowledge about a natural hazard event as it unfolds are vital to all four stages of emergency management: preparedness; response; recovery and mitigation. Those working within a 24/7 operational environment (such as the UK Met Office), remote from the hazard event, will want to know as much as they can about what the situation is and how it is unfolding. Information about natural hazards have traditionally come from scientific instrumentation, models and the media. However, information generated through social media, particularly when used alongside these traditional information sources, offers potential to enhance or verify risk-based models, real-time monitoring of vulnerability and hazard-related impacts, and provide insights into local resilience, all of which can improve situational awareness and inform the scientific response, helping disaster management
Creating a Debris Flow Susceptibility Model for Great Britain: a GIS Based Approach
The term debris flow refers to the rapid downslope flow of poorly-sorted debris
mixed with water (Ballantyne, 2004). Debris flows are described by (Hungr et al.,
2014) as: “very rapid to extremely rapid surging flow of saturated debris in a steep
channel. Strong entrainment of material and water from the flow path”. They are a
widespread phenomenon in mountainous terrain and are distinct from other types
of landslides as they can occur periodically on established paths, usually gullies
and first- or second-order drainage channels. Debris flows in Great Britain are
most commonly found in upland Scotland but also in parts of Wales and the Lake
District
A user guide for the GeoSure Extra : Debris Flow Susceptibility Model for Great Britain (Version 6.0)
This report is the published product of a study by the British Geological Survey (BGS) to produce a national scale Debris Flow Susceptibility Map for Great Britain. It builds on research BGS has conducted over the past decade investigating debris flows and extends the work conducted by Harrison et al., (2006) as part of the Transport Scotland Scottish Road Network Landslides Study (Winter et al., 2005, Winter et al., 2009).
The Debris Flow Susceptibility Model provides information on the potential of the ground, at a given location, to form a debris flow. It is based on a combination of digital geological, hydrogeological and topographic data. The methodology develops an additional dimension to the BGS GeoSure Landslides surface layer (Dashwood et al., 2014) and is designed for users interested specifically in debris flow susceptibility.
This document outlines the background to why the dataset was created, its potential uses and gives a brief description of the GIS raster file. Technical information regarding the GIS and how the data were created is described and advice is provided on using the dataset
Environmental and economic information for aggregates provision
This report describes a one-year research project entitled ‘Environmental and economic information
systems for aggregates provision’. This project is an extension to previous research on Strategic
Environmental Assessment (SEA) and future aggregates extraction, which was carried out by the British
Geological Survey (BGS) and reported in early 2004 (Steadman, et al., 2004). Both phases of the research
were co-funded by the BGS and the Mineral Industry Sustainable Technology Programme (MIST).
Environmental, economic and social information are essential for sustainable planning for the provision
of aggregates. There is a need to bring together disparate information relating to aggregate extraction.
Datasets include the location of resources and their potential end-uses, as well as those on the
environment and transport. Bringing this digital information together into one location or system will
assist in supporting a more balanced and informed approach to the decision making process. A number of
regulatory mechanisms are currently driving the gathering and compilation of relevant environmental,
economic and social information. Current drivers for information relevant to aggregate provision include
environmental appraisal of the provision of aggregates, SEA and Sustainability Appraisal (SA).
The objective of this research was to provide an interactive ‘tool’ or information system for the minerals
industry, land-use planners and other stakeholders to use when considering options for future aggregate
provision. The study area for the research was the East Midlands Region of England. The project had
three main deliverables:
1. To provide an online Geographic Information System (GIS) to access the ‘environmental
sensitivity’ map which was developed for the East Midlands Region during the first phase of
research;
2. to compile aggregate end-use suitability maps for the East Midland Region; and
3. to hold a stakeholder consultation exercise and dissemination seminars.
Each of these was met within the agreed timeframe. The environmental sensitivity map information and
associated attributes have been made available on the internet via the BGS ‘Minerals information online’
web GIS for the East Midlands Region (www.mineralsuk.com/web_gis). Accommodating these data in a
web GIS environment has entailed some compromises on data resolution and system functionality.
A methodology has been developed to integrate a range of aggregate technical property data. This can be
used to summarise the distribution of aggregate resources suitable for particular end-uses. These summary
technical data are useful in communicating issues of variable aggregate quality and economic value to
non-technical stakeholders in the mineral planning process. Availability of appropriate technical property
data for different aggregate resources across a wide geographical area is critical in developing these maps.
Feedback from an extensive consultation and dissemination exercise has generally been very positive.
Two critiques by independent consultants of the environmental sensitivity map were also undertaken.
These were deemed an important aspect of the consultation process. Stakeholders raised several issues.
There were some concerns about updating and maintenance of asset data and about the lack of social
information. In addition, some fundamental issues of approach (particularly asset weighting) raised in the
previous phase of this research resurfaced during this consultation.
Environmental sensitivity mapping will be carried out for the whole of England by the BGS in the near
future. The data will be made available online as each region becomes available. It is anticipated that the
mineral GISs for all regions of England (except London) will be completed by December 2005. New
datasets may be added to the environmental sensitivity layer as they become available. The research into
end-use suitability maps will be carried on by the BGS under its Minerals Programme, with the support of
co-funding where possible. The project team continue to welcome feedback and criticism of this research
Scientists and public: is the information flow direction starting to change?
Over half of the population of the UK
own a smartphone, and about the same
number of people uses social media
such as Twitter. For the British Geological
Survey (BGS) this means millions of
potential reporters of real-time events
and in-the-field data capturers, creating
a new source of scientific information
that could help to better understand
and predict natural processes
Digital factsheets with ground stability information for each World Heritage Listed (WHL) site
The main objective of work package 2 was to define, catalogue and assess available (and processed) InSAR and Persistent Scatterer (PS) datasets for the European UNESCO WHL sites using existing information from satellite InSAR ground motion datasets. This information would allow the team to create digital factsheets for each UNESCO WHL site within Europe, highlighting the information available (and where it is not) and the potential susceptibility of the location to a selected number of geohazards. This report gives an overview of the digital factsheets (D02.02) that have been created for the PROTHEGO project and which are accessible via the PROTHEGO website’s map viewer – http://www.prothego.eu
Search for displaced vertices arising from decays of new heavy particles in 7 TeV pp collisions at ATLAS
We present the results of a search for new, heavy particles that decay at a
significant distance from their production point into a final state containing
charged hadrons in association with a high-momentum muon. The search is
conducted in a pp-collision data sample with a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV
and an integrated luminosity of 33 pb^-1 collected in 2010 by the ATLAS
detector operating at the Large Hadron Collider. Production of such particles
is expected in various scenarios of physics beyond the standard model. We
observe no signal and place limits on the production cross-section of
supersymmetric particles in an R-parity-violating scenario as a function of the
neutralino lifetime. Limits are presented for different squark and neutralino
masses, enabling extension of the limits to a variety of other models.Comment: 8 pages plus author list (20 pages total), 8 figures, 1 table, final
version to appear in Physics Letters
Measurement of the polarisation of W bosons produced with large transverse momentum in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV with the ATLAS experiment
This paper describes an analysis of the angular distribution of W->enu and
W->munu decays, using data from pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV recorded with
the ATLAS detector at the LHC in 2010, corresponding to an integrated
luminosity of about 35 pb^-1. Using the decay lepton transverse momentum and
the missing transverse energy, the W decay angular distribution projected onto
the transverse plane is obtained and analysed in terms of helicity fractions
f0, fL and fR over two ranges of W transverse momentum (ptw): 35 < ptw < 50 GeV
and ptw > 50 GeV. Good agreement is found with theoretical predictions. For ptw
> 50 GeV, the values of f0 and fL-fR, averaged over charge and lepton flavour,
are measured to be : f0 = 0.127 +/- 0.030 +/- 0.108 and fL-fR = 0.252 +/- 0.017
+/- 0.030, where the first uncertainties are statistical, and the second
include all systematic effects.Comment: 19 pages plus author list (34 pages total), 9 figures, 11 tables,
revised author list, matches European Journal of Physics C versio
Observation of a new chi_b state in radiative transitions to Upsilon(1S) and Upsilon(2S) at ATLAS
The chi_b(nP) quarkonium states are produced in proton-proton collisions at
the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV and recorded by the ATLAS
detector. Using a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 4.4
fb^-1, these states are reconstructed through their radiative decays to
Upsilon(1S,2S) with Upsilon->mu+mu-. In addition to the mass peaks
corresponding to the decay modes chi_b(1P,2P)->Upsilon(1S)gamma, a new
structure centered at a mass of 10.530+/-0.005 (stat.)+/-0.009 (syst.) GeV is
also observed, in both the Upsilon(1S)gamma and Upsilon(2S)gamma decay modes.
This is interpreted as the chi_b(3P) system.Comment: 5 pages plus author list (18 pages total), 2 figures, 1 table,
corrected author list, matches final version in Physical Review Letter
- …