BGS soil property data layers including parent material, soil texture, group, grain size, thickness and European Soil Bureau description. These data are delivered under the terms of the Open Government Licence (http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/), subject to the following acknowledgement accompanying the reproduced BGS materials: Contains British Geological Survey materials copyright NERC [year]. Contact us if you create something new and innovative that could benefit others usingbgsdata@bgs.ac.uk.

The British Geological Survey (BGS) in collaboration with the Environment Agency (EA) has developed a web-based tool that provides an indication of whether suitable conditions exist in a given area for Open-loop Ground Source Heat Pumps (GSHP). The tool is developed within a GIS and maps the potential for open-loop GSHP installations (heating/cooling output >100kW) in England and Wales at the 1:250,000 scale. Data layers from this tool are available to view in this service. The data in this service is available to access for free on the basis it is only used for your personal, teaching, and research purposes provided all are non-commercial in nature as described on http://www.bgs.ac.uk/about/copyright/non_commercial_use.html. Where commercial use is required, licences are available from the British Geological Survey (BGS). Your use of any information provided by the BGS is at your own risk. BGS gives no warranty, condition or representation as to the quality, accuracy or completeness of the information or its suitability for any use or purpose. All implied conditions relating to the quality or suitability of the information, and all liabilities arising from the supply of the information (including any liability arising in negligence) are excluded to the fullest extent permitted by law.

The BGS has been commissioned by Defra to provide guidance on what are 'normal' levels of contaminant concentrations in English soils in support of the revision of the Part 2A Contaminated Land Statutory Guidance. The domain polygons and other data produced by this work are served as WMS here.

Data from the British Geological Survey's GeoIndex Geochemistry theme are made available for viewing here. GeoIndex is a website that allows users to search for information about BGS data collections covering the UK and other areas world wide. Access is free, the interface is easy to use, and it has been developed to enable users to check coverage of different types of data and find out some background information about the data. More detailed information can be obtained by further enquiry via the web site: www.bgs.ac.uk/geoindex.

This layer shows data collected mainly by the Geochemical Baseline Survey of the Environment (G-BASE) programme. Geochemical data are available for soil samples for the Humber-Trent and East Anglia atlas areas (see the Geochemical atlas areas layer). Samples for East Midlands and part of Southeast England have been collected and are currently either undergoing analysis or data conditioning. More than twenty urban areas have also been sampled and top soil analyses are available for these urban areas (Belfast, Cardiff, Corby, Coventry, Derby, Doncaster, Glasgow, Hull, Ipswich, Leicester, Lincoln, Manchester, Mansfield, Northampton, Nottingham, Peterborough, Scunthorpe, Sheffield, Swansea, Stoke, Telford, Wolverhampton and York). Regional samples are collected at an average density of one site per 2 square kilometres, urban sampling is at a density of 4 samples per square kilometre. Top soil samples are collected at a depth of 5 - 20cm. It is sieved through a 2mm mesh and milled to less than 150 microns. The data include analyses for some or all of the following elements by XRFS: Mg, P, K, Ca, Ti, Mn, Fe, V, Cr, Co, Ba, Ni, Cu, Zn, Ga, As, Se, Rb, Sr, Y, Zr, Nb, Mo, Pb, Bi, Th, U, Ag, Cd, Sn, Sb, Cs, La, Ce, Ge, Sc, Se, Br, Hf, Ta, W, Tl, Te and I. Loss on Ignition (LOI) and pH (in a slurry of 0.01 M CaCl2 ) is now routinely determined on 50% of regional and all urban samples.