Estimated Urban Soil Chemistry

The Estimated Urban Soil Chemistry data are derived by spatial interpolation of the Measured Urban Soil Chemistry data. A unique feature of this dataset is the inclusion for the first time of estimated bioaccessible arsenic and lead data. The Estimated Urban Soil Chemistry data indicates the estimated geometric mean concentrations (mg kg-1) of Arsenic, Cadmium, Chromium, Nickel and Lead in topsoil derived by spatial interpolation of the Measured Urban Soil Chemistry data. Estimated bioaccessible As and Pb concentrations are derived using linear regression models of the relationship between total and bioaccessible concentrations. The Estimated Urban Soil Chemistry data can be used to assist Local Planning Authorities to identify those areas where a risk assessment may need to be carried out by developers. Comparison of this spatially referenced geochemical data with information on current or historic land use and geological information might help environmental professionals decide whether high potentially harmful element (PHE) concentrations in topsoils can be attributed to geogenic or anthropogenic sources. The dataset is based on, and limited to, an interpretation of the records in the possession of the BGS at the time the dataset was created. This dataset consists of two shape files Estimated Urban Soil Chemistry (As, Cr, Ni) and Estimated Urban Soil Chemistry (Cd, Pb).

Date (Creation): 2012

Citation identifier: http://data.bgs.ac.uk/id/dataHolding/13605688

Point of contact

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
British Geological Survey	Enquiries	enquiries@bgs.ac.uk	Distributor
British Geological Survey	Enquiries	enquiries@bgs.ac.uk	Point of contact
British Geological Survey	Enquiries	enquiries@bgs.ac.uk	Custodian

Maintenance and update frequency: As needed

GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0

Geology

BGS Thesaurus of Geosciences

UK Location (INSPIRE)
Soil chemistry
Lead
Chromium
Nickel
Arsenic
Cadmium

dataCentre

UK Location (INSPIRE)

Keywords

NERC_DDC

Access constraints: Other restrictions

Other constraints: Available to 3rd parties under licence.

Use constraints: Other restrictions

Other constraints: The copyright of materials derived from the British Geological Survey's work is vested in the Natural Environment Research Council [NERC]. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a retrieval system of any nature, without the prior permission of the copyright holder, via the BGS Intellectual Property Rights Manager. Use by customers of information provided by the BGS, is at the customer's own risk. In view of the disparate sources of information at BGS's disposal, including such material donated to BGS, that BGS accepts in good faith as being accurate, the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) gives no warranty, expressed or implied, as to the quality or accuracy of the information supplied, or to the information's suitability for any use. NERC/BGS accepts no liability whatever in respect of loss, damage, injury or other occurence however caused.

Other constraints: The dataset is made available to external clients under BGS Digital Data Licence terms and conditions. Revert to the IPR Section ( iprdigital@bgs.ac.uk) if further advice is required with regard to permitted usage.

Spatial representation type: Vector

Denominator: 50000

Language: English

Topic category

Geoscientific information

Geographic identifier: GBN
ISO 3166_2 2009 revision

Geographic identifier: GREAT BRITAIN [id=139600]
British Geological Survey Gazetteer: Geographical hierarchy from Geosaurus 1979 creation

Begin date: 1968

End date: 2012

Supplemental Information: User Guide for the BGS Soil Chemistry Data for Environmental Assessments (BGS Open Report OR/12/050)

Unique resource identifier: OSGB 1936 / British National Grid (EPSG::27700)

Distribution format

Name	Version

Distributor contact

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
British Geological Survey	Enquiries	enquiries@bgs.ac.uk	Distributor

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
	https://www.bgs.ac.uk/datasets/bgs-soil-chemistry-for-environmental-assessments/	Soil chemistry for environmental assessments

Hierarchy level: Dataset

Other: dataset

Conformance result

Title: INSPIRE Implementing rules laying down technical arrangements for the interoperability and harmonisation of Geology

Date (Publication): 2011

Explanation: See the referenced specification

Pass: No

Conformance result

Title: Commission Regulation (EU) No 1089/2010 of 23 November 2010 implementing Directive 2007/2/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards interoperability of spatial data sets and services

Date (Publication): 2010-12-08

Explanation: See http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2010:323:0011:0102:EN:PDF

Pass: No

Statement: Soil geochemical surveys have been carried out at 24 urban centres in England, Scotland and Wales. Most of the surveys were undertaken by the BGS as part of the Geochemical Surveys of Urban Environments (GSUE) project (Fordyce et al., 2005), whereas London, Wolverhampton, Manchester and Glasgow were sampled as part of larger multi-disciplinary projects. The concentrations of many potentially harmful elements including arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), chromium (Cr), nickel (Ni), and lead (Pb) are above 'natural' background in urban environments as a result of a range of contaminative processes. Urban geochemical surveying is based on the collection of samples on a 500 m grid at a density of approximately 4 samples per km2 across the urban areas. Samples were collected from open ground as close as possible to the centre of each 500 m grid cell. At each sample site, composite samples based on 5 sub-samples taken at the centre and four corners of a 20m square, were collected from the topsoil ('A' soil sample; 5-20 cm depth) and subsurface ('S' soil sample; 35-50 cm depth). Approximately 40 chemical elements were determined in the <2mm size fraction of the 'A' soils. The Measured Urban Soil Chemistry data contain analysed results from these sampling campaigns. The Estimated Urban Soil Chemistry indicates the estimated topsoil total As, Cd, Cr, Ni and Pb concentrations (mg kg-1) derived by spatial interpolation of the point source urban soil chemistry data. Urban soil geochemical data generally have large positive skewness coefficients so were transformed by taking natural logarithms. To overcome the bias associated with traditional measures of location (mean) and scale (standard deviation) for log-normal data, the inverse distance weighted (IDW) mean and standard deviation of log transformed.