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Geology Digimap

General

Following an agreement made between the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), EDINA have developed a subscription service to deliver geological maps and data from the British Geological Survey to Higher and Further Education.

Geology Digimap is part of the Digimap Collection of online mapping and data delivery facilities. Users can view maps through their web browser, save maps for printing and download the geological map data for use in geographical information systems. There is also access to the Lexicon of Named Rock Units which has details for many of the rocks found on the map. You can find a Powerpoint demonstration of the service here.

Geology Digimap, available since January 2007, is free at the point of use for staff and students at subscribing higher and further education institutions and research councils (special conditions apply). Details of how to subscribe can be found here.

Data

Geology Digimap contains map data at scales ranging from 1:625,000 to 1:50,000 available for making maps online or for download. For a full list and detailed description see the Products Available page.

Complete coverage of Great Britain is available for all the products listed, except for a few areas of Wales at the most detailed level, at the moment. It is expected that the range of datasets that are available through Geology Digimap will increase over time.

If you want to know what you can and can't do with the maps and data from Digimap please read the BGS Data Licence Agreement. There is a set of Licence FAQs for further clarification.

Standard tasks

Standard tasks that Geology Digimap allows you to perform are:

  • selecting your area of interest in Great Britain by zooming and panning
  • viewing maps at one of five pre-defined scales with Ordnance Survey background maps:

    • 100 x 100 km view: using BGS 1:650,000 data and a generalised Ordnance Survey Strategi® data
    • 40 x 40 km view: using BGS 1:250,000 data and Ordnance Survey's Strategi® data
    • 16 x 16 km view: using BGS 1:250,000 data and Ordnance Survey's Meridian™ data
    • 8 x 8 km view: using BGS 1:50,000 data and Ordnance Survey's 1:50,000 Raster data
    • 4 x 4 km view: using BGS 1:50,000 data and Ordnance Survey's 1:50,000 Raster data

  • click on the map to identify individual rocks and find more information about them

Advanced tasks

In addition to the standard tasks listed above, Geology Digimap allows you to carry out a range of related, advanced tasks.

Download

Geology Download allows those with more specialist requirements to download geology map data for use in GIS software on their own desktop. It allows:

  • selection of map data product and area to download
  • data available in Shapefile and MIF/MID formats for use in a GIS
  • data selected using National Grid reference, BGS sheet name, place name or from a map

Rock Lexicon

There are links from the maps which allow users to find more information about individual rock types from the Lexicon. You can also:

  • search the Rock Lexicon by name, age or other specified criteria
  • filter searches for completeness of entry or rock age
  • create a map covering the extent of a rock unit