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New European-scale project led by NGU

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30.04.2008

The geological surveys of Europe are now launching a comprehensive mapping of the geochemical properties of agricultural soil and grazing lands throughout Europe.

The GEMAS-Project will uncover new knowledge about the geographical pattern of the chemistry of soils used to produce food, and the project is led by Clemens Reimann, NGU.

Clemens managed to obtain substantial industry funding for this project. The European metals industry, represented by EuroMetaux in Brussels, will back this project with 4 x 130.000 Euros, over 4 million NOK.

34 organisations collect samples

34 European Geological Survey Organisations have agreed to collect samples of arable land (ploughing layer, 0-20 cm) and of land under permanent grass cover (0-10 cm) at a density of 1 site per 2500 km2 in their territory.

The total area covered will be about 5.8 Million km2. The project is a continuation and extension of the Baltic Soil Survey which resulted in a very successful geochemical atlas that is one of the few geochemical atlasses that is sold out.

Further exciting projects

The EuroGeoSurveys Geochemistry working group had a meeting in Berlin from March 5-7, 2008. This meeting was used to discuss two further exiting projects of the group. Variation of chemical elements in European groundwater is determined using commercial mineral water samples from all over Europe.

The samples will all be analysed at the laboratories of BGR for more than 60 elements.

European groundwater atlas

Many participants travelled to the meeting with quite heavy baggage full of mineral water bottles. Results are expected at the end of this year and the group hopes to be able to publish a first atlas of "European Groundwater Quality" during 2009.

Some first interesting results about the influence of the different bottle materials on the analytical results are already submitted for publication.

This project is jointly led by Manfred Birke of BGR and Clemens Reimann of NGU.

Clemens Reimann | Source: alphagalileo
Further information: www.ngu.no

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