British Geological Survey (BGS)

British Geological Survey (BGS)

The BGS OGC API provides access to geological, geophysical, and environmental data across the UK and offshore areas. No authentication required.

Data Model

• Collection — A themed dataset (e.g. boreholes, earthquakes, geological maps). Each collection has an ID, title, description, and spatial extent.
• Feature — A single record within a collection (GeoJSON format). Contains a geometry (point/polygon) and properties specific to the collection type.

Key Collections

• onshoreboreholeindex — UK onshore borehole records with location, depth, and scan links
• agsboreholeindex — AGS-format borehole data with geotechnical properties
• historicalearthquakes — Historical UK earthquakes with magnitude, depth, and date
• recentearthquakes — Recent seismic events
• landslideindex — National Landslide Database records
• bgsgeology625kbedrock — 1:625k scale bedrock geology map
• bgsgeology625ksuperficial — 1:625k scale superficial deposits map
• bgsgeology625kfaults — 1:625k scale geological faults
• aeromag — Aeromagnetic survey data
• geomag-observatory-index — Geomagnetic observatory locations

Spatial Queries

• bbox — Bounding box filter as minLon,minLat,maxLon,maxLat (WGS84)
• limit — Max features per request (default 10, API may cap at 10000)
• offset — Skip records for pagination

Gotchas

• All geometry is in WGS84 (EPSG:4326) longitude/latitude.
• Use f=json parameter to request JSON format (default may be HTML).
• Some collections contain hundreds of thousands of records — always use limit and bbox to constrain queries.
• Feature IDs are numeric within each collection.