BGS Earth Material Classes: A Geological Classification System

BGS Earth Material Classes (concepts) is a classification of all types of earth material or other substance that may be recorded in a geological log or section. The British Geological Survey (BGS) publishes these concepts as linked data, available under the OGL-UK-3.0 license. The dataset was last updated on 2026-06-17.

Use Cases

• Standardizing geological log entries based on the BGS Rock Classification Scheme.
• Enhancing semantic search and data integration for geological databases using linked data concepts.
• Training or validating machine learning models for automated lithology classification from textual descriptions.

Strengths

• Based on the authoritative BGS Rock Classification Scheme (RCSv3).
• Published as linked data, facilitating machine-readable integration.
• Available under the permissive OGL-UK-3.0 license.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

British Geological Survey (BGS)

Collection Method

Published classification scheme (RCSv3) converted to linked data.

Time Range

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Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-17 12:31:55.414273; freshness should be verified.

Geography

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