New Walloon geological maps at scale 1:25.000

Doelstellingen

A first Belgian geological cartography campain, started in 1890 and ended in 1919, led to the publication of geological maps at scale 1:40,000. New interest in the knowledge of Belgian subsoil, related to several topics such as territory planning, hydrogeology and natural resources management, have required a second geological mapping campain. This one, now under the Regions competence, has been established for Wallonia in 1989 by the Ministry of the Walloon Region for an estimated 20 years period.
This wide-spreading project permits to update data stored at the Geological Survey of Belgium. Data, integrated into a data base related to a GIS, could be consulted in the future through the website of the DGRNE of the Walloon Region. The project goal is also to produce and to sale printed geological maps (1:25,000 scale-map) with their associated booklets.

Realization

The new geological mapping campaign of the Walloon Region is realized through the work of 5 teams of two geologists and a technical team linked to the Catholic University of Louvain (UCL), Free University of Brussels (ULB), Liège University (Ulg), Polytechnic Faculty of Mons (FPMS) and the Belgian royal Institute of Natural Sciences (RBINS). The mission of the guiding committee consists in supervising scientific and technical aspects of the project.
The updating of Walloon geological maps permits to collect new data and the treatment of the previous collected data since the first mapping campain. This new geological cartography campain is essentially based on fieldworks for collecting new fielddata necessary for the cartographical work at scale 1:10,000. These maps are reproduced and published at scale 1:25,000. A reading committee supervises each map before printing. The printing procedure leds to the publication of a geological map with its explanatory booklet as well as outcrops map associated with a data base describing every outcrops.