NatureScot Spatial Data Hub

What it contains

Statutory nature conservation designations and habitat data for Scotland: Sites of Special Scientific Interest, Special Areas of Conservation, Special Protection Areas, Ramsar sites, National Nature Reserves, Geological Conservation Review sites, Wild Land Areas, carbon and peatland class 2016. These are the primary environmental constraint layers for drilling site selection in Scotland.

When you need it

Useful at these project stages, from the working group's stage matrix:

SelectDefine

Matched on

Constraints, regulation and consenting data (not a matrix item)

Assigned by

Matched to data items the matrix names

Coverage and detail

Nations

Scotland

Resolution

Site polygon boundaries digitised at 1:10,000

Formats

GeoJSON, CSV, KML, Shapefile, GeoTIFF; FeatureServer

Update cadence

Varies; designations updated as notified, typically quarterly

Access and machine route

Licence as stated

Open Government Licence v3

Assertion source

as published by NatureScot (Scottish Natural Heritage)

Protocol

Esri ArcGIS REST / Hub API; OGC WMS/WFS

Harvest note

Yes - fully harvestable machine_endpoint field held prose, not a URL: ArcGIS Hub API + per-dataset FeatureServer /query (f=geojson); WMS and WFS links published per item

Caveats

Peatland/carbon layers are class-based screening products, not depth-resolved. SiteLink (the citation and condition-monitoring system) is a separate web application without an API - see SCO-014.

Classification

Category

Constraints, Regulation & Consenting

Sub-category

4.1 Environmental designations & protected sites

Assigned by

Stated by the source

Data form

Tabular, Vector

Evidence confidence

Not yet assessed. Only a person can set this.

How current this entry is

Last updated here

2026-09-22

Last checked against the holder

2026-09-07

Checked by a person

Not yet. Nobody has read this entry.

Catalogue id

naturescot-spatial-data-hub