Raster

This assessment has been developed by NAFC Marine Centre, on behalf of the Shetland Islands Marine Planning Partnership, with guidance from the Shetland Islands Marine Planning Partnership Advisory Group. The assessment provides a data baseline to support the development of a regional marine plan under the Marine Scotland Act (2010).

Please visit the Shetland Islands Regional Marine Planning Partnership website (under Data Provider) for more information, including the data originators for all the individual data sets used for the maps. It is not possible to list all the originators here. As the assessment is a snapshot in time, more up to date data may be available on MS Maps NMPi along with data originator details.

The Viewshed tool in ArcGIS has been used to develop a GIS layer, with approximately 30 m resolution, showing the visibility of locations in the sea in terms of the number of buildings with a view of any given location i.e. the higher the number the more buildings that can see that marine location from the land.

The analysis is featured in the paper  O’Higgins. et al. (2018) ‘Many Points of View?: Visibility Mapping for Marine Spatial’, 13, pp. 302–314. doi: 10.2902/1725-0463.2018.13.art18. 

High resolution bathymetry data of Rockall and Helen's Reef collected 2011-2012 as part of the ROAME Offshore Fisheries and Conservation (OFFCON) project. Rockall, a tiny island just 19 metres high, sits on the very extremity of Scotland’s marine environment. Some 180 miles due west of St. Kilda, it is buffeted year round by the extreme winds and swell that the North Atlantic weather generates. As such, it is Scotland’s only truly offshore shallow water ecosystem. The islet of Rockall is actually the only part of vast plateau of submerged continent that remains above sea-level.

 

 

In 2014, the Scottish Government commissioned Land Use Consultants to undertake a study to fill data gaps on marine recreation and tourism activity in Scotland and to provide baseline information for marine planning. The project was designed and undertaken with the industry and co-funded by the Scottish Government with additional contributions from The Firth of Clyde Forum, The Crown Estate and The Scottish Coastal Forum.  This layer depicts sea angling from the shore.