Bathymetry Geodatabases to Assist in Wave and Tidal Energy Site Selection

Marine Scotland Science has created geodatabases for the areas surveyed in the Pentland Firth and west of Lewis. The purpose of the geodatabases is to provide regional guidance to assist developers involved in identifying suitable sites for localised survey work in support of site specific developments. The parameters available to assist in the identification of sites are depth of water, seabed slope and distance offshore. All the layers available from this section of Marine Scotland Interactive can be viewed using ArcGis Explorer and are projected using British National Grid.

A number of maps have already been created using the databases and exported as grouped layer packages. The maps have been queried using depth and seabed slope e.g.

By_10_30m_Slp_0_10deg

This filename should be read as the area of seabed between 10 to 30m depth and between 0 to 10° slope. The buffer file records a series of concentric rings that extend offshore in 1 km increments. This file can be opened together with the maps in ArcGis Explorer to determine the distance offshore for the areas selected based on depth and seabed slope. Opening combinations of the maps enables comparisons to be made between the areas available for development in terms of increasing depth or increasing seabed slope.