Open Government Licence (OGL)

World Heritage Sites are described by UNESCO as exceptional places of ‘outstanding universal value’ and ‘belonging to all the peoples of the world, irrespective of the territory on which they are located’.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) seeks to protect and preserve such sites through an international treaty called the Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, drawn up in 1972

Scottish Ministers identify and put forward sites to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport for nomination.

This dataset comprises Scotland's cultural World Heritage Sites.Once a World Heritage Site is inscribed, under the Convention, member states have a duty to protect, conserve and present such sites for future generations.

Historic Marine Protected Areas ‘Historic MPAs’ are designated under Section 67 of the Marine Scotland Act 2010 to protect marine historic assets (e.g historic shipwrecks) of national importance within Scottish territorial waters.

The Scottish Government is committed to clean, healthy, safe, productive, biologically diverse marine and coastal environments, managed to meet the long-term needs of people and nature. This includes protecting and, where appropriate, enhancing our most important historic wrecks and other marine heritage sites in such a way that they can be valued and understood. One way Scottish Ministers can achieve this is by designating nationally important marine historic assets in Scottish territorial waters as Historic Marine Protected Areas under the Marine (Scotland) Act 2010.

The data shows the boundaries of all Historic Marine Protected Areas in Scotland. You should refer to the Historic Marine Protected Area site documentation for exact locations of individual boundary points and supplementary information.

This layer is displays a fine scale common/ harbour seal (Phoca vitulina) at sea usage map. These ‘usage’ maps are produced by looking at movement data from telemetry tagged seals between 2003 and 2015. The resulting patterns of usage are scaled to population levels using data collected in aerial survey counts at haul-out sites, to produce estimates of mean density at a spatial resolution of 0.6 km x 0.6 km grid cells.

Alongside these maps, a report is available at (https://data.marine.gov.scot/dataset/fine-scale-harbour-seal-sea-usage-mapping-around-orkney-and-north-coast-scotland), that describes how fine-scale harbour seal usage maps around Orkney and the north coast of Scotland can be used and interpreted, as well as the caveats and limitations, and methodology used to produce them.

This layer was created to support Marine Scotland's Wild Harvesting of Seaweed and Seagrass SEA Environmental Report. The layer includes spatial information on known areas where seaweed and seagrass (Wracks) is currently harvested.