Marine

Making the most of marine data

December 15, 2015 by Marine Scotland Communications No Comments | Category Collaborations, Marine Directorate general, Marine Planning

Screenshot of National Marine Plan interactive

In the latest Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) ‘The Nature of Scotland’ magazine is an article highlighting the importance of marine data to managing Scotland’s seas sustainably. This timely article, co-written with Marine Scotland, sets out the growing use of data in support to such initiatives as the designation of Marine Protected Areas and, equally as important, it outlines the steps being taken to make marine data available to stakeholders and the wider public using the internet.

Marine Scotland has developed National Marine Plan interactive (NMPi), an on-line mapping portal, giving users access to appropriate data or data of interest. NMPi has grown in content and functionality over the last few years and the latest upgrade, based on stakeholder feedback, allows users to control the ordering of the layers to create better maps and save their work so that they can return to it later – or even share the file so that another user can open the map they have created. A feature has also been introduced to assist with displaying data that will help inform future assessments, including the ability to view a single set of NMPi data over multiple time periods.

Other enhancements are in preparation for 2016, as well as the inclusion of new data sets.

Marine Scotland works with SEPA, SNH, JNCC and MASTS to oversee NMPi content. If there are any particular data sets that would be useful to display on NMPi, please let us know.

More information

• National Marine Plan online (NMPo)
• Marine Protected Areas

Comments