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monitoring
Monitoring

Marine Directorate undertakes a wide range of monitoring covering many aspects of the Scottish marine ecosystem.

Monitoring is undertaken in Scottish Inshore Waters, using networks of volunteers and automatic recording equipment, as well as in Scottish Offshore Waters, using the MSS research vessels MRV Alba na Mara and MRV Scotia.

Marine Scotland Science also participates national monitoring programmes, such as:

  • UK Marine Monitoring and Assessment Strategy (UKMMAS)
  • UK Marine Environmental Change Network (MECN)
  • UK Marine Environmental Data and Information Network (MEDIN)

This group provides published data from monitoring these activities. For many activities, there are national or international standards for how the monitoring is undertaken.

Data Extent

License

UK Open Government Licence (OGL)

Other Access

The information on this page (the dataset metadata) is also available in these formats.

JSON RDF

via the DKAN API

Social

Mapping risk from non-indigenous species in Scottish coastal and transitional waters - Interactive Maps

A html with three interactive maps
The interactive maps show the results of the Scottish Government Marine Directorate analysis to map areas of high risk from introduction of non-indigenous species (NIS) to assist in planning monitoring strategies for NIS.

The maps show the patches of highest risk from introduction and internal spread, those high risk patches within a marine protected area with a benthic feature, and the boundary of that MPA, and patches of highest risk of introduction and internal spread that also have a high risk of establishment by D. vexillum.

The three maps show these layers when all activities that can cause spread of NIS are considered, when only those associated with shipping or recreational boating are considered, and only those associated with aquaculture activities.
The map for shipping and recreational boating also includes a layer on the point location of ports, harbours and marinas.
The map for aquaculture also includes a layer on the point locations of active fish and shellfish farms.

doi: 
https://doi.org/10.7489/12569-1
Citation: 
Scottish Government, Marine Directorate. 2026. Mapping risk from non-indigenous species in Scottish coastal and transitional waters - Interactive Maps. doi: 10.7489/12569-1

Data and Resources

environment
human activity
Non-indigenous species
FieldValue
Publisher
Monitoring
Modified
2026-07-21
Release Date
2026-07-20
Identifier
f00272b8-42a5-47ce-a119-26060b0a6636
Spatial / Geographical Coverage Area
POLYGON ((-8.9208984375 55.641561536874, -8.9208984375 61.027368140694, -0.17578125 61.027368140694, -0.17578125 55.641561536874))
Temporal Coverage
2024-04-01 to 2026-03-31
Language
English (United Kingdom)
License
UK Open Government Licence (OGL)
Data Dictionary

The patches presented on the maps area the outputs of the risk mapping exercise.

They also display a subset of Marine Protected Area boundaries. The boundaries and information on SACs were downloaded from JNCC (https://hub.jncc.gov.uk/assets/598a60db-9323-4781-b5a8-dcf0ca3b29f9) in October 2023 and the boundaries for nature conservation MPAs and SSSIs were downloaded from NatureScot (https://opendata.nature.scot/search?groupIds=9828d34c7aee46919f28ccc859e...) in June 2025.

The location of ports, harbours and marinas data was provided by Marine Directorate GIS team. Metadata is available from https://marine.gov.scot/maps/23
The details of Aquaculture sites were exported from https://aquaculture.scotland.gov.uk/data/site_details.aspx in June 2024

All analyses were done using R version 4.3.1
R Core Team (2023). _R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria, https://www.R-project.org.

The packages used to create the interactive plots are cited below:

htmltools

Cheng J, Sievert C, Schloerke B, Chang W, Xie Y, Allen J (2023). htmltools: Tools for HTML. R package version 0.5.6, https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=htmltools.

htmlwidgets

Vaidyanathan R, Xie Y, Allaire J, Cheng J, Sievert C, Russell K (2023). htmlwidgets: HTML Widgets for R. R package version 1.6.2, https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=htmlwidgets.

leaflet

Cheng J, Schloerke B, Karambelkar B, Xie Y (2024). leaflet: Create Interactive Web Maps with the JavaScript 'Leaflet' Library. R package version 2.2.2, https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=leaflet.

RColorBrewer

Neuwirth E (2022). RColorBrewer: ColorBrewer Palettes. R package version 1.1-3, https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=RColorBrewer.

sf

Pebesma, E., & Bivand, R. (2023). Spatial Data Science: With Applications in R. Chapman and Hall/CRC.
https://doi.org/10.1201/9780429459016
Pebesma, E., 2018. Simple Features for R: Standardized Support for Spatial Vector Data. The R Journal 10 (1), 439-446, https://doi.org/10.32614/RJ-2018-009

sgplot

Byers A (2023). sgplot: Graphic Styles and Colours for Scottish Government Plots.
https://github.com/DataScienceScotland/sgplot, https://DataScienceScotland.github.io/sgplot.

terra

Hijmans R (2025). terra: Spatial Data Analysis. R package version 1.8-29, https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=terra.
Contact Name
Scottish Government, Marine Directorate
Contact Email
contactus@gov.scot
Public Access Level
Public