Predictive Seaduck Prey Habitat Model for Two Scottish Marine Protected Areas

NatureScot commissioned a project to map prey-supporting habitats for wintering seaducks within two marine Special Protection Areas. The resources include a project report, technical report, interactive maps, and a CSV file detailing species-biotope associations. Predictive model outputs map the known and predicted distributions of bivalve and gastropod prey and their seabed habitats.

Use Cases

• Identify critical prey habitats for seaduck conservation based on species-biotope association data.
• Model the distribution of benthic invertebrates like bivalves and gastropods within marine SPAs.
• Support site management decisions for achieving Favourable Conservation Status for vulnerable species.
• Evaluate the use of predictive modeling approaches for marine habitat mapping.

Strengths

• Includes predictive model outputs mapping prey distributions for two specific marine SPAs.
• Project resources contain multiple components: reports, interactive HTML maps, and a structured CSV file.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and file sizes are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Provenance

Source

NatureScot, commissioned via the Government Digital Service.

Collection Method

Predictive modeling and mapping approaches applied to marine survey data.

Time Range

Project commissioned in December 2020; temporal coverage of underlying data is not specified.

Freshness

Project was commissioned in December 2020; data likely reflects conditions around that period.

Geography

Moray Firth and the Outer Firth of Forth and St Andrews Bay Complex (OFFSABC) marine SPAs in Scotland.