FCS National Forest Estate: Forestry and Recreation Map Layers for Scotland

Scotland's national forest estate is mapped through an interactive web service containing nine data layers. The layers include recreation points, routes, areas, roads, bridges, sub-compartments, ownership, legal boundaries, and the Galloway Dark Skies Park. Forestry Commission Scotland, with cooperation from Scottish Natural Heritage, provides this service, which was last updated on July 8, 2026.

Use Cases

• Plan recreational trail networks based on the Recreation Routes and Recreation Points layers.
• Analyze land ownership and management units based on the Ownership and Sub-compartments layers.
• Assess infrastructure for forest access based on the Roads and Bridges layers.
• Identify areas for dark sky preservation based on the Galloway Dark Skies Park layer.

Strengths

• Contains nine distinct thematic map layers for detailed analysis.
• Layers can be switched on and off independently for flexible visualization.
• Service is hosted by Scottish Natural Heritage on behalf of Forestry Commission Scotland, indicating official provenance.

Limitations

• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

Forestry Commission Scotland, hosted by Scottish Natural Heritage.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-07-08 13:33:27.194782; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Scotland, United Kingdom.