UK Special Areas of Conservation: Interest Feature Details with Designation Status

Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) are strictly protected sites designated under the EC Habitats Directive. This dataset contains one row for each combination of individual site and interest feature, detailing habitat or species coverage, marine status, and designation codes. The data was substantively updated on 22 December 2015 as part of a UK-wide submission to the EU Commission.

Use Cases

• Analyze the proportion of marine versus terrestrial protected areas based on the IS_MARINE column.
• Track the designation status progression of conservation sites from candidate to final SAC based on DESIGNATION_STATUS_CODE.
• Assess habitat extent and percentage cover for specific sites using the habextent and habcover columns.
• Evaluate data quality for conservation feature records using the DATA_QUALITY categories (Good, Moderate, Poor, Data Deficient).
• Categorize interest features by taxonomic group (e.g., Amphibians, Birds, Mammals) using the SPECIES_GROUP codes.

Strengths

• Includes a time series of archived versions, allowing analysis of changes in site count and feature details over time.
• Provides detailed metadata for key columns like IS_MARINE, DESIGNATION_STATUS_CODE, and DATA_QUALITY.
• Contains one record per site-feature combination, enabling granular analysis of conservation targets.

Limitations

• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The core data columns were revised in December 2015; earlier archived versions have a slightly different structure.
• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.

Provenance

Source

Joint Nature Conservation Committee

Collection Method

Derived from UK-wide data submitted to the EU Commission as part of the Standard Data Form updating exercise.

Time Range

Archived versions correspond to European submissions; a substantive update was applied on 22 December 2015 (Tranche 50).

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-14 09:45:33.751451; freshness should be verified.

Geography

United Kingdom