Issue 4 - October 2013

Scotland's environment web
October 21, 2013

Where you can find information about the latest developments on the website along with news from our partners.

The 'get involved' section, that provides information and resources to help users get involved in discussion, monitoring and action, has also progressed with a new interactive diagram which details the journey of data collected by citizen scientists and a new page listing mobile apps to help users get more involved in their environment. If you come across a cool mobile app that can help people get involved in the environment in Scotland, contact us and we can add it to the list.

The LIFE+ Project section of the website is used to communicate and provide updates about the project and we continue to add any relevant information and documentation. A list of project actions with descriptions and 'The impact of citizen science activities on participant attitudes and behaviour' report that the project has been working on with The Conservation Volunteers, have recently been uploaded and are available now.

The redesign of this page is part of a much wider relaunch which we are planning for the website as a result of the visioning exercise carried out by Abertay University. To ensure the vision for the future development of Scotland’s environment website reflects the needs of the wide range of users, Abertay carried out user engagement and research. The relaunch of the new website is planned for next year and will include the latest State of environment report for Scotland, environmental trends and indicators, citizen science project register, and a new refreshed, user friendly design.

New water body classification tool launched

Scotland’s environment web partners are pleased to announce that their first data analysis application is now available. The new water tool allows you to easily visualise the quality of rivers, lochs and seas in Scotland. Not only that but you can interrogate the latest Water Framework Directive classification results, view the changes in classification results between years and drill down to find out exactly what problems there are with water quality in your area and what is being done to fix them.

Scotland’s environment web is using software called Spotfire which is a visual data analysis tool which can read data from any source and multiple sources all at once. This exciting new application means water data can be filtered to your area of interested and downloaded in the format most suitable to you. It’s a new and interactive way of analysing and understanding environmental data.

This is just the first in a series of applications which Scotland’s environment web is developing to visualise and analyse data. Climate change projections, climate change trends and household waste tools will also be launching on the web site over the next few months. See our latest core briefing note below for more information on Spotfire.

If you have an idea for a new data visualisation tool, please fill out our request form and email to seweb.administrator@sepa.org.uk

Core briefing no.6 published

The sixth core briefing has now been published. Spotfire is the subject of the next in our series of core briefing documents which give a detailed overview of different aspects of the project. This document is published as the first spotfire app is launched and gives more detailed information about what spotfire is and how Scotland’s environment web will use this technology to its full potential.

Land information search coming soon

The Land Information Search (LIS) is due to go live at the beginning of November. The Land Information Search is a map based tool that allows you to search for data relating to an area of land that you have identified.

This easy to use tool allows you to define your area of interest by either simply placing a point on the map, or by drawing more detailed shapes to better represent your area.  The search results will highlight the presence of a range of features such as scheduled monuments, sites of special scientific interest and native woodlands that may fall within your area of interest including a 500m buffer.  The search results are delivered directly from Scotland's environment web partners, therefore ensuring the use of the most up to date, published information.

Land Information Search has been designed specifically as a search tool and is not intended to be a map browser.  However it does enable the user to view individual results on the map against their area of interest.

The tool is intended for applicants of rural development contracts and/or felling licences, but is likely to be of use to anyone interested in finding out about certain features in a particular location.

Your environment, your view – get involved!

Our youth and public discussions are now well underway.

The public online discussion follows on from a series of workshops which have already been successfully held around the country, where members of the public shared their views on their own environmental issues as well as the five topics highlighted above. This has now opened up online until 28^th October to get even more people involved.

Young people are having their say too. We want to inspire young people to enter a competition, giving us ideas on how they can make a difference to their environment. The youth discussion has some fantastic prizes, and is open to all young people throughout Scotland, whether in school, as part of a group or as an individual.

Check out our new podcast

Our first podcast is available online now. As the website continues to develop we are looking at new and varying ways to present information and give visitors the option of how they would like to view and receive that information. The rivers and canals topic under ‘our environment’ is the first podcast; however we intend to produce videos and podcasts for a number of other topics in the near future so watch this space!

Find us on Facebook

Digital communications are developing at an increasing rate and in order to achieve our objectives, Scotland’s environment web needs to develop and extend its web presence. Social media offers opportunities to share environmental information in a number of different formats to different audiences. As part of the social media strategy, a number of messages have been tweeted from partners Twitter accounts and a Scotland’s environment web Facebook page has now launched.

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