Welcome to our new website: environment.gov.scot

Scotland's environment web
October 05, 2017

We’ve seen many changes to the face of Scotland’s environment website over the years – reflecting how technology, design and user needs are constantly evolving. And we’ve come a long way since we started with that initial idea of creating Scotland’s first ‘gateway to what you want to know about the environment’ back in 2009.

So what’s new on the website?

New user focussed design and mobile first: The whole website has a new up-to-date look that has been informed by feedback from our users. We’ve designed the site with mobile devices in mind, meaning you’ll find the website and data more accessible on your mobile devices. And for our desktop web users, you’ll find an enhanced experience too.

Easier to find what you’re looking for: New navigation at the top of each page; an enhanced search that allows you to use key words to search web pages, map data layers, data analysis tools, blogs, PDFs and documents; and regularly refreshed links on the home page highlighting data, tools and information, and providing suggestion for information you might find of interest.

Our environment: Topics covering many important issues facing Scotland’s environment, with key messages on why they are important, data to help understand current status, policy and legislation that drive action, further information on what is being done, and details of organisations active on the topic that can provide more detailed guidance and expertise. Each topic also has links to relevant data and information elsewhere on the website and to a wide range of other information published by our partners.

Map tool: You’ll see big changes on Map tool - our most popular data viewing tool on the website. You can now search for the data you are interested in by title, publishing organisation, theme and keyword, and view any combination of spatial data from different sources on the one map. Scotland’s environment website is the only place you can do this.

Useful data sources and map tools: The website is a rich source of information and data published by our partners. It’s now much clearer to see who publishes the data accessible throughout our website, and we’ve provided you with recommended useful data sources and other map tools developed by our partners that you might find useful.

Scotland’s environment website isn’t where our gateway to information and data finishes. Through partnerships and collaboration, Scotland’s environment web is a growing network of interconnected, trusted and authoritative sources of data and information. These websites are branded as ‘Part of Scotland’s environment’ and contain more detailed and specialised environmental data on certain topics. This currently includes:

• Scotland’s soils - data and information on Scotland’s soils
• Scotland’s noise - view maps of noise from road, rail, air traffic and industry
• Scotland’s aquaculture - data about the aquaculture industry in Scotland
• NBN Atlas Scotland - submit and view data about plants, animals and habitats in Scotland

This network is growing so look out for the ‘Part of...’ logo over the coming months.

But the work to evolve Scotland’s environment website doesn’t just stop here. We’re already working on a new and improved version of the Land Information Search tool, and a data catalogue that will help you search and discover all the data resources you can access through the website. You can also expect to see new Our environment topics, map data layers and projects on Project Finder being added as we develop new topics.

It’s important to us to know what you think; we’ll continue to seek your feedback to make sure we can provide the best product possible to help you find and view environmental data and information. So this may be the latest incarnation of Scotland’s environment website but by no means do we expect it to be the last.

Don’t forget...

If you have saved bookmarks and links to the old Scotland’s environment website, don’t forget to update these with the new website www.environment.gov.scot

Watch out for updates over the coming months that will provide a more in-depth view of the different features of Scotland’s environment website and what are partners are doing to address some of the big environmental issues facing Scotland. You can do this by looking out for our latest blogs and following us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

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