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• About NatureScot
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• Climate change
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  • Our changing climate
  • Climate change impacts in Scotland
    • Impacts on habitats
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  • Nature-based solutions
    • Peatland ACTION Project
      • What we do
      • How to apply
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      • NatureScot calendar 2023 - Photo competition to mark Peatland ACTION 10 year anniversary
    • Land and soil
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  • Climate Change and Nature
• Funding and Projects
  • FIRNS - The Facility for Investment ready Nature in Scotland
    • FIRNS - Aims and Outcomes
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    • FIRNS - Contacts and Resources
  • IRNS
    • IRNS - Aims, Outcomes and Eligibility
  • Scottish Marine Environmental Enhancement Fund
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  • Nature Restoration Fund
    • Outcomes and Eligibility
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    • Contacts and Resources
  • NatureScot and the Year of Coasts and Waters 2020/21
  • Better Places Fund
    • Better Places Fund - outcomes and eligibility
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  • Future Routes Fund
  • Community-led Marine Biodiversity Monitoring Project
    • Marine Biodiversity Monitoring Handbook
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  • Green Infrastructure Strategic Intervention
    • About the Green Infrastructure Strategic Intervention
      • Outcomes and Horizontal Themes
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    • Projects
      • GI Fund Projects
        • Canal and North Gateway
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        • Climate-Ready Bishopbriggs!
        • Greater Easterhouse
        • Cuningar Loop Phase 2
        • The Treehouse
      • GI Community Engagement Fund Projects
        • Wild Ways Well
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        • Recovery through Green Infrastructure
        • 10,000 Raingardens: Glasgow Pilot
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        • Renfrewshire Living Water Project
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        • Growing Connections
      • GI and GICEF Project Updates
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  • Natural and Cultural Heritage Fund (NCHF)
    • Outcomes and eligibility
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• Landforms and geology
  • Scotland's rocks, landforms and soils
    • Rocks and minerals
      • Three billion years of earth history
      • Scotland’s geological foundations
        • North-west Seaboard: geological foundations
        • Northern Highlands: geological foundations
        • Grampian Highlands: geological foundations
        • Central Belt: geological foundations
        • Southern Uplands: geological foundations
      • How Scotland's geological foundations came together
        • Collision with England
        • Grampian Event
        • Scandian Event
      • Rocks formed since the foundations joined
        • Devonian rocks
        • Carboniferous rocks
        • Permian to Cretaceous rocks
        • Palaeogene and Neogene rocks
      • Fossils
    • Landforms
      • Caves and karst
      • Coasts
        • Scotland’s varied coasts
        • Our coastline’s geological and glacial inheritance
        • Sea-level history
        • Present and future sea levels
        • Coastal erosion
      • Ice Age landforms
        • The Ice Age
        • Ice-carved landscapes
        • Ice-transported debris
        • Meltwater channels and deposits
        • Periglacial features
        • After the ice
      • Landslides
        • Causes of landslides
        • Types of landslide
      • Rivers
        • Where our rivers run
        • How rivers and burns work
        • River types
    • Scotland's soils
  • Importance of geodiversity
    • Ecosystem dependence on geodiversity
    • Geodiversity and cultural heritage
    • Geodiversity and natural resources
    • Geodiversity as a scientific resource
    • Learning from past climate change
  • Pressures on geodiversity
    • Pressures on buried ancient pollen
    • Pressures on fossils
    • Pressures on landscape sculptures
    • Pressures on rivers and coasts
    • Pressures on rocks
    • Pressures on soils
  • Protecting our geodiversity
    • How to help safeguard geodiversity
    • Local geodiversity action plans
    • Geodiversity in protected areas
    • Codes for researchers and collectors
      • Helping to safeguard Skye's fossil heritage
      • Responsible fieldwork
      • Sampling for cosmogenic dating
      • Scottish Fossil Code
      • Scottish Core Code
      • Guidance on collecting geological samples from SSSIs in Scotland
    • Scotland’s Geodiversity Charter
    • The Geological Conservation Review
• Landscapes and habitats
  • About Scotland's landscapes
    • What is landscape?
    • Why our landscapes are important
    • Landscape variety in Scotland
  • Habitat types
    • Coast and seas
      • Large-scale features and Marine Protected Areas
        • Seamounts
        • Continental slope
        • Shelf Deeps
        • Shelf banks and mounds
        • Ocean fronts
      • Coastal habitats
        • Coastal cliffs
        • Coastal shingle
        • Machair
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        • Saltmarsh
        • Sand dunes
      • Marine habitats
        • North sea fan and sponge communities
        • Circalittoral sands
        • Seagrass
        • Burrowed mud
        • Cold-water coral
        • Flame shell beds
        • Horse mussel beds
        • Kelp beds
        • Maerl beds
        • Sea loch egg wrack beds
        • Sea lochs
        • Serpulid reefs
        • Tideswept channels
    • Farmland and croftland
      • Arable fields
      • Hedgerows and field margins
      • Lowland grassland
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      • Traditional orchards and wood pasture
    • Habitat definitions
    • Lochs, rivers and wetlands
      • Freshwater lochs
      • Lowland wetland
      • Ponds
      • River, stream and headwater
    • Mountains, heaths and bogs
      • Blanket bog
      • Grassland
      • Heath
      • Inland rock
      • Mountain heath and montane scrub
    • Urban habitats
      • Green networks
      • Urban greenspace
    • Woodland habitats
      • Scotland's Rainforest
        • Atlantic hazelwood
        • Western oakwood
      • Ashwood
      • Birchwood
      • Caledonian pinewood
      • Minor woodland types
      • Montane scrub
      • Wet woods
      • Wood pasture and parkland
  • Habitat Map of Scotland
• Plants, animals and fungi
  • Algae
    • Freshwater algae
      • Green algae
      • Blue-green algae
      • Yellow-brown algae
      • Golden algae
    • Marine algae
  • Amphibians and reptiles
    • Adder
    • Common lizard
    • Great crested newt
    • Marine turtles
    • Natterjack toad
    • Slow worm
  • Birds
    • Farmland and croftland birds
      • Chough
      • Corncrake
      • Wintering geese
    • Freshwater birds
      • Dipper
      • Osprey
      • Red-throated diver
    • Seabirds and shorebirds
      • Eider
      • Puffin
      • Storm petrel
    • Upland birds
      • Golden eagle
      • Red grouse
    • Urban birds
    • Woodland birds
      • Capercaillie
      • Crested tit
      • Redstart
  • Ferns
    • Bracken
    • Clubmosses
    • Horsetails
  • Fish
    • Freshwater fish
      • Allis shad and twaite shad
      • Arctic charr
      • Atlantic salmon
      • Brown trout
      • European eel
      • Lamprey
      • Other freshwater fish
      • Sparling
      • Stickleback
      • Vendace and powan
    • Sea fish
      • Skatespotter
      • Basking shark
      • Sandeel
      • Flapper Skate
  • Flowering plants
    • Coastal and marine plants
      • Scottish primrose
    • Farmland plants
    • Loch, river and marsh plants
    • Mountain, heath and bog plants
    • Urban plants
    • Woodland plants
  • Fungi
  • Invertebrates
    • Freshwater invertebrates
      • Dragonflies and damselflies
      • Freshwater pearl mussel
      • Riverflies
    • Land invertebrates
      • Bees, wasps and ants
      • Beetles
      • Butterflies and moths
      • Flies
      • Other land invertebrate groups
      • Slugs and snails
      • Spiders and harvestmen
      • Worms
    • Marine invertebrates
      • European spiny lobster
      • Native oyster
  • Lichens
  • Mammals
    • Land mammals
      • American mink
      • Badger
      • Bats
      • Deer
      • Eurasian beaver
      • Hares and rabbits
      • Other carnivores
        • Fox
        • Polecat and ferret
        • Stoat and weasel
      • Other small mammals
      • Otter
      • Pine marten
      • Red squirrel
      • Water voles
      • Wildcats
    • Marine mammals
      • Dolphins, whales and porpoises
      • Risso's dolphin
      • Bottlenose dolphin
      • Minke whale
      • Seals
  • Mosses and liverworts
• Scotland's Biodiversity
  • Scottish Biodiversity Strategy and COP15
    • Countdown to COP15
      • The Edinburgh Process and Edinburgh Declaration
    • An ecosystem approach
      • How to apply an ecosystem approach
      • Ecosystem approach case studies
      • Ecosystem services - nature’s benefits
    • Biodiversity Strategy reporting
    • Biodiversity Duty
      • Biodiversity Duty Reports
      • Biodiversity Duty Reports 2015-2017
    • Local Biodiversity Partnerships
    • Scottish Biodiversity List
  • Scotland's Biodiversity - What is biodiversity?
  • Make Space For Nature
    • Make Space For Nature - Summer
    • Make Space For Nature - Autumn
    • Make Space For Nature - Winter
    • Make Space For Nature - Spring
    • Podcasts
    • Campaign Toolkit
  • Species on the Edge (SotE)
    • About the project
    • Safeguard Coast and Island Wildlife
    • Community Involvement
    • Species on the Edge - Vacancies
  • Helping Scotland's Pollinators
    • Get busy - get involved!
    • Pollinator - resources
  • Benefits of Biodiversity
  • Key pressures on biodiversity
  • Biodiversity - what can you do?
    • The Volunteer Mountain Hare Survey
    • Citizen Science for biodiversity
  • Where to find data