Landscape Character Assessment in Scotland
Learn about Scotland’s national Landscape Character Assessment coverage.
Scotland’s national coverage of landscape character assessment is provided as a single dataset. This can be viewed within the Scottish Landscape Character Types Map and Descriptions.
The coverage is at the level of Landscape Character Type (LCT) – i.e. types of consistent and recognisable landscape character that may occur in more than one area. The dataset labels, as “urban”, settlements with a population of more than approximately 25,000; these were not assessed.
Background
Between 1994 and 1999, NatureScot commissioned, in partnership with others, a series of 30 regional landscape character assessment studies. Together, these identified, mapped and described the landscape character of all of Scotland (mostly at a scale of 1:50,000). Townscape character assessment was beyond the scope of these studies, and urban areas were not assessed.
Each study typically covered a local authority area, and provided the foundation for landscape planning. The studies were used widely in the planning system.
We began a review of these paper-based documents in 2011. This was due to technical advances in the meantime and additional complementary datasets produced e.g. Historic Land-use Assessment.
More detail on how we carried out the review is available within the LCA Introduction and Review Methodology document. We produced a summary of the main differences between 1990 and 2019 data.
Several of the 1990s LCAs contained "Forces for Change" and guidance sections. Many of these had become dated, for example planning policy references and turbine heights. The 2019 national LCA did not update these. Some of the details, such as settlement pattern analysis in some reports, may still be useful and can be accessed from the archived reports via the above link. If there is a relevant sensitivity study, that would take precedence for informing landscape considerations for that development type, e.g. wind farms.
Should you find any broken links, missing labels etc, or have any queries, please notify us at [email protected].
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