Standing Water Database
SR(00)08F
March 2001

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The purpose of this database is to provide a source of data for all freshwater lochs in Scotland with a surface area greater than 0.5km2, together with smaller lochs of local significance. Data held on the database relates to location and physical characteristics and is explicitly linked to meta-data of chemical and biological data holdings. There are 454 lochs in total, 116 of which are less than 0.5km2 in size. Lochs were originally selected from a digital coverage of loch outlines using area as the initial criteria and then additionally selecting those lochs specified by SEPA. Metadata of chemical and biological data holdings were solicited from all organizations and individuals thought likely to have recorded data on Scottish Standing Waters.

The principle source of physical data are Murray and Pullar (1910) and the Ordnance Survey PANORAMA 1:50000 vector dataset. A complete list of sources is given in Appendix 1.

97SNIFFER.MDB was designed on a 333mhZ Pentium II PC with 128 Mb RAM using MS Access 2000 then saves as an MS Access 97 database file. Database design was done using a screen solution of 1152 by 864 pixels and this resolution or greater is recommended when using the database.

The database comes with a number of standard queries that allow users to identify standing waters in specific areas or with specific characteristics. The structure of the database is given in Appendix II.

KEY WORDS

Scotland; standing waters; lochs; lakes, database

Copies of this database in electronic format on CDRom with accompanying User Manual are available from the Foundation, price £35.00 plus VAT, less 20% to FWR members