Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) are strictly protected sites designated under the EC Habitats Directive. This series of datasets is derived from the UK wide data submitted to the EU Commmission. A substantive update was done as part of the Standard Data Form updating exercise on 22 December 2015 (Tranche 50) . It contains details for each interest feature (habitat or species) for each and every SAC - there is one row in the dataset for each combination of individual site and interest feature. The data here are for the following sections of the standard data form.
This dataset relates to sections 3.1 and 3.2 of the Standard Data form
Notes on specific columns:
IS_MARINE
0 = Not considered to be a Marine Protected Area
1= Marine Protected Area.
DESIGNATION_STATUS_CODE
cSAC = submitted to the EU as a candidate site but not yet adopted by the EU as an SCI
SCI= Site of Community Importance - a status conferred by the EU Commission.
SAC = Designated SAC. The final stage in the process
PRIORITY
1= YES 0 = NO
habextent
Hectares
Values adjusted because whole sites area figures have changed due to GIS updates and habitat % cover estimates have been kept the same.
habcover: % of site
DATA_QUALITY
G = ‘Good’ (e.g. based on surveys); M = ‘Moderate’ (e.g. based on partial data with some extrapolation); P = ‘Poor’ (e.g. rough estimation); DD = data deficient (use this category only, if not even a rough estimation of the population size can be made, in this case the fields for population size can remain empty, but the field "Abundance categories" has to be filled in)
SPECIES_GROUP
A =Amphibians, B = Birds, F = Fish, Fu = Fungi, I = Invertebrates,L = Lichens, M = Mammals, P =Plants, R = Reptiles
Archived versions of this dataset are also available as part of a time series. These may be useful in determining how many sites there were at a given point of time, and also how some of the detailed information might have changed over time. Note that the data columns in this series of datasets were revised slightly in December 2015.
Each archived version corresponds to a European submission. A record of the changes made at each submisison is shown here.
http://jncc.defra.gov.uk/page-1488
