The National Soils Inventory for Scotland (NSIS1) dataset has been collected using sampling points arranged as a 10 km grid. A wide range of attributes are described, measured and analysed for each site. These range from contextual information describing the surrounding landscape (such as slope and vegetation), down to detailed chemical analyses of each horizon within the soil profile. There are 721 sites in total where soil occurs; where there is no soil at a particular 10 km sampling point, this point has not been included.

Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) has prepared a consolidated spatial dataset of ‘carbon rich soil, deep peat and priority peatland habitats’ in Scotland derived from existing soil and vegetation data (James Hutton Institute 1:25,000 and 1:250,000 scale soil data and Land Cover Scotland 1988). The resulting Carbon and Peatland map updated earlier work undertaken by SNH for the identification of natural heritage features of national importance available from Scotland’s soil website. The map is a high-level planning tool to promote consistency and clarity in the preparation of spatial frameworks by planning authorities. The map is a predictive tool which provides an indication of the likely presence of peat on each individually-mapped area, at a coarse scale. The types of peat shown on the map are carbon-rich soils, deep peat and priority peatland habitat.