Scotland's Fourth Land Use Strategy: supporting evidence pack

1 Introduction

Scotland’s landscapes are world-famous, with immense cultural, natural and economic importance, that is central to the country’s identity. Scotland is distinctive relative to other UK nations; it has proportionally far more upland area, including extensive peatland and carbon rich soils, and some of the largest areas of continuous rough grazing in Europe.

Nearly half of Scotland is rough or semi-natural grassland, around a quarter is improved grassland or cropland, and woodland covers 19% of the country. Although limited in extent, Scotland’s prime agricultural land is highly productive, underpinning much of the nation’s arable, dairy and horticultural output, making its protection important for food security. Agriculture, in both prime and grassland areas, underpins our world-renowned food and drink products, community livelihoods and national supply chains. These characteristics shape what Scotland’s land can deliver, and where opportunities exist for land use choices to support national outcomes.

Scotland’s 4th Land Use Strategy requires a clear, shared evidence base on how land is used, what benefits it provides, and where opportunities and constraints lie. This pack brings together published data, spatial analysis, and research from the ENRA Strategic Research Programme, including the Land Use Transformations and Large‑Scale Modelling projects, to explore the connections between Scotland’s land and its land use.

This pack is not designed to be prescriptive. It provides a transparent overview of the best available evidence to support clear, well‑informed decisions about Scotland’s finite land resources as the country responds to climate change, biodiversity loss, and the transition to a net zero, nature positive economy. In this pack maps of key datasets have been reproduced to visualise Scotland’s land and land use opportunities. However, links to a wider range of datasets which present alternative ways of understanding similar data have also been referenced. The selected maps for inclusion focus on information already in the public domain.